If someone wanted to know where to get a good beer in Campbell, there would be no shortage of answers. But you probably wouldn’t guess that Sandis, a civil engineering firm headquartered on Winchester Boulevard, is home to the best secret taproom in the valley.
The beermaking tradition started years ago when the company was located in Sunnyvale. A few employees were homebrewers and they started bringing their equipment to work, making beer during downtime in the office. “When our management found out that’s what we were doing, they thought it was great,” said Nate Dickinson, an associate principal with the firm. “We started brewing for company events, and it kind of became a little happy hour kind of thing.”
Sandis President Jeff Setera says the brewing became an outlet for employees to exhibit their passions outside of work. “It’s a nice way to show there’s something beyond what we do for a living, and to be able to share it together and with a select group of clients,” he said. “It’s a little bit of a unique culture, and we want people to be creative and show their creativity.”
About a year into the beermaking, the brewers bottled about 20 gallons of beer that was given to clients for the holidays, which was a big hit. And then came the move to Campbell, where there was a small conference room near the reception desk no one was sure what to do with. “The idea of putting together a taproom kind of came to fruition,” said Dickinson, who with colleagues combined civil engineering experience and brewing knowledge to outfit a five-tap refrigerated system.
It’s not your every day breakroom. Pint glasses and smaller taster glasses — branded with the Sandis logo, of course — fill shelves below the taps, and glass-topped pony kegs serve as coffee tables holding bottles of water and bar snacks. The office has been closed during the pandemic, but Dickinson — the company’s only current brewer — has kept the taproom maintained for employees who stop by to pick something up (or fill a growler). Most of the current beers have been named to reflect the moment — Covid Cure IPA, Corona Buster IPA, Pandemic Porter and Hazy SIP (“Shelter-in-Place”) IPA — and a menu board lists particulars like alcohol content and bitterness.
Sandis Vice President Laura Cabral, who has fond memories of a chocolate porter, said being a company that also makes beer is a helpful marketing tool. “When our business development folks go to a client’s office, it’s a really nice icebreaker to bring a four-pack of beer with them and then you have this additional thing to talk about,” she said. “There’s always a lot of questions, and we can invite them back to our beer room for a meeting.”
Dickinson. a San Lorenzo Valley native and Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo grad, easily ticks off a list of engineering projects he’s proud of working on, with the renovation of Frost Amphitheater at Stanford University at the top of the list. But it’s harder for him to name his favorite beer. Besides, it’s the camaraderie the taproom has fostered he really appreciates.
“To open this up on a Friday afternoon and let the engineers from one side and the surveyors from the other side share a beer and unwind and talk about what they have going on has really helped make the community in this office,” he said. “It’s a really nice way to end the week.”
TECH CHALLENGE ENDURES: Of all the real-world problems the Tech Challenge has tackled over the past 34 years, figuring out how to conduct the innovation competition during a pandemic that had most students distance-learning apart from each other might have been the biggest. But having every aspect of the yearlong program be virtual was just a bump in the road for the more than 1,200 students who participated in the signature program of the San Jose-based Tech Interactive.
This year’s Tech Challenge: Ultimate Upcycle — presented by San Jose-based Zoom Video Communications (in more ways than one) — asked teams to build a useful item out of cardboard that could be transformed into something else using the same pieces. The student teams — ranging from fourth-graders to high school seniors — presented their creations and answered questions about them during online showcases last weekend. If you want to see the best of the best, awards are being presented May 2 at 3 p.m. You can get more details at www.thetech.org/thetechchallenge.
And if you’ve been aching to get back to the Tech in person, there’s good news on the horizon. The downtown institution plans to reopen May 29, and tickets go on sale May 3. Get hours and other information at www.thetech.org.
BAR PATRONS PAY TRIBUTE: There was an emotional gathering at Jack’s Bar in San Jose on Thursday night to say farewell to Travis Walter, who managed the bar for 11 years and died at age 53 on April 29, 2020 — a time when getting together to remember him wasn’t possible. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran with a broad frame and broader smile, Walter made friends working for San Jose bars for more than 20 years, including the Flying Pig Pub on South First Street and the Flying Martini Bros. in San Pedro Square. It seemed like an endless stream answered Jack’s owner Jordan Trigg’s invitation and showed up to say goodbye.
I’d known Travis for two decades, but another longtime friend, Carl Foisy, told me a story about him I’d never heard. Bar patrons would often urge him to have a drink with them — as bar patrons will — even offering to buy. He’d resist and then finally relent, pouring himself a shot from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s he kept behind the bar, and toasting the happy customer. What they didn’t know was the bottle was filled with iced tea for just such an occasion. There was plenty of the real stuff flowing Thursday night at Jack’s in his honor, though Foisy said he considered sticking to iced tea.
