Tenma Beer Project: Not a Brewery. Not a Brewing Company. A Beer Project

Beer Project. Not Brewing Co. Not Brewery. At Tenma Beer Project, one of our “Best New Breweries of 2023,” co-founders Dana Martindale and Brennan Perry emphasize that they want their beers to evolve constantly. They can’t guarantee their Great American Beer Festival award-winning German-style pilsner, Don’t Fear the Answer, will always be on tap.

They can’t ensure that their Bistro IPA gold medal-winning and People’s Choice Award West Coast IPA, The Infinite Self: Nelson, will always be pouring.

What can they promise? You’ll find something new every time you walk in off the busy San Pablo Ave and into their taproom in Oakland, CA.

On a Friday afternoon, I stood peering up at twelve multi-colored neon clipboards behind Tenma Beer Project’s bar. My eyes skimmed over an Irish red ale, a pale ale, three West Coast IPAs, a doppelbock, one hazy, a rice lager, a helles, a Czech dark lager, a Munich dunkel, and batch two of that GABF bronze-winning German-style pilsner.

The co-owner, who often runs the front of the house solo, stood behind the bar, emphasizing that this was batch two. Not the same beer, but one tweaked by Perry to add a touch more bitterness to the base.

This is how things work at Tenma Beer Project. Beers never stay the same, and Perry and Martindale never stay in one place. On the afternoon we visited, Martindale tended the bar all night while Perry cleaned lines and took off to run the van down to Hayward for some deliveries.

Something fused into their bones from working twelve-hour shifts and eighty-hour weeks across a multitude of some of Southern California’s best breweries. Only now do the two get to put in the work for themselves.

So, while Perry and Brennan can’t and don’t want to promise that Don’t Fear the Answer will always be on tap, you should be okay with that. Because here’s what we can promise: Whatever beer you choose from those neon clipboards…will most likely be outstanding.

Cutting Teeth in Southern California’s Best Breweries

But in reality, Martindale and Perry have scraped, fought, sweated, grinded, and worked countless twelve-hour shifts, all so that they can now run a 7-bbl brewery with basically just the two of them (plus a couple of part-time bartenders) running the show.

Perry’s training started at Stone in Escondido, CA. While he hated the rigidity of big production brewing, he said he picked up an irreplaceable technical foundation.

“A big brewery teaches you that you don’t really have the option to make mistakes,” he shares, as we perch at one of the high-top tables, where I can peek at Tenma’s much tinier 7-bbl set-up in the background.“It’s not my style. I’m way more free and enjoy messing around, but honestly, doing things off the cuff without a technical background is a dangerous place to be.”

Something Perry learned when he moved EuropeanDate arvostelut to Beechwood Brewing, a hitherto unheard-of spot that Stone kept putting on its guest taps in the pub.

Tenma Beer Project: Not a Brewery. Not a Brewing Company. A Beer Project

“Every time we’d have them, we’d be like, holy shit, this is great!” recounts Perry, who met Martindale while working at Stone.

“I specifically remember his Tinder profile,” said Martindale, a former global product manager for a biotech company. Responsible for selling and marketing biotech products, Martindale traveled the country for trade shows, enjoying craft beer everywhere she went. “His said, ‘brewer looking for a beer buddy. Applicants apply within.’”

When Beechwood opened up its Huntington Beach facility, Perry started poking owner and brewmaster Julian Shrago. He wanted to leave production brewing and move closer to Martindale in Orange County.