A Spectral Ghoul and some Scumbags...
- Randall Wilburn
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
An afternoon at Ghost Town's Beer Garden in Laurel — a Fermented Metal field report from 3506 MacArthur Blvd.
The first thing you notice walking into Ghost Town Brewing’s Laurel taproom on a Sunday afternoon isn’t the skull iconography or the stack of empty kegs with the Ghost Town logo on them — it’s the kids and dogs. There’s a toddler wobbling between picnic benches while her dad nurses a pint, and someone’s leashed pit bull naps under an umbrella. East Oakland’s loudest brewery has, somehow, become a family beer garden. A giant skeleton towers over the beer garden next to a fantastical mural of a "Death Knight". The death motif hangs over everything — the brewery’s whole brand leans into Oakland’s old “Ghost Town” nickname for a historically rough stretch of West Oakland — but at noon on a Sunday, with the gates open at 12 p.m. sharp, the vibe is closer to backyard barbecue than basement show (Ghost Town Brewing — Laurel, Yelp; Berkeleyside, May 2018).
A Brewery That Started as a Side Hustle for a Metal Band
To understand Ghost Town, you have to understand that it began as a financial hack for musicians. Co-founders Ryan Nosek, Sam Carr-Prindle, Jason Gehman, and Adam Hill were Bay Area bandmates who launched a one-barrel nano-brewery in 2012 to help pay the rent on their rehearsal space (Square — The Bottom Line). They never settled on a band name — they cycled through “Baby Arm,” “Tire Fire,” “HAG,” and what Nosek has cheerfully described as “a bunch of other garbage” (Berkeleyside, May 2018) — but the brewery name stuck. By 2018 they had a full taproom on Adeline Street in West Oakland, and in early 2021 they took over the former 4505 Burgers & BBQ space at 3506 MacArthur Blvd. for their first satellite location (Oaklandside, Jan. 2021; Hoodline, Jan. 2021).
Five years on, The Oaklandside named the Laurel patio the East Bay’s best beer garden in its 2025 Nosh Awards, citing exactly the contradiction I’m sitting in: growlers, grub, and good times built around a death motif (Oaklandside, Dec. 2025).
Gloomfang : The Hazy That Bites Back
My buddy Peter orders at the bar by the door and starts with the Gloomfang. This is Ghost Town’s flagship Hazy IPA, a Yakima Chief Hops collaboration at 6.8% ABV built on EXP 638 and Krush — the latter formerly EXP 586, both proprietary varietals from the last few years. It pours the color of a cloudy mango lassi and smells of peach, plum, and sweet lime. The brewery’s own copy frames it as “a new, bizarre monster” born of “the perilous ongoing collaboration with Yakima Chief Hops,” which is a level of commitment to the bit I respect (Gloomfang, Untappd; Gloomfang Hazy IPA, BevMo). What sets it apart from the East Bay’s haze tide is that it actually has teeth — a bitterness on the back end that pulls the juice into focus instead of letting it dissolve into milkshake territory. Untappd users rate it just over a 4 across 600-plus check-ins (Gloomfang, BeerAdvocate).
Mordant : An American IPA with a Sweet Tooth
The natural follow-up is the Mordant, Ghost Town’s American IPA. It runs 6.7% ABV — fractionally lower than Gloomfang — and is hopped with Strata and Mosaic, two of the most fashionable American varieties of the past decade. The brewery’s tasting notes describe it as “a touch aggressive and bitter,” with rough edges “tempered by a sweetness that’s reminiscent of peak summer melons, peaches, strawberries, and citrus” — and that is exactly the seesaw the glass delivers (Mordant, BeerAdvocate; Mordant, Untappd). If Gloomfang flirts with the modern Hazy crowd, Mordant is the older sibling who never left the West Coast. It pours clearer, finishes drier, and stays bitter longer. The Strata gives it a pungent passionfruit-and-cannabis snap. With more than 1,400 Untappd ratings, it’s clearly the workhorse of the lineup — the IPA people order without thinking.
Scumbag : Cream Ale for the Heroes
After two IPAs you need a reset, and that is exactly the job of Scumbag. Scumbag is Ghost Town’s taproom-exclusive cream ale — the brewery’s own description calls it a “humble American Pseudo-Pilsner,” 4.6% ABV, “clean, crisp, and an insanely crushable” lawnmower beer that they pour as a $3 pint (Scumbag, Untappd; Scumbag, BeerAdvocate). On a 77-degree Oakland afternoon it disappears in roughly the time it takes to finish a paragraph.
So where does the name come from? Honestly: Ghost Town hasn’t made the answer public anywhere I can find. The brewery has never published a formal origin story, and press coverage doesn’t dig into the etymology of individual beer names. A brewery Instagram post from late 2020 dedicates the beer “for all the heroes eating” — the gag being that a $3 cream ale is honest and anti-snob, and therefore in the Ghost Town worldview a kind of folk hero, even if the label calls it a scumbag (@ghosttownbrewing on Instagram). Until the founders publish the real story, that’s the best I can give you: the name is a punchline that flatters the drinker.
The Atmosphere
Covering one side of the interior wall carries the Skinner / Mala Mujer Arte / Amol mural — a comic-book death knight wreathed in lightning and tentacles, wielding a battle axe. It was painted in April 2021, around the time Ghost Town opened the Laurel taproom, by the three-artist team ( Oakland Murals).
The choice of Skinner is not incidental. The Oakland-based artist has spent the past decade producing what he describes as a hybrid of comic-book line work, psychedelic pattern, and heavy-metal album art, with a client list that runs through Mastodon, Heavy Metal magazine, Adult Swim, Vans, and Fender (The Art of Skinner; Beyond Geek).
The patio runs picnic-bench seating under shade umbrellas; the Oaklandside / Berkeleyside feature on the brewery's 2025 Nosh Award win calls the result a "skull-adorned beer garden," which is the right phrase — every sightline is doing the work, from rooftop signage down to the prop-grade skeleton imagery the brand has wrapped around itself since the West Oakland location opened in 2018.
The food works the same theme at the menu level. The Laurel kitchen runs a hybrid pub-and-Mexican lineup — Cluckin Hell Sando, shrimp burger, fish tacos, beef-and-potato empanadas, Twisted Sister big ass pretzel — and lets the brewery's Metal motif carry the naming. Order the Altar of Sacri-Fries (a $-friendly bowl of fries) and you've already paid the joke its due. It's good food doing the thing more good food should do, which is take itself only as seriously as the room around it, and tasting damn good at the same time.
The Verdict
Three beers in, with a paper boat of Altar of Sacri-Fries cooling and a Scumbag sweating onto the table, Ghost Town reads like the thing East Oakland figured out and the rest of the country missed: a brewery can be loud, weird, display morbid art, run by metal heads and still be the most welcoming place to spend a Sunday afternoon.. The Gloomfang is a hazy with a spine. The Mordant earns its bitterness. The Scumbag is a $3 lager that doesn’t insult your wallet and goes well with the Altar of Sacri-fries. Bring the kid. Bring the dog. Bring your old school metal Dad. Bring an appetite. The patio is open until 10.
Ghost Town Brewing — Laurel. 3506 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94619. Sun 12–10 p.m. Patio, kid- and dog-friendly. Order at the bar.
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