Ale-lujah! The Gospel According to Holy Water

In the heart of San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, you’ll find a church with no altar or priest.

It’s a building with no cross on top or stained glass windows. One that switches pews for barstools and communion for community.

But walk inside, and you’ll see religious paintings coating the walls like wax dripping down a candle; every nook and cranny filled with a print—many French and German.

Holy Water Owner and Manager John Ottman found these works all over, from eBay to Etsy.

“I found a guy in Paris,” he shares, admitting that he pretty much sent money into the ether the first time he bought from him. But Ottman figured, “Well, I’ll only get burned once.”

Far from getting burned, Ottman has lit an eternal match. He figures he’s spent a couple of thousand dollars buying prints from him. “And I’ve gotten every single one.”

We’re perched on a high-top table in the back of one of San Francisco’s best-kept secrets, Holy Water.

This temple of tipples started as a spirits emporium but has transformed into one of the city’s best craft beer bars over the past decade.

In a metropolis populated by the likes of Toronado and City Beer, Holy Water somehow slipped silently through the cracks.

Those who know, know.

And those like me, who didn’t know, have discovered a new religion.

From way up towards the top of the wall, a space Ottman almost can’t reach, he pulls down a print of Jesus, the first. His virgin Mary, if you will.

It’s hard to believe, but when Holy Water opened in 2013, you’d find almost no religious paraphernalia on the wall.

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

But on New Year’s Eve in 2018 or 2019 (Ottman can’t remember exactly), he put up all the art he’d collected—somewhere near fifty pieces.

Ottman points to another print, “These nuns I found in Santa Cruz, at a flea market.”

Fully baptized, Ottman admits his hobby may be getting a little out of hand. “I actually have two hundred rosaries at my house that I’m just waiting to put up,” he laughs. “They’re just in these giant gallon Ziploc bags.”

Now you can’t turn your head at Holy Water without running into Jesus or Mary Magdalene.

Across from the bar, a wall-length mural of a Southern baptism. At least, that’s Ottman’s best guess.

“I don’t know too many river baptisms in California,” he chuckles.

Behind the bar, glasses stamped with commandments:

Wash away all my sins

Confess all your sins

Even the water glasses remind you that you’re drinking holy water.

“What’s crazy is they cost as much as the beer glasses,” laughs Ottman, “and they just walk out the door.”

I suppose I misspoke when I said this church has no overseer.

Holy water has become Ottman’s haven.

And in return, Holy Water has become a different kind of cathedral, a watering hole unlike any other in the city.

Genesis: From Cabinets to Cocktails

Holy Water Owner John Ottman | Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

I wouldn’t say Ottman had a calling to own a bar, but he found his way to it.

While working in a cabinet shop in Sacramento in the early 2000s, he had an epiphany.

“It was so hot, triple digits,” Ottman remembers. “I was just tired, and I had this bizarre idea that maybe I’d do something fun in architecture.”

While going back to school at the local city college, Ottman got a part-time job at Chicago Fire, a nearby pizza place.

The last person to interview, Ottman was hired on the spot. The owner told Ottman he knew he was the right person because, while working full-time and going to school three nights a week, he still wanted to work at the bar in his free time.

That was Ottman’s gateway. He hopped around for the next decade or so, working at bars like Churchill and Bloodhound.

Ottoman says he stuck around because he knew the owners of both those bars always found a third partner when they opened a new spot.

“Everyone thought I was crazy,” Ottman says of hospitality work. “But long story short … [a few years later] that’s pretty much exactly what happened.”*

*Editor’s Note: Ottman bought out his original partners in 2023 and is now the sole owner of Holy Water.

Exodus: The Road to Craft Beer

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

Holy Water wasn’t always a temple for fermented tipples. Ottman came from a cocktail background. After stints at spirits-focused bars, “I wasn’t worried about the cocktails,” he admits. “But beer was still unknown.”

To educate himself, Ottman began buying bottles—lots and lots of bottles.

At one point, he admits he had fifty to sixty different ones.

“At home?” I ask him.

“No,” he says, gesturing to his left, “here in the bar.”

Nothing was off limits. Ottman bought Belgian beer, all kinds of sours, and barleywines.

“People loved it,” he says with a shake of his head.

But beyond his personal collection, getting beer actually on draft at Holy Water was a whole other quest.

Ottman remembers wanting to bring in some Alpine Nelson, “the best IPA in California at the time,” he says. When he emailed the brewery, he received a firm reply: “No, sorry.”

Likewise, tracking down Cantillon came with a rejection.

Ottman was new. No one had heard of him. Holy Water was just a bar that primarily served cocktails and spirits at that.

But Ottman kept pursuing his unofficial beer education. And slowly but surely, beer by beer, he built a house of ale.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

During Holy Water’s first S.F. Beer Week in 2014, Ottman secured eight half-kegs from Avery, planning to tap the beer all week.

On the first day, Ottman says he got a call. “Dude, I need some help.”

Running down to the bar, Ottman found it completely packed. “What on Earth?” Ottman remembers asking himself.

With time, Ottman built connections all across California.

Like with Scot Blair, who originally opened the San Diego-based Monkey Paw.

Blair visited Holy Water and invited Ottman to the brewery to brew a beer.

Photography courtesy of John Ottman | Holy Water

Loading up his Toyota Tacoma with beer, Ottman drove down to spend a few days brewing and drinking with Blair.

“As I was getting ready to leave,” says Ottman, “he’s like, Do you want to take some beer back?”

Ottman drove back, loaded with kegs of Fall, Council, and Eppig.

“He had hit up all his buddies and told them you go to sell this guy beer,” laughs Ottman. “I had no business driving that much beer back up.”

For the next couple of years, Ottman became the craft express, ferrying beer back and forth between Northern and Southern California.

He’d bring back beer not just for Holy Water but also two of S.F.’s other watering holes—Toronado and City Beer.

Struggling to find the words for it, Ottman eventually landed on two words: buddy system.

Pretty soon, he started getting calls from hype breweries like Cellarmaker.

Ottman says they started asking him, “Hey, do you want to buy some of our beer?”

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture (top and bottom right) and Grace Lee-Weitz, Hop Culture (bottom left)

In Ottman’s mind, the math adds up pretty easily.

“People trust us,” he says matter-of-factly. “We take care of the beer. We keep it cold. We clean our lines and our faucets.”

The rest, he says, is just word of mouth.

Well, after five years, the word was out on Holy Water.

Today, walk into Holy Water on a Friday night and you’ll find a good mix of locals and beer nerds.

Regulars gather in a corner of the bar.

“It’s just one of those places,” laughs longtime regular Richard Park, who has been worshipping inside Holy Water’s hallowed walls since the very beginning. “It’s a neighborhood place … but it’s a little hidden.”

Park and his wife run a small kitchen called Overkill Grill inside a Mission bar called Benders.

Even though he works at a bar, Park says Holy Water is his drinking sanctuary, where he likes to relax at the end of the night.

Over the years, Holy Water became his Sunday school, an education in California craft beer. “John brought in things you couldn’t get anywhere else,” says Park, admitting he’s a West Coast IPA guy who likes to end the night sipping on something like a Private Press stout.

The regulars have gotten so close at Holy Water that they’ve even traveled together.

When Park celebrated his forty-fifth birthday in 2020, twenty-five Holy Water regulars went with him to Vegas.

“It was amazing,” remembers Park. “That’s one of the biggest things I’ll remember, the community that John has created [at Holy Water].”

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirits

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

Devout to a fault, Ottman will go to the ends of California to source the best beer for his congregants.

He still hits the LA area every three to four months.

On his last beer run, Ottman drove through the night just to pick up some beer from Enegren. He woke up at 1:30 a.m., hit Moorpark to pick up those Enegren kegs by 6:30 a.m., dropped some other kegs off at Highland Park at 7:50 a.m., loaded up, and got back to the bar by 2:00 p.m.

“John is psycho,” says Park. “He’s always driving down to LA to buy the freshest, hoppiest beer from around town and bring it home for us.”

You’ll immediately notice the fruits of his pilgrimages on the draft list, strategically split into four columns and three rows.

The first and second columns are usually all hoppy stuff. While you might not always find a hazy on at Holy Water, one thing you’ll always find: A West Coast IPA or two.

Think Ghost Town, Russian River, Flatland, Alvarado Street, and Pizza Port if Ottman can get it.

Lately, Ottman has been crossing the Bay Bridge over to Faction in Alameda because even though they don’t distribute, “if you drive over, they’ll sell it to you.”

Recently, he made the thirty-five-minute drive for a pale ale called In the Pocket.

Ottman reserves the third column for sour and funky things. Like a 3 Fonteinen Nocturne and a Flanders oud bruin.

The last column on the far right has dark beer, usually a dark lager, porter, and a bigger beer. For instance, when we visited, Moonlight’s Death & Taxes and North Coast’s Nitro Old Rasputin shared the board with a Sante Adairius coffee porter.

While beer accounts for twenty-eight percent of the Holy Water’s sales, the rest is a mix of cocktails and just straight spirits.

Like the most popular Mexican Firing Squad, a tincture of Blanco tequila, grenadine, lime, and bitters over crushed ice.

Ottoman says what they sell the most of is whiskey, but agave-based spirits like mezcal and tequila aren’t far behind.

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

He plans to lay everything out in what looks like a Bible that you’d find in a Drake Hotel room.

The new red Italian leather-bound booklet will include twenty-two parchment-like pages of cocktails, beers, and even an NA and low-ABV section.

A special section called the Cardinal’s List will include cocktails, more expensive spirits like a Manhattan with George T. Stagg bourbon or a Sazerac with Thomas H. Handy.

Like the constant sourcing of the 1800s religious arts and rosaries stuffed into Ziploc bags in his basement, Ottman’s dedication reaches a higher level.

Something that becomes even crazier when you learn that Ottman has stayed sober for the last eighteen months.

Instead of drinking, he takes a one-minute cold shower every morning and sits in an ice bath at night.

“I hate doing them; they’re the worst,” he admits. “But it’s an obstacle I must do every day to help me.”

Call it his own private baptism.

Thou Shalt Go to Holy Water

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

In December, Holy Water will celebrate its twelfth anniversary.

Ottman can hardly believe it.

As we wrap up our conversation, and I start to put my notepad away, he points to sets of barrels behind me, set up almost like tables.

“All these whiskey barrels are unique to us,” he tells me. “They’ve all pretty much once had aged beer in them.”

Ottman gives these used whiskey barrels to breweries all over California.

Moxsa’s Singularity series? “That started with us,” he says with a smile.

GOAL.’s Founder Derek Gallanosa has a Holy Water barrel, too.

And Shred Founder and Brewer Zack Frasher? He also has a barrel.

Fitting, no? The place that once couldn’t get beer from Alpine or Cantillon now passes on barrels to the likes of Moksa, Shred, and GOAL.

“People who previously said no to me are now like, Can you give me a second of your time?” says Ottman, shaking his head in disbelief.

We’re not commanding you to go to Holy Water by any means, but once you step inside this cathedral, we find it hard to accept that you won’t become a believer.