A proposed Lagunitas class action filed in San Francisco federal court alleges that beer from The Lagunitas Brewing Company contains PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals, at levels the plaintiff compares to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits for drinking water, and that the brewery failed to warn customers. Nothing in the complaint has been proven. The case is Talbot v. The Lagunitas Brewing Company, No. 3:26-cv-12965, filed Nov. 2, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Courthouse News reported the filing on Nov. 3. The named plaintiff, Nathaniel Talbot of San Francisco, alleges that Lagunitas knew or should have known of the PFAS levels he claims are in the beer. A representative for Lagunitas did not immediately respond to Courthouse News. As of Nov. 10, 2026, we found no public statement from Lagunitas or from Heineken, which has owned Lagunitas since completing its purchase of the company in 2017, after buying a 50% stake in 2015.
What the Lagunitas class action alleges
According to Courthouse News’ account of the complaint, Talbot says he became concerned after an April 2025 study looked at PFAS in beer and in tap water. The study, as described in the filing, tested 23 beers for 17 different PFAS and did not disclose which beers had been sampled. The complaint identifies “beer 4,” in a group described as brewed in regions with PFAS in municipal drinking water, as coming from Sonoma County, California, where Talbot says Lagunitas is the largest brewery and the only one that distributes nationally and internationally. That is the plaintiff’s characterization of the study, not a finding that the study named Lagunitas.
The complaint also cites testing Talbot arranged on four samples of Lagunitas beer from around the country. Courthouse News reports that those tests, according to the plaintiff, showed nearly seven times the EPA’s enforceable limit for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and about four times the EPA’s current enforceable limit for perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA). Those EPA figures are standards for public drinking water, not a federal limit written specifically for beer. The complaint uses them as a comparison. The testing was arranged by the plaintiff and has not been tested in court. Those alleged results are part of the Lagunitas class action complaint, not findings by the EPA or by the court.
Talbot alleges he bought and drank Lagunitas beer regularly, would not have bought it if he had known of the risks he claims, and would buy it again if the brewer could ensure it was free of PFAS. The claims in the Lagunitas class action, as reported by Courthouse News, include breach of the implied warranty, unfair competition, and violations of California’s Consumers Legal Remedies Act and unfair competition law. In a statement to Courthouse News, Carl L. Stine of Wolf Popper, representing Talbot, said it “appears that Lagunitas knowingly sells beer that contains levels of PFAS that the EPA has found to pose health risks” and that the firm believes Lagunitas “should immediately fix this problem and pay damages to its customers.” That is counsel’s advocacy, not a court finding.
Where the Lagunitas class action stands in court
The public CourtListener docket, last updated Nov. 10, 2026, shows the case assigned to Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse. An initial case management conference is set for Feb. 5, 2027, at 2 p.m., by videoconference, with a case management statement due Jan. 29, 2027. A summons was issued to The Lagunitas Brewing Company on Nov. 9. A Nov. 10 docket entry is labeled a certificate of interested entities or Rule 7.1 disclosure; the public listing we could read does not identify the filer or include any statement from Lagunitas or Heineken addressing the allegations. There is no answer from the brewery on the docket as of that update, and the court has not ruled on the claims, the testing, or whether a class should be certified. A Lagunitas class action at this stage is a filing, not a judgment.
Lagunitas was founded in 1993 in Lagunitas, California, and later moved its brewing to Petaluma, where Courthouse News says it still operates. Heineken is not named as a defendant in the Lagunitas class action caption. We will update this if Lagunitas or Heineken issues a response, or if the docket shows an answer or a significant ruling. Until then, this remains a set of unproven allegations in a newly filed proposed Lagunitas class action. We are not saying the beer is unsafe, and the court has not found that it is.
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