RESTAURANT REVIEW / SHIELDS BREWING COMPANY : Half-Pint Brewery : Mini-pubs that make their own are popping up in California. The Ventura establishment serves ales on draft and offers a limited menu.

In downtown Ventura, across the street from a wholesale store, sits the county’s only “brew pub.” It’s also the county’s only brewery. In fact, say its owners, this corner beverage and food dispensary is the first brewery--legal variety--the region has seen since before prohibition.

Brew pubs are those small, mini-breweries that have sprung up in California during the last dozen years or so.

Although the Shields Brewing Company is the only one of its kind in the Ventura region, you will find a few scattered throughout the Los Angeles area, one in Santa Barbara and several farther north as you go up through San Luis Obispo and into the San Francisco Bay area.

These small establishments make their own brews on the premises, usually within view of their customers. They produce ales and lagers, two families of beer categorized according to type of yeast and fermenting temperature. And they serve what is frequently called pub food--fish and chips, hamburgers, fried calamari and so on.

In a refurbished industrial building, which decades ago housed a blacksmith and welding business, Bob and Trudy Shields opened a mini-brewery in 1990.

The decor could be described as “clean industrial.” The ceiling is original, with heavy steel beams visible. The utility ducts are painted, and the room’s colors are primarily neutrals and muted greens.

The focus at Shields is on the ale, which is the only kind of brew it serves. The counter of the bar faces the stainless-steel brewing apparatus, which is set behind glass walls. One of the charms of this particular arrangement is only apparent during daylight. The glass partition reflects, from outside and across the street, a row of gracefully swaying eucalyptus trees, dancing in the ocean breezes.

As is the tradition, Shields’ ales are less carbonated and served at a bit warmer temperature than lagers.

Starting with the lightest, there’s the Gold Coast beer, an amber brew that Bob Shields says, “fits the California lifestyle.”

On a couple of occasions, my companions and I had to drink the Gold Coast from the bottle (their bottled beer is sold only on the premises) rather than on draft since an “experiment” on the tank Shields was working on had not gone well.

A couple of times I opted for the Channel Islands ale, which was strong, but not as strong as the Shields stout, which had a smoother, creamier, heavier taste.

In addition to those, which are all usually available on draft, there are special seasonal brews, such as the summertime West Coast Wheat, an especially thirst-quenching beer, and an Oktoberfest beer--a darker, German-style product.

Food is not Shields’ strongest point,; which is too bad, because this is a place you really want to like. Bob Shields is nearly always there--cordial, helpful and knowledgeable. The service in generally is friendly and efficient, and the dart room at the rear is a nice touch. You wish the kitchen were equally effective.

We did like the calamari ($8.95), fried in a beer batter--naturally. It was a fairly heavy batter, but the oil they used was obviously clean and the calamari was as tender as you are likely to find.

Unfortunately, the same batter doesn’t save the beer-batter fish dinner ($8.95). The night I ate there, it was frozen red snapper that had been cooked much too long.

A common specialty in a brew pub is sausage. Besides the Polish sausage sandwich ($6.95), Shields offers a sausage platter ($11.95), which boasts the Polish model, a bratwurst and a knockwurst. The plate is worth trying; it comes with good sausage, steamed in beer, served with the house’s own beer bread and vegetables.

The curly cue french-fried potatoes, which are a popular menu item, were nicely done. The fried potatoes, on the other hand, were mealy and dried out. The sauerkraut on the dish was excellent--crunchy and perfectly seasoned with caraway seeds.

Salads started out with the right idea, with things like lentils and fresh broccoli and mushrooms and cauliflower, but they were pretty much destroyed by all the water seeping out of greens that had not been properly drained, making the whole thing a soggy mess.

A choice of either split pea soup or clam chowder ($4.95) served in a small, hollowed-out sourdough loaf is a frequent blackboard special. The loaf is from the Pioneer bakery. The split pea soup was peppery and otherwise bland, but the chowder is one of the house’s better items. It was thick but not too thick, with an interesting flavor which, it turns out, comes from a dash of allspice.

The corned beef and cabbage ($9.95), a featured dish, was a mixed blessing. The horseradish served with it had long ago lost its zing, but the brisket cut was tender, and the boiled cabbage and potatoes were fine.

The beer-steamed dinners were, as an uncle of mine used to say about certain people in his life, “no better than they should be.” Cooked in fresh ale, the shrimp version ($8.95) was what you deserve if you order boiled shrimp.

One Sunday afternoon, with those eucalyptus reflected in the glass nearly hypnotizing me, I decided that I couldn’t go wrong with the hamburger ($4.95). After all, the menu assured me that it was “just like Grandma’s.”

Perhaps I should have recalled that Grandma--mine, at least--didn’t make hamburgers. And I should not have ordered this one. The word I think I’m looking for, to describe both the bun and the meat, is dense . The meat was heavy and characterless, the bun was just there. The only saving grace was the thick, gorgeous slice of onion. That’s not much of a saving grace.

It seems that the brew really is the thing here.

* WHERE AND WHEN

Shields Brewing Company, corner of Santa Clara Street and Ventura Avenue, Ventura, 643-1807. Open Tuesday-Thursday 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m., Friday-Saturday 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m., Sunday 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Major credit cards accepted. Beer and wine only. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $10-$30.