San Diego is great for breweries. You'll definitely need to hire a car. And tasting hours are all towards Friday/Saturday arvos to plan ahead for tasting hours. You can run around and hit 5 or 6 awesome breweries in an arvo/evening if you do it right.
Pizza Ports are great. There are few, visit them all. See Stone it's well worth it. Greenflash can be good. Coronado brewing is good. Lost Abbey, Iron Fist, Firehouse, AleSmith, BallastPoint, are all worth a visit. Alpine Brewery is worth the drive out if you have the time.
There are few nano-breweries out there like Mother Earth and Hess.
The beaches are interesting compared to the Goldy, so go out to sunset cliffs for a sunset.
If you are in South LA/Orange county/Anaheim we liked The Bruery and Bootleggers. Tustin was ok... nice copper gear behind the bar, but lots of loud big screen TVs with crappy yank sports.
A few years ago, me and some mates hired some Harleys from eagle rider in LA for 8 days. They are very foreigner friendly there (lots of Euro tourists straight from the plane - no hassle with Aussie licenses). We rode the coast road Highway 1 up to near Monteray. Big Sur and the coast was good to see. Then we cut across the Yosemite. That was awesome. Nothing like it in Aus. Then we went back down via Mamoth lakes and the Sierra Nevadas. Great scenery.
San Fran and the bay area is worth a visit. Some good beer pubs there. Go to golden gate park, hire a tandem bike and ride across the golden gate bridge with the missus. Traffic and the roads suck there for getting around.
I have never been up to north Cali, but I have some friend who love Sacramento. Plus you would get to hit Sierra Nevada brewery on the way.