I have said it to many people already, but Palm City Brewing in Fort Myers is, to me, the high-water mark when it comes to family-friendly breweries.
That is something that is incredibly important to me, as my wife and I want to be able to go someplace and not have to figure out with whom to leave our three-year-old daughter. Why not bring her with us, and so everybody can be happy at the same time?
I have been on a Kolsch kick lately.
I can’t totally explain why, but for some reason a nice, clean golden ale seems immensely appealing these days. The kolsch is something THAT fits that bill absolutely perfectly.
As a style, it is perfectly crisp and clean and instantly appealing, as it will go with pretty much anything and everything. Of course, that’s how I would label a good many other styles, such as the cream ale. One of the Florida breweries that has really taken the cream ale and exploded it is Pompano’s Bangin Banjo Brewing.
When it comes to brewing in Palm Beach County, the person you need to look to for starters is Fran Andrewlevich. He’s a pretty awesome guy, very tall, and he really started it off with the opening of Tequesta Brewing in Tequesta.
They were around for many, many years, before Fran decided to double up, not with another Tequesta Brewing, but with a whole new concept, Twisted Trunk Brewing off of PGA Boulevard. Both of those have done quite well for themselves, but it looks like Fran got the itch again.
Today is quite the auspicious day, as it marks the 5th anniversary of Florida Beer Blog!
Since being created while sitting in a comfortable easy chair in Tampa, the blog has had close to a thousand articles, and we’ve watched the burgeoning craft beer scene here in Florida take off with wild abandon.
It’s been an interesting ride, I’ve done a number of things that I never thought that I would be able to do, and met some very amazing people.
The tradition of snack mixes being served alongside drinks is so old and so standard that it’s almost a stereotype. And those usual stereotypes are either peanuts or pretzels. Delicious, yes, but we’e been there.
I was recently approached by Brewhouse Legends with a much better proposition: three different snack mixes specifically made to go with beer. I have tried each of them, and I was pleasantly surprised by each, distinctly different yet pretty delicious nevertheless.
Here they are, along with a Florida beer that pretty much everyone in the state should be able to get and enjoy:
The first time I saw beers from Florida Avenue Brewing, I was on vacation in the Sarasota area with my wife. This was a long time ago, so it was the glass bottles with the really awesome old-timey pirate ship logo they used to have.
I really like the new iconography of a completely refreshed Florida Avenue Brewing, but I miss that nautical look from the early beers. The new imagery is definitely more urban and harkens a lot more easily to their location with in Tampa on, as you could tell, Florida Avenue.
I’m not totally sure which expressway it is, especially since there’s roughly 40,000 expressways in Miami-Dade County, but whichever one runs along the south side of Miami International Airport suddenly has an exit in what feels like the middle of nowhere that leads directly into a Days Inn.
My wife and I were actually kind of impressed with this, since what looks like the former restaurant for the hotel has now been turned into Miami-Dade’s newest brewery, Beat Culture. If you look inside, they’ve made excellent use of the space, and if you squint your eyes you can still hear echoes of what the space used to be.
It is amazing to see how much Carnival Cruise Lines is doubling down on their new-found love for craft beer.
But it’s an interesting story, and I will tell you the entire story as my beautiful wife and I lived it.
