The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition)
Page 45
PHILOSOPHY
Brewery-as-melting pot. Redner is an aficionado of Tampa’s culinary brew that melds Sicilian, Spanish, Puerto Rican, traditional southern, and especially Cuban traditions. The mission driving Cigar City is to create ales and lagers that pair perfectly with Cuban dishes such as boliche and picadillo, and Wambles is a tireless experimenter, employing everything from additions of apricot, mango, pomegranate, scuppernong grapes, and peppercorn to various sorts of barrel aging with cedar chips, lavender, and heather.
KEY BEER
Wambles’s favorite beer, the bombastic 7.5% ABV Jai Alai IPA is a walloping beer with a fat caramel malt backbone and six different hop varietals, including Simcoe, used only in dry-hopping. It’s hugely citric and resinous with the waves of tang and fruit in the balance that are required of great IPAs. I’ve tasted off the canning line, when it’s literally never been fresher, and it’s worth seeking out.
DeLand
ABBEY WINE & BEER BAR
117 N. Woodland Blvd. • DeLand, FL 32720 (386) 734-4545 • abbeydeland.com • Established: 2006
SCENE & STORY
This upscale beer and wine bar about twenty minutes from Daytona Beach has parchment-colored walls, handsome terra-cotta tile floors, recessed lighting, and eighteen taps with a focus on the rare and hard-to-find Belgian variety. There are 150 beers in bottles including the six Trappist beers available in this country (the seventh, Westvleteren is well-nigh impossible to obtain without traveling to Belgium). Several staffers are Cicerones (the sommeliers of beer) and they’ve launched a line of meads (Middle Ages-inspired honey wines), but they’re not taking things too seriously, with retro video game nights and spirited trivia competitions.
PHILOSOPHY
The owners focus on recommending pairings, including vintage ales and other specialties, to go with a rotating menu of sandwiches and other simple fare.
KEY BEER
Where else will you find the extraordinary Dupont Avec Les Bons Voeux? A strong saison from Belgium (9.5% ABV) that is hazy gold in color, fruity and vinous in flavor, with a dry, earthy kick in the finish, it’s worth a trip inland from the beach.
FUNKY BUDDHA BREWERY
1201 NE 38th St. • Oakland Park, FL 33334 (954) 440-0046 • funkybuddhabrewery.com • Established: 2010
SCENE & STORY
Built in a former hookah lounge in Boca Raton in 2010, Funky Buddha Brewery launched with a fifty-five-gallon system. In 2014, they added a brand-new production facility in Oakland Park, making it, for the moment, South Florida’s biggest craft beer success story. Located in the heart of Oakland Park’s Culinary Arts District, the 54,000-square-foot facility is anchored by a thirty-barrel brewhouse and massive taproom with terra-cotta colored walls and polished cement floors. It’s open seven days a week, noon to midnight. Note too that the Funky Buddha Brewery & Lounge in Boca Raton (original location) is still open, working as a pilot brewery. In November 2015, Funky Buddha announced its Craft Food Counter & Kitchen, which unfortunately displaced an indoor bocce court, but giant Jenga and cornhole remain.
PHILOSOPHY
Having fun and selling a lot of beer should go hand in hand. Their breakout beer, Maple Bacon Coffee Porter (6.45% ABV), just sounds like a kick. But then it got so popular that RatBeer kicked them up to twenty-sixth place in the world in ratings for a spell. Now thousands of people show up for the annual release party of this beer, lining up at 6 a.m., for a taste.
KEY BEER
Floridian hefeweizen and Hop Gun IPA are the well-made flagships, but beer geeks still flock to the taproom for tastes of beer like No Crusts, a jam–and–peanut butter beer.
BEST of the REST: FLORIDA
7VENTH SUN
1012 Broadway • Dunedin, FL 34698 • (727) 733-3013 • 7venthsun.com
With a degree in fermentation science from Oregon State, Devon Kreps joined Justin Stange (who brewed with Sweetwater and Cigar City) in 2012 to brew terrific Belgian-style beers, IPAs, and oak-aged sours in Dunedin, twenty-five miles west of Tampa. Working, for the moment, out of a tiny storefront location on a four and a half barrel system, this buzzy brewery is one to watch. Two recent intriguing brews: cucumber gose, and a watermelon/Brettanomyces Berliner weisse.
COPPERTAIL BREWING
2601 E. 2nd Ave. • Tampa, FL, 33605 • (813) 247-1500 • coppertailbrewing.com
In 2014 Tampa got another great brewery with big plans: Coppertail, named for an imaginary sea creature the owner’s daughter came up with and built in a spacious, modernized, cinderblock warehouse that was formerly a mayonnaise factory and olive cannery. With head brewer Casey Hughes at the kettles and an impressive brewhouse and wood cellar in action, Coppertail is poised for big things. Formerly head brewer of Flying Fish brewery in New Jersey (which is famous for, among other beers, the hops-forward Exit 4 Tripel), Hughes comes to Coppertail having pulled down medals for his IPA, tripel, dubbel, Belgian strong dark ale, and other projects. Now he’s brewing up hop-forward brews of many stripes, from emerging tart and hoppy American to Belgian classics and oceans in between.
J. WAKEFIELD
120 NW 24th St. • Miami, FL 33127 • (786) 254-7779 • jwakefieldbrewing.com
Coming out with a 13% Russian Imperial stout called “Nothing” as your first commercial release takes some cojones. The Wakefield crew have proved they have mettle. Armed with the biggest crowdfunding round the craft beer world had seen yet ($110,000), Johnathan Wakefield’s brewery sprang onto the beer scene in 2014—a year before their taproom was ready for the public—with a range of rainbow-bright, juicy “Florida weisse” beers that married tart Berliner weisse with tropical fruit juices of Florida. After long (but predictible) delays, as of early 2015, the taproom is open. Don’t miss it in Miami.
DUNEDIN HOUSE OF BEER
927-A Broadway • Dunedin, FL 34698 • (727) 216-6318 • dunedinhob.com
Note to aspiring craft-beer bar owners: If you want to stay open, you need a community behind you, especially if your beer bar is found on a faceless stretch of asphalt in a sort of strip mall. The low-key, exposed-brick-walled Dunedin House of Beer is one of those bars, thriving with the support of locals and thanks to a network of the most interconnected beer travelers. The Dunedin’s charitable clientele sponsors events and keeps the lines flowing and kegs turning for the right reasons.
REDLIGHT, REDLIGHT
745 Bennett Rd. • Orlando, FL 32803 • (407) 893-9832 • redlightredlightbeerparlour.com
The hometown of Disney World is also home to a world-class but ultra-down-to-earth beer bar with a supercurated beer list comprised of American micros and special European finds. Established in 2005, its location recalls the setting for a 1970s movie car chase, but inside the bar is cozy, with brewery-sign-dotted dark walls and a nicely tiled back bar. The tap row runs to twenty-three taps and two engines, plus another 200 or so in bottles at any given time, like Kulmbacher’s roasty Mönchshof Schwarzbier, light but flavorful (4.9% ABV). They started brewing their own beer in 2014. What are you waiting for? Greenlight!
Postscript
EVERY DAY I WRITE, OR DRINK A BEER, AND ESPECIALLY WHEN I’M DOING BOTH, I THINK of Michael Jackson. Not “that one,” as he would say, but the Yorkshire journalist whose life and career was defined by a glorious world tour of beer. The towering hero of craft beer appreciation since the late 1970s, Jackson—author of sixteen seminal works including The World Guide to Beer (1977) and The New World Guide to Beer (1988), The Great Beers of Belgium (1991), and many others—took me under his wing starting in late 1996. With a seemingly bottomless reserve of graciousness, he helped me get started as a beer writer after I won a postgraduate fellowship that allowed me to delve into beer brewing techniques around the world for a year right out of college.
Those encounters and that year changed my life.
It was August 1996. I was twenty-two, and I had arrived in England just a few days before to start a wandering independent study on brewing for the Watson Foundation. Af
ter a needlessly nervous phone call to his office I traveled by train from Shawford, a village outside Winchester, to visit Jackson in his London home, in Hammersmith. We headed to his local, and then the Dove, a gloriously weathered old pub along the Thames, and drank for an entire evening. That day he became a mentor, writing to me (and once, to my amazement, about me, in a story about the Belgian beer Orval, a mutual minor obsession), and even promised me he would write the foreword to my first beer book. Alas, I failed to have this one ready for him in time.
I saw Michael infrequently after my year of research, not entirely by choice. Shortly after we’d met again in Portland, Oregon, at the 1998 American Home-brewers Association’s National Conference, I moved to New Mexico for my first national magazine job, then decamped to New York just two days before 9/11 to pursue my luck as a writer. Though we spoke by telephone and corresponded by e-mail intermittently, Michael didn’t make many appearances in Gotham, and what’s more, I’d drifted away from the craft beer scene a bit in pursuit of New York–based travel writing work, which didn’t call for my craft beer expertise nearly enough (yet). It would take five more years in the trenches for me to earn the right to call myself a full-time writer, and I’ll never forget how he would always inquire, in the most honestly inquisitive and supportive manner imaginable, if I was getting there. “Keep writing,” he wrote to me in a dedication in one of his books he’d given me as a gift. I did.
The last time I saw Michael was at D.B.A., the once-great New York beer bar, on a limpid spring night on March 23, 2007. He was in town for a special tasting at a hotel in Midtown, and the late D.B.A. owner Ray Deter and an assortment of other beer lovers who knew him well had arranged for a late-night session to taste rare Scandinavian ales. By candlelight, around 1 a.m., we watched as Jackson arrived. He was walking with companions including the lovely Carolyn Smagalski, beer importer Dan Shelton (who had called to invite me to join, for which I am eternally grateful), his wife, Tessa, and Monk’s Café owner Tom Peters. I was shocked when I looked at my old mentor: he greeted me warmly, but his eyes were weary, his frame hunched. It was not the Michael I once knew. Dan Shelton pulled me aside and told me what was going on; it was then that I learned he had been severely weakened by a decade-long battle with Parkinson’s, a closely held secret for years, but something Jackson had begun to discuss bravely.
This was devastating news for me—and as Deter opened up his back patio area for the gathering, I struggled to find words, to feel at ease. We piled in shoulder to shoulder at a picnic table as samples made the rounds, and soon Jackson was bantering like his old self. Though his eyes were glassy and his head swayed gently from side to side, he was in his element. I felt both profoundly sad and grateful all at once.
There we stayed into the early morning, candles flickering and oozing all over the tables, sampling the beers Dan Shelton had discovered during his journeys. As glasses and bottles crisscrossed the table for inspection, Jackson—ever the journalist—spoke of the Norse tradition of home brewing a beer for your own approaching death, so that your loved ones may send you off in proper style. There was no pathos in his tone, but I detected a glint in his eye as he broached the topic—that of death, and his own, by extension—as he looked around at the brood over his wire-frame glasses perched at the end of his nose. The words ached; I was a little bit afraid of his state. But I didn’t need to be. He had been writing about beer for as long as I’d been alive, and though the eeriness of the moment hovered in the air like smoke—this part, we heard in echoing silence—he wasn’t being maudlin; he was doing what he always loved to do the most: talk about beer, drink, and laugh among old friends.
It’s a bitter irony that in his final years, like the beverage he loved, Jackson was often misunderstood. Many mistook the effects of his illness for excess. He joked that his next book was going to be about Parkinson’s: “I’m Not Drunk,” he thought of calling it.
It was the last time I ever saw him; Jackson died five months later, on August 30, 2007, in his home. Shelton called me to tell me the news while I was out in New Mexico visiting old friends and colleagues at Outside magazine. It was a teary phone call for us both: Dan was one of the lucky people who was able to spend a lot of time with “the Bard of Beer,” and even filmed a set of extraordinary interviews with him in England. In September, as shock surrendered to sorrow, beer lovers, including at D.B.A., participated in organized tributes worldwide. It’s an annual tradition for me on his birthday (March 27) to salute the man and what his efforts have inspired in me and in so many others. As a beer lover, writer, and friend, I will always owe him the world.
Acknowledgments
The gratitude I feel for all the people who helped me craft volume one of this book will never fade, especially for Jonathan Miles and John Rasmus, my literary agent Alia Habib of McCormick & Williams, first editor Jennifer Kasius, original designer Ryan Hayes, Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery, assistant friends Georgia Perry and Avery Houser, as well as many dear family and other assorted friends and supporters including beer industry role models Charlie Papazian and Sam Calagione. In publishing, I am grateful to a huge cast of supporters from Amelia Lester, Michael Agger, Daniel Fromson, and Burkhard Bilger to Joshua Wesson, Will Bostwick, Hampton Sides, Liesl Schillinger, Anne Zimmerman, Lynne Rosetto Kasper, Dave Miller, Ryan Krogh, Gabrielle Langholtz, Pauline Frommer, Jen Murphy, Mike Thelin and Carrie Welch of Feast Portland, Talia Baiocchi, and Margo True, all of whom have helped realize my dreams of releasing a successful first book. The release party at Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland, Oregon was one for the ages, and I’m profoundly grateful to the many friends and strangers who helped organize dozens of signings, dinners, and other book-related gatherings over the past five years. I’m also deeply honored that the Society of American Travel Writers awarded the book the 2012 Lowell Thomas Award for Best Guidebook.
For their careful work on this expanded, revised edition, I heartily thank Jessica Fromm, Jennifer Kasius, Amanda Richmond, and the whole team at Running Press. Thank you to Susan Hom and Ruoxi Chen for their eagle-eyed reads, and to Dan Cantada for the new cover design. Georgia Perry again supported the project from afar with reams of ace fact-checking and research skills. And Lila Martin was, as always, my dearest source of balance, inspiration, and optimism from beginning to end.
I’m deeply grateful for the suggestions of many beer brewers, experts, and fans across the country on the new edition. It’s surely an incomplete list, but I would like to recognize the support of Margo Knight Metzger, Campbell Levy, Justin Bresler, Andra and Kyle Zeppelin, Kate Lacroix, Debbie Rizzo, Brian Yaeger, Christopher Solomon, Michael Moser, Sarah Bart, Mark Hampton, Lee Jones, George Stevens, Hannah Wallace, Meredith Klinger, Justin Kennedy, Chris O’Leary, Joseph Alton, Erika Rietz, Matt Dinges, Tara Nurin, Joanne Jordan, Karen Wong, Lisa Allen of Heater Allen Brewery, and Julie Wartell for their long lists of ideas. On Twitter and Facebook, many friends and anonymous users alike were supportive to queries. Thanks @JodieVero, @CodyHaskell, @DanielGNYC; thanks also to Reddit users DropBearHug, Rockheart_Ridgerunner, GenderChangers, IkariWarrior, JGrogr, ProudTyrant, DeFroach84, PatsPints, Broham13, and PatEvansMSU.
Thank you all! I could never have finished this book without your help.
Glossary
3.2 laws: Laws in certain states that only permit beer to be sold when it has an alcohol by weight of 3.2%, equivalent to 4% ABV. Famously applied in Utah, though laws are changing.
22 oz.: aka “bomber.” A U.S. standard size for large bottles of beer sold individually.
750ml: aka “wine bottle size.” The European standard size for a large bottle of beer, as opposed to 22 oz., which is also becoming more popular in U.S. craft brewing. The “750” is popular with Belgian and Belgian-style brews, and may be closed with a traditional crown cap, cork-and-cap, or cork-and-wire cage combination.
Abbey-style: Refers to malt-forward, typically fruitier beers made with traditional methods of brewing first used by the brew
eries of Belgian monks, including the Trappist monasteries. Something of a catch-all phrase. See also: Tripel.
Acidity: Level of acid in beer; proportional to the degree of sour/vinegar/lemony taste. A by-product of fermentation adds dimensions of flavor beyond sweet, bitter, and estery notes. See also: Esters.
Ale: Formerly, beer without hops; today, beer fermented with ale yeast at warmer temperatures than lagers (which are made with lager yeast), imparting fruitier and more aromatic notes.
Altbier: A style of robust German pale ale that is typically aged, or “conditioned,” for longer than standard periods of time, resulting in a smooth brew.
American wild ale: Beer fermented with ambient, naturally-occurring yeast in the United States that is allowed to settle in the beer naturally and begins the fermention spontaneously rather than with the intentional addition of brewers’ yeasts. See also: Lambic.
American Pale Ale (APA): Distinguishable by an elevated but still balanced presence of malt and hops, with fruity, floral, and citrus-like flavors.