I've heard a lot of people complain about Florida's lack of craft beer. But that seems to be turning around. Although I had never previously heard of it, apparently there's a brewery called Cigar City in Tampa, and it's churning out excellent beer! A little on their history:
Cigar City Brewing is comprised of a 15 barrel (one barrel is 31 gallons) brewhouse occupying 6,600 sq. ft. of warehouse space in the Carver City-Lincoln Gardens neighborhood of Tampa. Six fermenters, also 15 bbl, are used to ferment the beer for packaging and kegging.
We package using a 6 head PPM filler which allows us to adjust to many bottle formats and we keg in 50 liter and 5 gallon kegs. We use the highest quality ingredients we can lay our hands on and that is not just marketing jargon. If it makes better beer, we use it. We also strive to use local ingredients when and where we can. Not only do fresh local ingredients help us to make better beer, it helps us to make beer that reflects the culture and heritage of Tampa Bay.
They also just got distribution to NYC as of Wednesday evening. I was able to try the Jai Alai IPA and the Improvicasion Oatmeal Rye India-style Brown Ale (that's a mouthful! oh man, pun). Both were excellent, with the Jai Alai standing out as one of the freshest, hoppiest IPAs I've had on tap for awhile.
Cigar City, I am now a fan of yours.
