If you truly want to know the heart of an American city, you have to take a bite of its local sandwich (in Miami, it’s a medianoche) chased by a sip of a local beer.
Over the past dozen or so years, craft brewers have become what musicians were in the 1970s: markers and makers of the local scene. Down here, it used to be that by grooving to Deep City Records, Clarence “Blowfly” Reid, and KC and the Sunshine Band, you got a good idea of what the scene was all about.
(Courtesy of EST. 33 Thai Craft Brewery & Kitchen)
An EST.33 pour
Today, a glass of EST. 33 mango lager or a hazy Rare Dankness (an IPA brewed collaboratively by Lost City Brewing and Old Deck Beer Co.) reveals something about what’s going on behind the Biscayne scene. It might be hard to put into words, exactly. Beer – locally brewed beer – can be a cultural barometer, a measure of a community’s character, and its sense of well-being.
Luckily, after a rough 2020, the Biscayne Tippler sees good portents for summer 2021.
(Courtesy of EST. 33 Thai Craft Brewery & Kitchen)
Todd Space, EST. 33 Thai Craft Brewery & Kitchen head brewer, has added homegrown fruit flavors to his sour Berliner Weisse-inspired Hallo Schatzi.
Take EST. 33 Thai Craft Brewery & Kitchen, for example. At a time when most small businesses were having to change everything about the way they did business, the Thai-Miami fusion brewery was just trying to set up shop in Brickell City Centre.
“We opened in January of this year, so the biggest challenge that we faced was opening our doors,” said head brewer Todd Space.
Juggling pandemic precautions and inspection schedules wasn’t easy, but the craft brewery now serves South Asian dishes with easy-drinking beers specially brewed to fight July’s heat and humidity – something Thailand has in common with the Biscayne Corridor.
“You can already get some light, refreshing all-day session beers like the hazy IPA One Night in Bangkok and the Berliner Weisse-inspired Hallo Schatzi,” Space said.
That last is a sour wheat beer served straight or with a selection of tropical fruit flavors meant to complement its sour base, including mango, passionfruit, kaffir lime and guava. As summer progresses, Space plans to add Redlands favorites lychee and mangosteen to those options.
“We’ll also be releasing some special fruited treatments, like local fresh mango, for our lagers,” he said. “As more and more people become vaccinated, we look forward to introducing the entire downtown and Brickell area to its very own local brewery. We’re proud and honored to be a Miami-made product and we want to show that to all our guests.”
Deep in the heart of Wynwood, Boxelder Craft Beer Market has remained a kind of Rosetta stone for the local scene, stocking brews from local breweries like Tank Brewing Co. and Beat Culture Brewery & Kitchen alongside small labels from around the world. (What could be more Miami than sipping a Baltic porter produced through a collaboration between English and Canadian brewers who aged their beer in South American rum barrels? It’s called Origin of Darkness, and BoxElder also sells it online.)
(Courtesy of Lost City Brewing Company)
Lost City Brewing Company’s Diego Escobar, Gary Ellis, Christopher Campos, Daniel Morales and Kenneth Barbot (L-R).
Already established as a bottle shop as well as a bar, BoxElder was well-positioned to weather the storm that was 2020.
A bit further up Biscayne in North Miami, Lost City Brewing Company had to move nimbly after opening last July, shifting from what was originally intended to be a local watering hole to a business based on curbside pickup and crowlers. (For those new to craft beers, that’s a growler – a jug for transporting draft beer – served in a can.)
“We had a little hype on social media, thanks to our participation in beer festivals a year prior, so we invested in a second canning machine,” explained co-founder Kenneth Barbot. “People would wait curbside and get an order filled in 10 minutes. Then in October, we went into Phase 3, and were finally able to open our taproom to the public – at 50% capacity.
(Courtesy of Lost City Brewing)
Lost City Brewing Company’s Casa de Campo
“But little by little, as people ventured outside, locals started to find us through word of mouth. It’s at the point now where most sales are people who come in, drink in the taproom and then take something to go. We’ve been lucky in that we’ve seen continuous growth.”
This summer should find even better things on the way for Lost City, thanks to local distributor Nomad and Company stocking its cans as far afield as Florida City’s Exit 1 and, at their home base in North Miami, live music and an outdoor beer garden with a barbecue food truck.
“In the next few months, we’re installing three new 10-barrel fermenters to keep up with demand,” Barbot said. “And where we were only doing one live act a month, over the summer we’re hoping to grow that to, if not twice a month, then every Saturday having live music at the taproom.”
Of course, Lost City is also planning on expanding its portfolio of new brews. Beyond the team-up with Old Deck, Lost City has a new Belgian wheat beer coming out, and plans for another collaboration, this time with Unbranded Brewing Co. By the end of summer, the hope is to have introduced at least four new recipes to keep delighting a growing fanbase.
“We’ve had a lot of help from the local craft beer community,” Barbot said.
We’ll lift a glass to that.
Biscayne Times Brewery Finder
Creating a comprehensive list of every craft beer maker and microbrewer in Miami is an impossible task, but here are some significant sources for suds.
Box Elder Craft Beer Market
(Courtesy of Lost City Brewing Company)
Lost City Brewing Company’s NoMi Pale Ale
2817 NW 2nd Ave., Miami
305.942.7769
BXLDR.com
Lost City Brewing Company
12207 NE 13th Ct., North Miami
305.456.0318
LostCityBrewing.com
EST. 33 Thai Craft Brewery & Kitchen
(Courtesy of EST. 33 Thai Craft Brewery & Kitchen)
Brewing equipment at EST. 33
At Brickell City Centre
701 S Miami Ave., Miami
305.425.9266
EST33.us
Lincoln’s Beard Brewing Co.
7360 SW 41st St., Miami
305.912.7390
LincolnsBeardBrewing.com
Biscayne Bay Brewing
Official brewer for the Marlins and the Heat
8000 NW 25th St. #500, Doral
305.381.5718
BiscayneBayBrewing.com
Veza Sur
55 NW 25th St., Miami
786.362.6300
VezaSur.com
Beat Culture Brewery & Kitchen
In the Days Inn by Wyndham Miami International Airport
7250 NW 11th St., Miami
786.431.5413
BeatCulture.com
The Tank Brewing Co.
5100 NW 72nd Ave., Bay A1, Miami
786.801.1554
TheTankBrewing.com
Unbranded Brewing Co.
1395 E 11th Ave., Hialeah
786.332.3097
UnbrandedBrewing.com
Wynwood Brewing
565 NW 24th St., Miami
833.996.9663
WynwoodBrewing.com
NightLife Brewing Company
1588 NW 7th St., Miami
786.787.2337
NightLifeBrewingCo.com
Legacy Caribbean Craft Brewery
13416 NW 38th Ct. B, Opa-locka
786.681.6572
LegacyCCB.com
J Wakefield Brewing
120 NW 24th St., Miami
786.254.7779
JWakefieldBrewing.com
Focal Brewing Company
7235 NE 4th Ave., Miami
305.363.5166
FocalBrewing.com
Prision Pals Brewing
At PS Business Parks
8302 NW 14th St., Doral
305.487.2780
PrisionPals.com
Cerveceria La Tropical
42 NE 25th St., Miami
305.741.6991
CerveceriaLaTropical.com