Ultimate 6er | Tampa Bay Breweries You Can’t Miss

It’s time to take a vacation and hit the beaches! The beaches in Tampa Bay are known as some of the best in America. If you’re planning a trip to the Tampa Bay area anytime soon, you’re surely going to be seeking out some of the breweries to get your hands on some of the local craft beer offerings. Here are some of the breweries I think you just can’t miss if you’re around:

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Real Ale Brewing Company | Wallball IPL

On a Saturday night not too long ago, a hell of a storm blew through San Antonio. Overnight rains are certainly welcome to the area, considering the region’s aquifer-based water supply is highly dependent on the spring rainfall. What wasn’t so welcome, however, was the wind that accompanied the storm. With gusts between 30 and 50 mph, it was strong enough to topple over a section of my fence, adding a totally unexpected chore to my weekend to-do list.

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BlackMan Brewing | Blueberry Hostel Cereal

Some brewers pull inspiration from current trends and others seek to brew according to personal like and although neither is wrong, Barrett Tillman of BlackMan Brewing, he’s in neither category.

Insert the Hostel Cereal, a timidly tart sour ale, which according to Tillman “began as a study on famine, its cause and how people survive.” During his travels through Africa and staying at hostels, the breakfast that was served was a porridge, made from grains and topped with whatever fruit was available. This was Tillman’s inspiration for the Hostel Cereal.

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Sun King Brewing & Austin Beerworks | Body Spray Brut Double IPA

Defining what makes a person a millennial has been an object of journalistic contention for years now. Is it a strong memory of 9/11, barely remembering the world pre-internet, or growing up watching single-camera sitcoms? May I humbly suggest adding one more to the list: you can identify as a member of the millennial generation if you have ever been personally victimized by a toxic black can masquerading as men’s body spray. Even if you never directly sprayed this shower-substitute on your skin in middle school, you have breathed in its foul fumes at some point during your adolescence. With scents like Apollo, Kilo, Phoenix, Tsunami and Maniac, body spray was aimed at moldable millennial minds hoping they could spray their way to cool.

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SXSW | Craft Beer Events Roundup

Depending on who you ask, South by Southwest (SXSW) is either an adult Disneyland full of freebies, quirky popup experiences and endless live music or a modern scene out of Mad Max with throngs of tourists swarming the streets of downtown Austin, TX. Do you live for the crowds and discovering secret shows or do you hope that your local bar hasn’t been discovered? Either way, Austin breweries have you covered. Keep reading for a roundup of craft beer events at SXSW.

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TrimTab Brewing | Helix Rising

Yet another highly anticipated IPA release from TrimTab Brewing‘s Light Visions Series has just hit limited Southern markets. As a result, hop heads couldn’t be more excited. The name given is Helix Rising, a double dry-hopped hazy double IPA. TrimTab continues to do exciting things in the Southern IPA game, and this DIPA brewed with Chinook, Zythos, Simcoe and Simcoe Lupulin powder is a truly unique and welcomed addition to their increasingly successful repertoire.

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Top 10 Vegetarian Friendly Breweries and Brewpubs Across America

My wife and I recently reached our milestone of traveling to all 50 states, ensuring we visit the local brewery in each of the places that we visit. While I am an avid meat eater, my wife is vegetarian. So, the places we choose to eat during our travels had to be well researched in advance to ensure they have a vegetarian menu that met the expectations of my wife, who can be quite a picky eater. Luckily, nowadays, that isn’t hard. Many breweries and brewpubs offer at least one vegetarian option on their menu, to various degrees of success and creativity.

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Texas Still Doesn’t Allow Beer To-Go, But Breweries Are Fighting Back

Texas is officially the only remaining state that doesn’t allow beer-to-go sales from craft breweries. In 2018, the Texas Craft Brewers Guild formed a political action committee aimed at putting Texas craft brewers on equal footing with other alcohol beverage … Read More

Event Preview | Pink Boots Society Biannual Conference

The second annual Pink Boots Society biannual conference kicks off this weekend in Austin, Texas with an evening welcome reception. The event is a two-day conference happening January 18th-19th. It features a dual track format covering the business and technical aspects of the brewing industry.

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Ultimate 6er | GABF Gold Medal Winners From Texas

Each year thousands of beer drinkers invade Denver for the Great American Beer Festival, a three day event dedicated to American craft breweries. Last year Texas walked away with 18 medals, six of which were GOLD. I caught up with each of the winners to ask how it felt to bring home the Gold in 2018.

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What We’re Drinking | December 28, 2018

We are officially in the middle of the holiday week, and it’s probably time for a nice break from all the festivities. Here is what your favorite PorchDrinkers are enjoying this holiday season, it’s time for another installment of What We’re Drinking.

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Whitestone Brewery | Melted Snowman

Living in Texas, we never really have a traditional fall season, or a normal winter, with temperatures frequently fluctuating 20-30 degrees in a week. So I always mark the start of fall based on the release of the first Oktoberfest brews, and then I wait patiently for the winter warmers to appear to let me know that “winter” is on it’s way. Regardless of the temperatures, nothing says winter and Christmas like a well-spiced winter warmer.

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What We’re Drinking | December 7, 2018

Holiday party season is in full swing, and what goes better with the cooler weather than delicious full-flavored beers? Take a few tips from the PorchDrinking crew and bring one of these beauties to your holiday party. This is What We’re Drinking.

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TrimTab Brewing Co. | Mosaic Singularity IPA

After a short-lived, but spoiled, beer experience while living in Los Angeles for the past two years, I find myself back in the deep South for one simple thing: educational singularity. With this move came the heartbreak of broken connections and proximity to some of the best breweries the U.S. has to offer. However, every once in a while you find a diamond in the rough. Even with the slow start that Alabama had with developing reputable beer and breweries, I’ve really seen the state taking off in the right direction in the last couple of years.

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4th Tap Brewing Cooperative Brews Spooky Concept for Haunted House Entertainment Pioneer

Halloween is upon us and haunted house fans in Texas know the House of Torment in Austin, Texas is as good as it gets. Nationally recognized, this pioneer in haunted entertainment features three re-imagined immersive experiences and a new bar, Torment Tavern. Read More

Brewery Showcase | St. Elmo Brewing Company

I’m not sure what age I was when I started favoring breweries to bars. I distinctly remember frequenting the only brewery in my tiny college town more and more, while braving the sticky floors of the dive bars less and less. Not to say there isn’t a time and a place for a great dive bar; however, if you’re reading this it’s more likely that you’d rather drink something exciting, fresh and flavorful than pay for a bottom-shelf vodka soda. What hasn’t changed as I have gotten older is the desire to socialize over a drink.

Enter the neighborhood craft brewery. A far cry from the empty warehouses of my college days. Neighborhood breweries have become gathering places for the entire family, both two and four-legged, to come together to listen to music, play games and explore new styles of beer. However, occasionally these neighborhood breweries transcend beyond just a community hangout by producing extremely high-quality beers.

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From Beer to H2O | Breweries Lending a Can After Hurricane Michael

On Wednesday, October 10, Hurricane Michael slammed into the coast of Florida into a tiny town called Mexico Beach. On Monday, Oct. 8, the storm had been a Category 1 as it made its way to the Panhandle; by the time it hit, it was a Category 4. Though news reports, complete with eye-witness testimony and photos and videos released after the fact, try to illustrate the devastation that this storm wreaked, it’s hard to fathom. Even when you hear it from friends and family, it’s hard to take in.

My family was lucky. The trailer that my grandparents bought in 1985 is still standing, with only a few windows blown out. The house my parents’ built and have been living in full-time since 2008—my home for half the year—sports shattered windows like empty eye sockets, a hole in the roof and an exterior that looks as if it’s been skinned due to the siding being torn off, but it’s standing as well. We were lucky. But it’s going to take time to rebuild. In the meantime, many areas are still without power and running water.

In these times of disaster, when most of the luxuries that we take for granted are gone (electricity, internet, flushing toilets and potable water), all help is appreciated. But the necessities: a place to sleep, food and water to drink, are even more important. It’s times like these that breweries and beer companies step up.

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What We’re Drinking | October 12, 2018

Festival season is in full swing, and the PorchDrinking staff has been busy putting together a collection of the week’s finest brews. Festival season in fall can mean unpredictable weather, and in some parts of the country the unpredictable weather is serious; we don’t take that lightly. We hope everyone is staying as safe as possible with friends and family.

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Watch the Braves in the Playoffs with Terrapin Brewing CJ10

With the baseball playoffs at-hand, one can now toast both the Atlanta Braves’ division crown and newly inducted Hall of Fame Braves player Chipper Jones with CJ10, a beer conceived by the prolific switch hitter and the folks at Terrapin Beer Company.

CJ10, an easy-drinking Kölsch-style ale, emerged from Terrapin’s unique ATL Brew Lab found at SunTrust Park in Atlanta during the summer. And, what better way to honor a switch hitter than with a beer that’s made with ale yeast, but is fermented like a lager?

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Event Preview | Scallywag! Craft Beer Meets Punk Rock

Craft Beer meets Punk Rock – that’s the focus of the Scallywag! festival headed to Austin, Texas on Sunday, September 23 at the Austin 360 Amphitheater. The punk rock extravaganza features over 100 craft beers pouring from some of the best national … Read More