The state's growing contingent of micro-brewers show off their suds at the annual Best Florida Beer Championship.
By Chris Sherman
Published March 8, 2006
TAMPA -- The Rolling Stones tribute band Satisfaction tried to adjust the lyrics for the crowd at the seventh annual Brewers Ball.
"I saw her today at the reception/A glass of wine in her hand,'' the would-be Jagger mouthed. Make that "a glass of beer.'' The beer lovers in the tie-dyed shade of Skipper's Smokehouse on Sunday roared and rocked on.
They joined in lustily, but the refrain "You can't always get what you want'' just wasn't true. Two-dozen gold medal craft beers, ales, stouts and porters were set up amid the trees and picnic tables, showing off the wit and brewing wiles of Florida's growing supply of micro brews.
A couple brews had run dry, including a rich dark beer carefully barrel-aged at Dunedin Brewery and Tampa Bay Brewing Company's One Night Stand pale ale, but there was plenty left, including Florida's best beer.
This year that title went to a sweet, almost sherried barley wine called "I'll Have What the Gentleman on the Floor is Having," strong but smooth, not too heavy and with a grand finish.
Gentleman was one of a number of winners from McGuire's Irish Pubs in Pensacola and Destin.
Each year during the fair season, the state's brew pubs and commercial brewers come together in Tampa for the Best Florida Beer Championship, run by the Florida Brewers Guild. Many were poured for a crowd of 1,500 at the Beer Fest in Ybor City on Saturday, with a smaller party Sunday afternoon at which the judges announced the top three among the medal winners.
They ranged from that rich barley wine to Tampa Bay's One Night Stand, which ranked second, to Yuengling Light, a remarkably bright, brisk lager from America's oldest brewery, founded in Pottstown, Pa., and now brewed in Tampa.
High quality showed throughout. When One Night Stand went out, Tampa Bay Brewing offered Double Red Eye Amber Ale that packed 9.1 percent alcohol and equally punchy hops with enough malt to balance it all.
At another extreme of the beer spectrum, Father Theodore's Imperial Stout, from Abbey Brewing on South Beach, was done in the Russian style and as thick as coffee straight from a samovar, dripping with chocolate and cinnamon.
Jeff Gladish, the Tampa president of the brewer's guild, pronounced it a winning weekend for all craft beers. He concedes that "The more the mainstream brewers take flavor out of their beer the more they sell,'' but it also creates a demand for something better. "We make beers that have a strong beer flavor, an I'm-not-afraid-of -beer flavor.''
