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Beer renaissance is hopping

Local brewers of handcrafted beers say the key is thinking small.

By Alan Snel Special to the Times
Published July 6, 2007

The hands of Caitlin Sylvester sort newly filled bottles of beer during the bottling process. The Saint Somewhere Brewing Company is ready to ship out its first batch of Belgian-style ale in late July or early August. Your ultimate bartender Find a bar
	[Times photo: Joseph Garnett, Jr.]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Joseph Garnett, Jr.] Anne Sylvester fills bottles of beer. Anne and her husband, Bob, poured $50,000 into their microbrewery's start-up costs. Their ale will sell for about $8 a bottle.

TARPON SPRINGS

It's a mere 1, 200 square feet of Spartan, concrete space tucked away in an anonymous industrial area. Neighbors include a cabinetmaker, a sheet metal fabricator and a guy who restores old cars.

Bob Sylvester isn't big on decorations at his commercial brewery off Anclote Road near the river that goes by the same name. He just wants to make the tastiest, most flavorful Belgian-style ales this side of Belgium.

Sylvester, and his wife, Anne, are poised to roll out two handcrafted Belgian-style ales early next month at the WaZoo beer and food festival at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa to unveil the Saint Somewhere Brewing Co.

David Doble, head brewer at the Tampa Bay Brewing Company in Ybor City, said the bay area market is ripe for such handcrafted beers. Saint Somewhere would become the fifth microbrewery in the bay area.

"It's the most underutilized market, " Doble said. "People are dying for good beer."

In fact, based on national statistics, microbreweries are making something of a comeback. After peaking at 420 microbreweries in 1998, the numbers have steadily slipped each year, according to the Brewers Association, a Boulder, Colo.-based trade association. That was until last year, when it rebounded slightly from 352 to 364.

The drop after 1998 was from a "shakeout" caused by quality issues for some microbreweries, said Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association.

In 2006, craft brewing increased 12 percent in volume and 15 percent in gross sales - numbers that Gatza found encouraging.

"The American public's beer taste is changing. What we'll see in beer is what happened to coffee and breads over the last 20 or 30 years, " Gatza said. "People used to eat only white bread. Now, the flavor options have grown. We're seeing a similar thing with beer. Even the larger brewers are dabbling with flavor beers."

Sylvester, 46, has poured $50, 000 into start-up costs for Saint Somewhere, including $8, 500 worth of brewing equipment purchased from a retiring Colorado brewer.

The light-colored and amber ales will flow from 24.9-ounce bottles, which will be corked like champagne bottles, complete with a metal cage on top. The Sylvesters will sell their ale to Micro Man Distributors of Oldsmar, which, in turn, will distribute the hand-crafted suds to beer pubs, restaurants and beer shops in Florida.

Sylvester expects his Belgian-style ales to be showing up in the next month in beer-loving locales such as World of Beer in Clearwater and Westchase; Mr. Dunderbaks in University Mall; the Independent pub in St. Petersburg; and the Beverage Castle in Tampa. A Saint Somewhere Brewing Co. bottle is expected to sell for about $8 in stores and $10 to $14 in restaurants, he said. It won't be sold in supermarkets or convenience stores.

A Jimmy Buffett song inspired the name of the microbrewery. The Sylvesters, of Odessa, named their company after a reference to Saint Somewhere in the song Boat Drinks.

Sylvester plans to keep the micro in his microbrewery by cranking out only about 14 barrels of beer a month. He expects to gross about $45, 000 in sales from August through December, and $100, 000-$160, 000 in 2008. Peak production, he pointed out, would gross $200, 000 next year.

"I'd rather put out a small amount of a really good product than a lot of a mediocre product, " Sylvester said.

One ale will be a saison "with a spicy and moderately hoppy profile true to the traditions of the farmhouse ales of Wallonia." The other will be a "Lectio Divina . . . brewed in the spirit of the abbey ales of Belgium."

"It's a product niche within a niche, " Sylvester said of his brews. "It's different than anything else out there."

Area microbreweries

- Dunedin Brewery , 937 Douglas Ave, Dunedin

- Tampa Bay Brewing Co. , 1600 E 8th Ave., Tampa

- Sarasota Brewing Co. , 6607 Gateway Avenue, Sarasota

- Hops Restaurant Bar & Brewery , 33086 U.S. 19 N, Palm Harbor; 4502 14th St. W, Bradenton

[Last modified July 6, 2007, 12:55:17]