As we had previously mentioned in our last post, Christmas in Florida is super strange for a Northerner. But you know what’s even stranger? Having a whole Christmas village in your brewery that in terms of scale is probably the size of my home town; if not larger. Seriously, 3 Daughters Brewing freaking loves Christmas.
3 Daughters Brewing (St. Petersburg, FL)
As I was saying above, 3 Daughters seriously loves Christmas and instead of explaining it to you, just check out the photos below:
Ok, now that’s over. We sat down in the back room, which is the actual taproom and ordered up two flights because everything sounded delicious and actually came in flight form (looking at you Cycle Brewing). Did we mention they have cider? Because we sampled 8 this round, lets take our top 4 picks.
- Ctrl+Malt+Del: Malt Liquor and their homage to the old school, high grav 40’s. Malt liquors use heavy portions of corn and sugar to beef up the abv, and only add hops and barley to add character and body. We’ve had very few malt liquors in our tours so this got an honorary spot on our top four list.
- A Wake Coffee Blonde: We love blonde coffee beers. Coffee flavor, golden body, and quenches a stout desire on those hot days when it’s not really stout season.“BUT IT’S ALWAYS STOUT SEASON, ANDREW.” We got this beer both on the nitro line, and one on the regular carb… The regular line was better in our opinion.
- Original Apple Cider: I’m not sure how original the cider actually is, but it certainly was really good. A tad too sweet IMO, but Melissa certainly loved it.
- Key Lime Cider: Key lime pie, in a cider. If we were taking growlers home from this trip, it would have been 64oz of this and I wouldn’t share any. This is the must try at 3 Daughters.
Aside from the five mentioned above, we also had a cherry dopplebock, stout, and an IPA. None of which scored very well; 2.5 – 3.0. We want to like this place more than we did as it looks like a super fun hang out (tons of indoor and outdoor funtivities), but for beerventure and beersnobs, the real jewel in the rough here was the Key Lime cider. And I’m not sure how I feel about that. 3 Daughters earns an average 3 Daughters, out of 5.
Pinellas Ale Works (St. Petersburg, FL)
We’ve all been to a brewery that was dog friendly. In many cases, dog friendly establishments have water bowls and dog treats. However this brewery has gone to the dogs entirely; Pinellas Ale Works of St. Pete is all decked out in dog everything and donates a ton of food, treats, toys, and money to local shelters.
Now I would love to drone on about dogs and why everyone should adopt one, but we are here for the beer and we still have many more breweries to hit tonight. In order from least to most favorite we had Grapefruit IPA, Horchata Ale, BA Pawtoberfest and Peanut Butter Cup.
Grapefruit was your well executed, but average IPA. I’m not really a huge fan of grapefruit so I was pleasantly surprised that I did not taste a whole lot of it. I’m sure that is opposite reaction that the brewer had intended with this beverage; but to each their own. The Horchata Ale is where we got interesting. This is Melissa’s field of expertise (sweets) who described the concoction as “pretty horchata.” As someone whos never drank a Horchata before, I’m going to defer this to Melissa who was then singing some song about horchatas while sipping it. My own two cents is that it tasted exactly like a horchata is described on google; vanilla, cinnamon and very sweet. Can’t say it was my thing, but it certainly excelled at achieving its description.
BA Pawtoberfest is a barrel aged take on a classic Octoberfest. I’m not quite sure what barrels they used or how long it spent aging, but the whisky flavor was not subtle, nor was it overpowering the festbier. Quite frankly, it was the right amount of age in the right barrel. Last up was the Peanut Butter Cup milk stout. Right amount of sweet, hearty amount of peanut butter and creamy. It was just such a well made brew and a great way to end a flight that we couldn’t help but to place it as our top pick of Pinellas.
Pinellas was one of those breweries that we didn’t hear too much about while we were researching and reaching out to Florida locals; and that’s a shame. Luckily we had plenty of daylight left so we chose to stop here based on its proximity to 3 Daughters and Cage Brewing; certainly one of our best detours of the trip. We give Pinellas a 4 out of 5 dog treats. So if you can’t adopt a pup (or cat, or other animal) and want to feel good about yourself, feel free to drop some coin and know it’s for a good cause (and good beer) at Pinellas.
Do you need a bite?
While they no longer brew any of their own beers, Urban Brew and BBQ just down the road from Pinellas is a great stop for local crafts and great BBQ. The bacon wrapped kielbasa was amazing, and we got to wash the bites down with brews from breweries that we didn’t get a chance to stop at. So if you’re hungry, be sure to grab some BBQ between St. Pete breweries.
Cage Brewing
Cage Brewing is one of those breweries that came highly recommended, and it was just a block away from Pinellas Ale Works, making our next stop in St. Petersburg a no brainer. Now, most of our stops are a race against the clock and Cage Brewing was no exception as we were determined to hit our 400th brewery before it closed! This small brewery had a few retro arcade games, and a good beer lineup; code for I played games while Melissa drank the bulk of the flight.
Luckily, Melissa selected a good line up while I was busy dying in Space Invaders.
- King Krush: Our least favorite of the flight still ended up with a solid 3.75 on my untapped (Melissa being less generous) This DIPA weighed in at 8.6% and 73 IBU. It was sweet, tropical, and hoppy. A well done DIPA if there ever was one, but it paled in a head to head comparison with the Queen.
- Mango Bob’s IPA: Another well-made IPA, but this time with a small mango twist. Melissa’s complaint was not enough mango; but I had no qualms about the flavor.
- Strawberry Berliner: It was a Strawberry Berliner Weisse, and an automatic for team Melissa who is a fan of both strawberry and Berliners. My only note on this beer is that we gave is a 4/5 on Untappd.
- Queen Krush: As I mentioned above, Queen absolutely trumped the King in our opinion. We were told this Queen is actually a King variant with mango puree; and if that’s the case, the mango really overshadowed the body of the beer. It was certainly more of a mango body than Mango Bob, and the grain and hop profile resembled King, but it is always fascinating to taste variants next to the originals.
It’s no surprise that Cage was one of the most recommended breweries by locals for our trip in St. Pete. The appeal was literally palpable and this is one cage we didn’t mind being trapped in. Cage Brewing of St. Petersburg Fl. earns a 4.25 out of 5.
Brasserie Saint Somewhere (Tarpon Springs, FL)
We’ve done it! We’ve hit 400 breweries!
I’m kidding. Google lied to us about Saint Somewhere’s closing time and we didn’t make it north to Tarpon Spring, Fl. in time. We planned our day around hitting Saint Somewhere as our 400th, and our plan was ruined.
Google and the importance of Due Diligence
We’re what some might consider experts at this point in our career. If you consider traveling to breweries a field that one can gain an expertise in. Melissa is our chief navigator, as she has a supernatural ability to create the most extravagant and best-bang-for-the-buck beerventures. Through a combination of untapped, Facebook, Instagram, Google maps, websites and word of mouth from trusted sources; Melissa has successfully mapped us to 399 breweries with timing precision that Swiss Watches would be envious of. But even the best navigators are prone to an off day. Our faith is normally well placed with Google as it’s our primary GPS (except for our Canada trip, that was literally pens, napkins and literal folding maps). But even the almighty Google is not infallible! We didn’t do our due diligence by cross-referencing the Google listed hours of operation with Facebook, Instagram or Brasseries website. We’ve even been known to call breweries on several occasions to confirm last call. Just not in this case. So take it from the “experts,” do your due diligence before you Beerventure.
