“You get a good thing goin’ then you blow yourself out…”

She called me one Sunday, wanting to go on a road trip up to Savannah…said she wanted to get away. The sooner, the better. And quite frankly, I’m at a place in my life where I’m pretty much game for just about any getaway, so I was all in, but with one caveat—I wanted to stop at breweries all along the east coast of Florida as we drove. She laughed. Apparently, it wasn’t much of a caveat. And it was that agreement that found us winding down a stretch of road in Port St. Lucie one late Friday morning, flanked by motorcycle mechanics and clock repair shops, on the hunt for our first stop.

“Are you sure this is right? Seems like a weird place for a brewery.” She wasn’t wrong.

“Yeah, the GPS says we’re just about there. Keep your eyes peeled.” This is how it all goes wrong, I thought. This is where I begin apologizing for that easily satisfied caveat. This is cheap fodder for tomorrow’s social media headlines: Two Missing Florida Women Ensnared by Fake Brewery/Slave Labor Ring. But then she spotted Side Door Brewing, nestled between All American Golf Cars and Village Green Tires. I slammed the brakes and chucked a right into a small strip of retail in a sleepy business park. Our expectations were immediately clipped at the knees.

I had set out to write about the meteoric trend in sour and flavored beers here in the US, and at that point I thought that my first stop was going to be one of many in a long line of disappointments—like, losing-your-virginity-type disappointments (ladies, I know you feel me)—but we rolled our dice at the bar, and Megan proceeded to pour me four flawless brews. And then Megan poured me two or three more, insisting I try others that weren’t on my list. Megan didn’t have a clue that she had been playing with a handicap from the moment I made that hard, right turn. And in that glorious oblivion, Megan managed to shut me the fuck up.

First up was a blood orange/chocolate porter that truly tasted of both while still being elegantly lightweight. Then, a guava sour that seemed to marry Belgium and the tropics; a coffee porter that had been brewed with cayenne peppers, giving it beautiful, warm, smoky notes; a stout brewed with cold brew coffee that tasted simultaneously like a stout and like espresso (sidekick’s favorite); and a mango-salsa hefeweizen brewed with habaneros that completely rocked my world, coating my entire mouth with hot, green pepper heat and chasing it with subtle fruit. Not one of them was a miss. I wanted to hurdle over the bar top and give Megan a bear hug for having unwittingly restored my faith, but I was afraid that being taken away in handcuffs might bring our road trip to a less-than-stellar, premature (albeit gonzo) end. Side Door set a bar that would only be met by the last brewery on the trip—the bookends of a beer-soaked journey.

Turn the clock back 10 years and you couldn’t get your average beer drinker to enjoy a Lambic. It used to be that at some point or another if you found yourself becoming a craft beer geek, you would inevitably wind up exploring sours as a rite of passage…a wake-up call when you’ve spent your formative years sucking at the teat of Anheuser-Busch. But most took a single sip, grimaced, and went back to their balls-to-the-wall, over-hopped IPA, clinging to it as if it were a long-lost, snot-stained teddy bear. They didn’t “get” sour beers. Didn’t think they even qualified as being beer. Those of us that scoured store shelves for Cantillon, Hanssens and Girardin were viewed with guarded skepticism. A Killian’s red was somehow more acceptable than a Flanders red.

The same was true for flavored beers. Other than Sam’s Cherry Wheat or a few chocolate stouts, added flavors were laughed at by beer drinkers. Kriek? Gose? What the fuck is THAT? Fast forward to 2019, and now virtually every brewery of note has at least one sour in its portfolio, and sours are quickly outselling pilsners, stouts, and lagers, playing second fiddle only to IPAs. Ice that cake with the fact that Florida’s year-round warm climate welcomes lower ABVs and tartness, and that its list of available fruits is longer than most, and you have a perfect storm for a spiking trend. Only 45,000 cases of sour beer were sold in the US in 2015, a figure that more than quintupled in just one year and rose by nearly 43% in 2018 alone. But just like every other good thing that catches a wave, trends have a tendency to separate the wheat from the chaff.

We left Side Door and pointed my convertible northward again, toward St. Augustine. Somewhere on the back seat, there were bags filled with beef jerky, cashews, chips, pork rinds, candy bars and apples, and a cooler with water, St. Croix, Red Bull, and iced coffee. By the time we found our way to I-95, the Stone Temple Pilots were coincidentally singing about an Interstate Love Song, my feet were hanging out the passenger window, and she was getting used to the pick-up on my gas pedal. “What are we hitting first when we get there?” she blared over the music. I looked back at the bags of food and answered, “The john.”

St. Augustine has 4 breweries, and for a city of less than 13 sq mi, that’s both impressive and indicative of the “brew boom” that’s overtaken the state. In fact, trying to whittle down my list of road trip breweries proved to be much harder than I expected, even after allowing for the fact that we’d be hitting them on the way up to Savannah, and on the way back home as well. Ancient City Brewing sits in the heart of town, a stone’s throw from the Bridge of Lions, and directly across from the plaza. And unlike Side Door, which given its remoteness was certainly a Mecca only for those in the know, Ancient City served more tourists than locals. Given that neither one of us had realized that it was both Bike Week and Celtic Weekend up there, the swell of tourists was even larger than we expected.

After managing to snag stools at the bar, we picked a flight of four and asked for waters, forgetting just how unpotably shitty St. Augustine water is. The first pour was a coffee blonde—a new one in my book since you usually find coffee in porters and stouts—and it was fantastic. The server noted that the second pour in my flight was their coconut porter, and mentioned that they often recommended a 50/50 pour of the coconut porter and the coffee blonde. She left a small glass on the bar for us to mix some ourselves and thankfully walked away because we dumped it after both taking only one sip. Imagine squeezing some suntan lotion into a beer laced with coffee and you’ll understand us taking a hard pass on that concoction. Third up was an orange amber that barely tasted of oranges. It wasn’t bad, but if you had simply told me it was an amber and handed it to me, I wouldn’t have detected notes of orange. The polar opposite of the amazing orange chocolate porter I had tried at Side Door. Thankfully, the fourth pour restored me—their Belgian Christmas Abbey. It was a beautiful, warm-tasting brew with hints of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. But overall, their flavored beers left me underwhelmed and pining for Port St. Lucie.

We crashed in St. Augustine that night and toured the sites the next day, clocking in over 10 miles of walking by the time we had hobbled over the bridge and found our way to Old Coast Ales, our tongues dangling out the sides of our mouths like 13-year-olds watching their first porn. But I’m not going to waste your time on Old Coast any more than I just did, because I was sorry enough that we wasted ours. It was safe and it was fine, but fine is all around us. Count them, Old Coast…not one but two tired, unsatiated, unsatisfied women in under an hour. You, quite simply, didn’t hit the spot.

The next day, I took the wheel back and headed up to Jacksonville. I had read through the current tap list at Aardwolf and this was one of the breweries I was most excited to hit. In fact, the overwhelming majority of their online beer list had me salivating. It was late Sunday morning when we rolled into town, so we stopped to get a quick bite first while we waited for Aardwolf to open. The city was a veritable ghost town. Shops boarded up, restaurants shut down, and nearly no one on the streets. We weren’t sure if the city was still sleeping or in an induced coma. By the time we got to Aardwolf we were having another “are you sure we’re safe here” moment. The parking lot was nearly deserted…only one other car in it…so I grabbed my OTF switchblade just in case. It wasn’t until I saw the pretty beer garden around the bend that I eased up on my grip.

Again, I focused my flight on sours and flavored beers, and again it was hit and miss. The Early Bird Special: An American Imperial Stout with coffee, vanilla, and cinnamon, was well balanced but simply wasn’t “coffee” enough for us while the spices were overdone. Barrel Aged San Marco: A sour blonde aged in tequila and scotch barrels, was powerful but had off, smoky aftertastes that I’m guessing were from the peat in the scotch barrels. Death By Face: A sour wheat that started out light, crisp and tart, but again broke down on the finish, which was nearly medicinal. Soulshine: A foeder-aged saison aged with blackberries, cherries and black currants. It was refreshing and fruity (though indiscernible) and had yet another strange, chemically aftertaste. Twin Blasphemies: A barrel-aged sour amber saison, which I ordered mostly as a sort of sadomasochistic experiment because the description sounded like a beer in an identity crisis. I wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t quite funky enough of a saison, not quite malty enough of an amber, and it had some hints of coffee that I couldn’t quite peg down. I wanted to love this brewery. I wanted to double down on my flights because I couldn’t choose just 4. I wanted to leave there with their damn logo tattooed on my ass cheek. But I did none of those things. Aardwolf was trying too hard to give me funk, not understanding that either you’re born with it or you’re not.

We honestly couldn’t get out of Jax fast enough. I’ve heard tell that it’s now a destination for beer geeks…that great breweries dot the cityscape. And I’m sure I’ll go back for a second round at some point. But in a matter of minutes we were back on the interstate (she was at the wheel again) and I was flipping the ghost town not one but two birds as we hit the on-ramp and cranked up Peace Frog. The next four days were spent eating and drinking our way around Savannah, and after a drool-worthy breakfast at Narobia’s Grits and Gravy, we pointed the car southward, our backseat stash now a mix of rare stouts, breakfast bars, flavored oils/vinegars, cookies, jalapeño-flavored M&Ms (don’t do it), popcorn, Lunchables, and several jars of honey.

When plans were first hatched, we had planned on hitting another Jacksonville brewery on the way back down, but we were so turned off by the first go-around that we nixed that choice, changed the itinerary, and decided to head inland toward Mt. Dora during the trip home. But something goes south, quite literally, on every road trip. Road trips wouldn’t be road trips if you didn’t bring back some crazy story for the history books. Otherwise, you’re doing it wrong. So, we were clawing our way through Jax rush hour traffic, when I decided on an impromptu stop at Moonrise Brewing in Palm Coast. The town was just before we’d have to start driving westward, and it seemed like it had a great selection, with several guest taps, and food for two hangry bitches. I had driven the first leg of the day, so she was at the helm once again and I was navigating. We wove our way through golf courses and residential streets, again wondering who the fuck would put a brewery there, but then it suddenly rose up on the horizon like an oasis: European Village. It was an early Thursday evening in Snoozeville, but you’d have thought it was Miami on a Friday night. Restaurants, bars, cafes, shops, all clamoring with life, and condos with their balconies overlooking the cacophonous piazza. Parking, needless to say, was a whore. And when you’re as hungry and thirsty as we were, it becomes a spiteful whore.

She spied a couple of open spots to park, off on some grass. It looked rather harmless since plenty of others were parked there, but in our excitement to get the hell out of the car and into a beer, she didn’t realize that she had veered onto a walkway with a drop off to grass on either side. So, when she put the car in reverse and cut the wheel to get into a spot, she dropped the left side of the car off the cement and into the grass. And just like that, the metaphoric spiteful whore could be heard chuckling. We were screwed. The left wheel couldn’t get traction in the dirt and the more we tried to rock the car the more likely we would be to damage the undercarriage. I was about to call AAA when a couple knocked on my window offering to help. The man had a 2×4 in one hand, so I thought about grabbing that switchblade again, but quickly shook off the paranoia you tend to acquire when you’re two ladies on an open road. He was miming to us, so my first thought was, oh, OK, the dude’s a foreigner and probably doesn’t speak English. But the wife proceeded to do the same and asked me if I had something to write on.  

Deaf. Both of them. He signaled for my jack. I got it. She put her arm around me, started writing in my notebook, and told me to save my money…that he’d help us. I was dubious. But 35 minutes and 5 or 6 pages later, he had lifted my car, dug under the tire enough to lay down the wood (with help from the sidekick), dropped my car back onto the plank, and signaled for me to throw it into reverse. By that point he was covered in both sweat and dirt, his knuckles raw and bleeding, and not despite that but BECAUSE of that, I hugged him so hard I had to choke back a tear. I assure you that you have never seen two women more in need of a beer.

Moonrise did not disappoint. They had no flights available so we were forced to drink full glasses…you can imagine the horror. Luna Draconis was a dragon fruit sour that was crisp, balanced, tart, and definitely fruit forward. I had grown tired of having to hunt for the fruit that brewers swore was in my glass, so the Luna was a welcomed change. The second was the Dark Prince…my knight in clear-glass armor…the one who swept me off my feet. Say what you will about nitro beers, this was a nitro milk stout done completely right. It was creamy, and chocolaty, and had a fabulous head. I was so delirious from the car fiasco that the only tasting notes I managed were, “really fucking yummy.” After a couple of hours of rejuvenation and recuperation, we were Mt. Dora bound.

The last stop on the trip was easily the one I was most excited about. Odd Breed Wild Ales sits in an unassuming stretch just off the interstate, in Pompano Beach. There are three churches within a three-block radius so it’s not exactly a hotbed of nightlife, but it’s a beacon if ever there was one for dorks like me. What I loved most about their story is that the two founders/brewers had long had a passion for wild beers. They weren’t making these beers because sours were suddenly wildly popular in the US (pun intended) but because it’s what they love. Their place focuses solely on wild ales and farmhouse ales. Their brews are inspired by the Belgian Lambics I love so much. Their respect for the craft sets them apart…that wheat being separated from the chaff I mentioned earlier.

I’d rather not regurgitate a bunch of tasting notes that were scrawled down rather incoherently because I didn’t want to lose focus of the beers. Suffice it to say that if I lived remotely close to these guys (I’m about 40 minutes away, which is close enough to be viable but not close enough to be financially dangerous), I’d be a regular. Forget knowing me by name…they’d know me by scent. I’d walk through their sanctified door and they’d know that Katie was coming to warm a barstool before they could even turn around to say hello. They’d know my favorites. They’d be putting aside limited-release bottles for me to pick up. They’d let me choose a playlist. And they’d ask to see pictures of my cat.

While there, we shared a gose with oranges and lemons aged in French oak, a wild Baltic porter aged in rye barrels, and a saison brewed with pilsner malt and jasmine rice, all infused with lemongrass, galangal root, and kaffir lime leaves. We were exhausted at this point, but I was head-over-heels in love, and in dire need of taking some of that love home with me, so I also grabbed bottles of Stabbing Elbows (ale aged in French oak puncheons, then refermented on organic sweet and tart cherries), and Counter Cultural Colorations (in the tradition of a Flemish Red, aged in Sangiovese puncheons; one bottle plain and one bottle refermented with red currants). Not one of those bottles was a letdown…not one was even “just ok.” I could easily have been fooled into believing that the Counter Cultural Colorations were from Flanders instead of Florida.

Like any trend in food/beverage, sour beers can serve either as a tool to expand the palate of limited drinkers or as a tool to completely misguide uneducated drinkers depending on who’s pouring. When I started seeing them show up on Total Wine’s shelves years ago, I was excited. But we have this amazing way of driving a really great thing squarely into the ground and pummeling its identity right the fuck out of it. It spun quickly out of control, from a few great breweries showing us their funky side (think Ommegang in NY and Lost Abbey in CA) to everyone with a fermenting tank and some yeast trying to cash in. Nowadays, the shelves at Total Wine are bowing from the weight of sour beers and flavored beers lining their shelves. But for every great bottle of Three Philosophers, there’s a bottle of Voodoo Doughnut Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Ale that I’d sooner bash over my head than crack open. Not everything done outside the box is creative, bub. Creativity can’t be the scapegoat for ideas that are “out there”, simply for the sake of being out there. Sometimes, the reason you color outside the lines is not because you’re creative but because you’re a shitty artist and should consider taking up basket weaving instead.

Tagged as: Florida Breweries, Lambics, Sour Beer