Visit Florida Breweries! Drink Florida Beer!

A stellar line-up of local beers.

What makes local beer better?

For starters, freshness. Despite the ongoing trend of aging certain beers for many years to develop flavor, the vast majority of beer brewed tastes best fresh from the brewery. Why? Well, for a couple reasons. For starters, hops -- those gorgeous little buds that make big contributions to the flavor and aroma of beer -- are at their most pungent and distinctive early in a beer's life cycle. A Cigar City Jai Alai IPA would probably lose its tropical/citrus bite left to sit too long. Even a light helles like Native Lager would lose its distinctive fruitiness and grassy balance if drank too far from its bottling date.

Announcements!

Happy Friday, beer fans. We've got some good news today: Event announcements!

If you look at the calendar to the left side of the page, you'll see that a bunch of new bars, breweries, and restaurants have signed on to take part in South Florida Beer Week. We're going to have a number of tap takeovers, special deals on local beers, and even a pig roast! That's right, bacon: It's not just for drinking anymore.

Here's a brief run down of what we've added to SFBW so far:

Brew Insight: Q&A With Bob Gordash, Founder of Holy Mackerel Beers

Above: Bob Gordash of Holy Mackerel
stirs a batch of his award-winning brew.

Part of what makes local craft beer special is the stories -- the tales of spirit and passion that drive people to turn this obsession (read: beer!) into a career. So each week on the South Florida Beer Week Blog, we're going to try to give you a little glimpse into those stories by talking with the people behind the beer.

For this first Brew Insight column, we caught a big one: Bob Gordash, founder of Holy Mackerel Beers (née Gordash Brewing). Based in Fort Lauderdale, FL and brewed out of Greenville, South Carolina, Holy Mackerel is known for its compact but ultra-potent line up of Belgian-inspired ales. It's Special Golden Ale is highly drinkable, even at 8.5% alcohol by volume, while it's Mack in Black imperial stout is a beast of a beer with layers of tart pomegranate and chocolate malt. Holy Mackerel's latest brew doesn't relent either -- Panic Attack strong ale, released in 2010, clocks in at a whopping 10%. Talk about big boys.

Still thirsty? We wrangled Mr. Gordash into a little Q&A session to tell us more about his past as a brewer and the foundation of his company, and give us his thoughts on the Florida craft beer scene.

SFBW: Hey Bob! Tell us what Holy Mackerel Beers is all about.

Redesign!

Welcome all beer lovers, geeks, fanatics, and aficionados -- we're proud to unveil the all new SFBW site! We've got a lot in the works in the coming month getting ready for a week of all-local, all-Florida beer events culminating in the Jupiter Craft Brewers Festival at Roger Dean Stadium on January 28.

Perhaps this is your first time seeing the page; and that's cool. We wanted to create something we felt resonated with South Florida and spoke to our goal -- enjoying fantastic Florida craft beer! The logo you see to your left is part of that. This year, we decided to pay homage to perhaps South Florida's most important and iconic artistic style, art deco, by creating an "Art Deco Bottle" to represent our campaign. The bottle doubles as a building towering above one of those gorgeous Florida sunsets we love so much, replete with "bubble" lit windows and barley grain embellishments. It will be gracing posters all over SoFla in the coming weeks, so look out for that!

In short, now that we've got the page up and running, expect updates on all our beer events as we finalize them, which should be very soon. So stay tuned, folks. Cheers!

What is South Florida Beer Week?

Well we know you haven't seen it before because it's the first year...you must be asking yourself, "What's this all about?" Well for the first year we are helping to honor South Florida's Beer Community, Craft Brewers and Craft Beer Lovers with a week devoted to all things Florida Beer all culminating in the biggest and best beer festival in Florida, The Jupiter Craft Brewers Fest. All together, South Florida's Beer Community is working to bring you a week full of different events aimed at showing what South Florida Beer is all about. Stay tuned for more details on whats going on and try to come out and help celebrate. Cheers!