Winter ,
BY T H E GLASS
Coppertail Brewery Taproom
Cigar City Brewery
Events (continued)
Tampa Bay Beer Week
March 2017
This craft beer mega-celebration has hosted
more than 750 events since 2012. Throughout
Tampa Bay, you’ll find large-scale festivals, special tastings, dinners to learn about pairing the
perfect beer with your meal and plenty more.
Hunaphu’s Day
March 2017
Named after a Mayan legend, this festival is
pretty legendary in its own right, too. Admission
includes tapas, a tasting glass and unlimited
samples of 400 beers. Plus, it’s the only place
to get bottles of Cigar City Brewing’s award-winning Hunahphu’s® Imperial Stout.
Bad A** III Beerfest
April 2017
Tampa Bay Brewing Company
Every local brewery and homebrewing club is
invited to this event to give you a true taste of
Tampa Bay’s craft beer scene. Along with a boatload of samples, you get sneak peek tastings of
soon-to-be released brews.
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FoodTraveler l Winter 2016
Brewmaster Wayne Wambles,
Cigar City Brewery
Meet the man behind the brew
Award-winning brewmaster Wayne Wambles from Cigar
City Brewing tells us how he started and what’s up next.
How has the craft brewing scene in Tampa
Bay changed since Cigar City Brewing appeared on the map?
As far as craft beer shelf space in Tampa Bay,
there weren’t a lot of options locally. Since we
approached it fearlessly and were responded
to well, that helped to comfort people who
were interested in opening their own breweries. We made it pretty apparent that this was a working
business model; it wasn’t just a pipe dream.
Which gastropubs in Tampa Bay really elevate pub grub?
Anything that Chad Johnson from Haven touches is phenomenal. I’d say it’s the best dinner I’ve had in my life, and that
was the first beer dinner he’d ever made. He’s a very impressive chef.
What is the future of craft brewing in Tampa Bay?
It will get to the point that the bar for quality — and it’s already set pretty high, in my opinion — is going to be set even
higher, to the extent that it’s going to be hard to be a brewery
and make mediocre beer and survive. There’s so much good
beer to be had in the area.