In 1897, Cuban cigar maker Vincente Ybor introduced the first commercial beer brewery — the Florida Brewing Company — in Tampa. This opens a chapter for Tampa Bay's long history of beer and its continuous evolution to this day.
On "Florida Matters Live & Local," Jeff Houck, vice president of marketing for the Columbia Restaurant Group, talked about the current beer culture in Tampa. He said the craft brewing explosion in Tampa started with an underground homebrewing community.
"It is a continuation of a story that kind of went sleepy for a while," he said.
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When the conditions became favorable, many of these homebrewers started launching their own breweries. Cigar City Brewery became the leader of the state's craft beer scene, and they inspired others to start their own brewery businesses.
What became known as a "brew belt" stretched from Sarasota up to Jacksonville. Houck said it was the collaborative spirit that kept the culture going.
"There was this healthy kind of learn-and-go-do atmosphere at all the other breweries," Houck said. "People would kind of get trained and then say, 'Well, I'd like to make a brewery here.'"
In-house brewing is the new trend. Since 2014, many breweries have begun producing beer specifically for their own restaurants.
This is the case with Ulele, a Columbia Restaurant Group establishment at Armature Works that began brewing its own beer in 2014.
"They basically make brews only for the restaurant and and it's not circulated," Houck said. "They're not canned or bottled. It is meant to be paired with the food on the menu there.
"It's important that you care about telling stories through food, and you can't tell the story of Tampa's food without including brewing in it," Houck said.
La Tropical is the number one beer of Cuba. It was later licensed to brew at the Florida Brewing Company in 1897.
Although the original Tampa brewery closed in 1961, the Miami-based brewery Cerveceria later revived the product. They brought the original La Tropical beer along with varieties back to Tampa in 2022.
Cigar City Brewing is one of Tampa's nationally recognized brands. What was a passion project between Joey Redner and Wayne Wombles later became a prime example of a Tampa success story. Redner knew that the city's homebrewing scene would soon become a new trend.
"Every beer that left Tampa under the Cigar City brand told a different Tampa story," Houck said.
Opened in 1897, the Florida Brewing Company was the first commercial brewery established in Ybor City.
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Houck discussed the brewery's rich history and ties to the Columbia.
It "started in Ybor City using water that was generated partly at that water plant, and that water supplied all of Ybor City," Houck said. "And the Columbia restaurant, the mother ship of the company, used that water, and the Columbia started out as saloon Columbia, which was a tasting room for the Florida brewery. So it's all very cyclical."
The Florida Brewing Company building was modeled after a Johannesburg brewery; it quickly gained acclaim and influenced brewing across Florida, the Caribbean, and Cuba.
During Prohibition, most breweries in Tampa were forced to switch to producing soda. While many original breweries are no longer in operation, Houck said their influence can still be tasted in the modern Florida beer scene.
"As far as the current breweries, they're all doing sort of modern versions of beer," Houck said. "But beer is beer — they have been making it for thousands of years. Everybody has to have their own little thing."
This story was compiled from interviews conducted by Matthew Peddie for "Florida Matters Live & Local." You can listen to the full episode here.
