Darwin's on 4th
Downtown Sarasota brewpub Darwin's on 4th plans to create a production brewery in Sarasota to can and keg their beers, according to brewmaster Jared Barnes.
Thanks to Florida's antiquated beer laws, brewpubs can only produce beer for sale on premise. In other words, if you want to drink Darwin's beers you have to go to Darwin's. The same holds for the Sarasota Brewing Co. and others.
But by creating a separate brewery, Darwin's can package beer and sell it elsewhere, much like Michael Wagner plans to do with Little Giant Brewery in Bradenton. Cigar City Brewing in Tampa is an example of a production brewery.
In an email, Barnes says he doesn't want to get into specifics on the plan because it's so early in the process.
"But we have talked about opening a production facility sometime next year with plans to can and keg all of our beers," Barnes writes.
Note that he said can, not bottle. More and more craft breweries are choosing to put their beers in cans instead of bottles. Cans had a bad reputation, but that's changed, thanks to modern linings that prevent beer from directly contacting metal. Cans are in many ways superior to bottles: They don't let in light to spoil the beer, they are easier to recycle, lighter and easier to transport and they are allowed places where glass isn't -- like beaches. Cigar City should be releasing canned versions of four of its beers any day now.
Barnes says the brewery would be near the existing brewpub, or possibly in the University Parkway area.
This is very promising news. If things go as planned, Sarasota-Manatee will go from zero production breweries to two by the end of 2013.
