Coppertail Brewing Co. – Ybor City

 

After our lunch at The Bricks, we visited Coppertail Brewing’s brand new tasting room.  We’re going to have to update our brewery map because so many new breweries keep popping up in the area!

Their slogan is “Florida Inspired. Tampa Brewed.”  They had several beers that incorporated citrus, but nothing overly sweet.  We’ve had a few of their beers before (their “Core 4” are bottled and available at many local liquor stores now – we even saw their Free Dive IPA at Trader Joe’s later that day when picking up groceries). 

Coppertail’s new tasting room officially opened March 6^th, and it sounds like they’ve had a busy couple of weeks since then.  For middle of the day on a Wednesday, it had a pretty good crowd. 

 

For the label art, they collaborated with independent artist Evan B. Harris, who created intricate and imaginative designs for each style of beer.   

The brewery’s décor is nautical industrial with lots of funky non-traditional decorations inspired by their labels.  For some reason they also incorporated a traditional confessional booth into the design.  I’m assuming has to do with their “Unholy Trippel”, which they describe as “sacrilegious hops, fruity & funky”. 

 

 

 

 

While you enjoy your beers, they have a 2-player Pac-Man table that lets you play retro arcade games for free (Lance looks pretty excited about this in the picture below...)  They also have the oversized Jenga and a pile of other board games like you find at most breweries. 

 

As far as the beers go, I enjoyed the Frank and the Giant Peach “Floridaweisse” and their Night Swim porter best.  And even though I’m not big on IPAs, the orange and grapefruit in their Citrus IPA made it more my style. 

They offer tours Thursday – Sunday for $7, which includes a behind-the scene look of the operations, a beer, and a souvenir glass.  It was the wrong day of the week for us to try the tour out, but a glass with their logo would be pretty cool!   

Coppertail Brewing Co. is located at 2601 E 2nd Ave, Tampa, FL 33605  (right across from IKEA) and is open 4pm – 11pm Monday – Thursday, 4pm – 12am Friday, 2pm – 12am Saturday, and 12pm – 7pm on Sunday. 

The Bricks – Ybor City

 

Yesterday we headed to Ybor City to grab some lunch.  I had heard great reviews about a restaurant called The Bricks, but hadn’t had the chance to try it out before. 

As expected, it is located in a brick building, with exposed brick walls in the interior.  It is clearly aimed at a young crowd – The Skatepark of Tampa apparently opened it after decades of sending business to other local bars and restaurants. 

When you walk in, the music sounds like you might be in a Pac Sun or Tilly’s.  The TVs had footage of 80’s skateboarding kids and The Disney Channel playing.  They had ads for “The Church of Nintendo” game nights on Mondays, and they featured a chorizo soup called “Chorizard” (for those of you that didn’t grow up as 90’s kids, there was a Pokémon dragon named Charizard…I never even had any Pokémon cards, but I still recognized the name…)  

I was pretty excited to see Cigar City’s Cubano Espresso Brown Ale on the drink menu.  It’s a coffee beer brewed with local coffee beans, and tastes almost more like a Starbucks drink than a beer.   

 

I ordered The Bird and Pig sandwich – with roasted pulled chicken, bacon, apples, brie, and agave served on sweet bread.  From their Yelp reviews, it seems that this is pretty much everyone’s favorite sandwich there.  It was the perfect mix of savory and sweet – and they even served it presented in a heart shape! I had the mixed greens salad as my side, which was tossed in a tangy dressing. 

Lance had The Burrito – with oven roasted pork, black bean-corn relish, cheddar, and avocado cream in a pressed flour tortilla.  I thought the pressed tortilla was much better than the normal cold tortilla you’d get at a typical burrito restaurant. 

Whether you’re a skateboarder or not, I’d highly recommend checking this place out. 

The Bricks is located at 1327 E 7th Ave, Tampa, FL 33605  and is open 11am – 1am Monday – Sunday.       

Tampa Bay Brewing Company

 

We’ve been on a mission to try every local craft brewery (there are about 50 that I know of…so we’ve got a ways to go!)  If you need help picking one, The Brewery Bay is an awesome website that has a map of all the Tampa Bay area breweries, then lets you filter them by whether they are pet-friendly, offer growlers, have live music, have food, and more. 

On our day off last week, we visited Tampa Bay Brewing Company in the heart of Ybor City.  I’d been there once before for drinks, but this time we had lunch there as well.  They have an indoor restaurant as well as an open-air patio.  Since it’s been a little chilly lately, we ate inside. 

 

 

The place was all decked out for Christmas.  We were there around 2pm on a Wednesday, so it wasn’t very busy.  I was happy to hear that they offered beer flights so we could sample a variety.  I tried the Reef Donkey APA, Red Eye Amber Ale, Wild Warthog Hefeweizen, and their special Phantom Dark Ale (one of their seasonal beers).  I actually liked the APA best, which isn't usually my type of beer.  Lance had a double IPA along with a few flights as well. 

 

 

 

For lunch, Lance had the Brew House Cheese Burger and I had the Bad A** BLT Sandwich.  The burger was good, but I’d highly recommend the BLT.  They definitely didn’t skimp on the bacon.  Lance had his with fries and I chose the white cheddar mashed potatoes as my side. 

 

 

We wandered Ybor for a bit afterwards to walk off our meal (there are stray chickens and roosters all over!) 

 

One more brewery down, dozens more to go!  

Tampa Bay Brewing Company is located at 1600 East 9th Avenue, Tampa, FL 33605 and is open 11am – 11pm Monday through Thursday, 11am – midnight Friday/Saturday, and noon – 11pm on Sunday.