Cigar City Brewing Lights Up Tampa

Once upon a recent time in Tampa, there was a homebrewer anticipating the opening of a local craft brewery so he could get his dream job by working there. Finally, Joey Redner took matters into his own hands in 2009 and started his own brewery. The result is a paean to Tampa, the cultures surrounding the Gulf of Mexico and craft beer.

Even the most veteran of beer tourists would find a trip to Cigar City Brewing unique. It’s not just the ability to learn firsthand how cigars are rolled at the tobacco table in the tasting room – or the eclectic array of items on the wall behind the bar and broad variety of well-crafted in-house brews on the electronic chalkboard. For the alert traveler, there’s a breadth of opportunity to engage the history of Tampa.

I happened to be traveling to the brewery on the same Monday when President Obama was paying tribute to Jose Martí in Cuba during his historic state visit. The poet who helped inspire revolution and the fight for independence in Cuba, Martí was a frequent visitor to Tampa. Several years before hailing Cuba and Martí was cool, he was commemorated in one of the early releases by Cigar City. An 8 percent ABV porter with a strong hop kick, this beer was typical of the early high-gravity brews that fueled Cigar City’s meteoric growth.

The signature big beer, Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout, one of the early arrivals to the chili pepper-infused beer phenomena, is a tribute to a mythical Mayan god of the sun and is released once a year at the brewery. Given that demand continues to outstrip supply, Hunahpu’s is also a tribute to Redner and head brewer Wayne Wambles, who introduced the beer in the Atlanta Cask Ale Festival shortly before opening the brewery in 2009.

Consider a can of Tocobaga Red Ale, which is ultra-malty with a hop profile to match and easy-drinking – like so many of Cigar City’s traditional styles despite their decided twists. The back of the Red Ale can recalls the history of the Tocobaga Native Americans who built platform mounds in the Tampa Bay area that still exist. “Climb to the top,” goes this trip advisory, “and with a little imagination you can see Tampa Bay as they did.” The Tocobaga were the only original residents of what is now Florida to grow maize, or corn (we learn from the can), although it’s likely honey that helps supply sweetness and smoothness. In any event, this reddish-hued amber ale has really got it going on.

During my visit, the tasting room featured El Lector, a very engaging example of an English Dark Mild and another indicator of the eclectic nature of the beers available in the tap room, where Belgian and German styles are also found. Low on ABV and carbonation, El Lector was still deep in roasted richness, which seems appropriate. “The reader” was a man who held forth on a centrally located stand in the cigar-making plants in nearby Ybor City. These lectors could spontaneously translate into Spanish from a variety of languages while reading newspapers and literature to the Cuban-born cigar makers as they labored at the benches.  No doubt some of the poems read to the rollers needed no translation and were written by Jose Martí.

Just in case this cultural pursuit seems to be getting too far afield (especially if one includes the eminently drinkable Jai Alai IPA, named after the game imported to Florida from the Basque country and played in frontons with cestas and pelotas), consider the Belgian Witbier that goes by the name of Florida Cracker. That name is a tribute to the Scots-Irish herdsmen who used bullwhips and cracked them above the heads of driven cattle. This beer, too, is a subtle departure of what one might expect from the style, with the signature smoothness helping to push the beer’s thirst-quenching aspect forward in such a hot climate.

So a trip to Cigar City is an opportunity to engage more than beer. It turns out to be a window on the melting pot that is Tampa. “The two are irrevocably tied together,” wrote the ever-busy Redner during an e-mail interview following my visit. “It was my love for this city that drove me to want to make Cigar City Brewing exist here. I wanted to share what I love about Tampa with the rest of the world via the vehicle of beer.” 

All this keeps Redner, who has four daughters, very busy. The goal of Cigar City from the outset was to provide what craft breweries were doing elsewhere in the current beer revolution. If it’s a typical craft brewer activity, then Redner and his staff, which now includes 10 brewers who put out 60,000 barrels a year, are engaged in it.

In addition to the cozy bar, tap room, brewery tours, beer garden tables, food truck and swag room with some high-quality breweriana, there’s a cooler with a multitude of carryout bomber bottles such as Sugar Plum (a winter white with plums, cacao nibs and coffee), Black Currant Groove (a sour ale), Strawberry Shortcake Lager and the Big Sound Scotch Ale, among others. Headed for the beach? Get a growler to go or a selection of six-packs and four-packs, including the Jai Alai IPA Aged on White Oak and the ever-popular Maduro, a Northern England brown ale. There are Hot as Helles and Cigar City Lager to choose from as well.

If it’s a full lunch or dinner you’re looking for, head up the road to the Cigar City Brewpub, which has an independent beer menu along with fan favorites. Gotta have some cider? Pay a visit to Cigar City Cider and Mead in Ybor City not far from the museum dedicated to telling the story of Tampa’s cigar and Cuban connection.

Beyond the signature high gravity brews of the Humidor Series aged on Spanish oak spirals, there’s the ever-growing Hunahpu’s Day festival each March, which this year moved from the parking enclosure of the brewery’s industrial park, limited to 5,000 in attendance, to the Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park. In addition to being timed with the release of Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout, the festival is primed by many in the far-flung universe of brewers who have done collaborations with Cigar City as well as Florida’s finest craft brewers.

No wonder Redner is busy, in part because he didn’t expect what he describes as “the upward potential range” once the brewery opened. He and Wambles brewed 1,000 barrels the first year and three years later were brewing that much every two weeks. (This is the type of info found on blog selections written by Redner under the glass top of the bar in the tap room that provide a pastiche of the brewery’s history.)

“All those cylinders firing is really just a result of wanting to have all the cool things a lot of the rest of the U.S. had from a craft beer standpoint here in Tampa,” writes Redner in his e-mail reponse. “I wanted beer styles I gravitate to that would be readily available, ubiquitous even. I wanted cool one-offs and tons of inventive variety in beer offerings, barrel-aged beers, cool events and fests. At the time there was not a lot of that here so we sort of set out to do all of those things so we could have them here.

“Other areas had several breweries to look to in order to get those things,” he continued. “At the time our scene did not have several breweries to look to so we tried to do the things several breweries would do. We have a thriving beer scene in Tampa now so we have shifted more to focusing on the things that we are best at or that have become part of our core DNA like Hunahpu’s Day. So we now say ‘maybe not’ to a lot of things we would have.”

The brewery’s most significant craft stamp, aside from its seal-type red logo, is the long list of collaborations, estimated to exceed 130. When asked how he keeps up with such a hectic collaboration schedule, Redner had this to say, er, write:

“We (mostly brewmaster Wayne Wambles and myself) have been told by the people who actually end up doing most of the marketing/brewing work to tone it down.”

After a flirtation with The High End of Anheuser-Busch, Redner recently elected to join the Oskar Blues Brewing line-up, which is part of the craft collaboration owned and operated by Fireman Capital Partners. He doesn’t anticipate anything other than making his own calls running the brewery and sees a lot of benefits beyond making whole his original investors, which include his father Joe, who succeeded quite well with strip clubs, a type of business that seems to thrive in Tampa.

“The upside is capacity, know-how, capital and cost savings on raw materials,” said Redner of the new alignment with Oskar Blues. “Cigar City instantly gets more resources and I don’t personally have to risk tens of millions of dollars to take the next steps.”

Those next steps likely include better access to more Cigar City brews in more states. In the meantime, there’s nothing quite like the place of origin to get a good feel for what’s behind the Cigar City brews and to get a highly original view of Tampa and Tampa Bay.

(All photos courtesy of Cigar City)