Tampa drinks beer first, and the breweries are concentrated enough that you can pick a neighborhood rather than a bar.
Ybor City: BarrieHaus pours lagers through Czech side-pull faucets and has two World Beer Cup golds. Coppertail runs a 34,000 square foot production brewery with a two-storey taproom in front of it. Sky Puppy is small and inside Casa Bomberos, Ybor's original fire house. Cigar City Cider & Mead is one of very few rooms in town built on cider.
The Heights: Angry Chair in Seminole Heights, known nationally for pastry stouts, and Magnanimous, the original taproom near Armature Works, twenty rotating taps and no kitchen. Cigar City has brewed on West Spruce Street since 2009; Jai Alai is named after the game the Ybor and West Tampa social clubs played.
Not beer: Jekyll in Hyde Park, where the house signature is brewed and smoked at the table. Gasparilla Distillery in Ybor, distilling since 2018. Ybor City Wine Bar sells itself as a neighborhood room rather than a nightlife one, which on Seventh Avenue is a real distinction.
Worth the drive: Mr. Dunderbak's is a German beer hall, brewery, deli and European market behind a strip-mall storefront on Bruce B Downs, running since 1974. Lowry Parcade is the Forest Hills arcade bar. The Independent has anchored Seminole Heights for about fifteen years.
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