2/6/2026
After my parents left I kinda just bummed around St. Pete until the weekend. On the 30th I went to a couple of breweries and found out one of the ones that I’ve been to before closed and the owner is in a ton of trouble for embezzling millions of dollars. So unfortunately Big Storm in St Pete is out of business. They still have a spot up in Clearwater though. I went to Rapp Brewing Company instead. The brewer was behind the bar serving so I was talking to him all night. They have a tiny 1.5 barrel brewing system. They still had 15 or more beers on tap though.
On the 31st Tampa was celebrating Gasparilla Festival. This involves a pirate ship sailing into the bay by the convention center, “taking the mayor hostage until they get the key to the city,” a pirate parade, and lots of people dressed as pirates drinking all over downtown. I thought about doing the pub crawl, but I’m glad I didn’t. There were so many people everywhere and lines to get into the bars. Even with the weather not cooperating the people didn’t seem to mind. The college girls were very under dressed and there were people camping out for the parade for hours.
This week I’ve been pretty boring. Mostly hanging out at the library, trying to stay out of the cold. It got down into the 30’s at night. It was nice on the 3rd and I went to Bullfrog Creek Brewing. The beertender was really nice and talked to me the whole time I was there.
Today I drove out to Lakeland, FL. It’s about halfway between Tampa and Orlando. I’ve spent a lot of time here in the past. My first stop was at the Florida Air Museum. This was a small air museum at the airport where the annual Sun n’ Fun fly-in is held. There were a couple of aircraft that I haven’t seen before, a Seadart and the vertical takeoff XVF-1. Both of these were prototypes with 17 and two being produced. The museum also had a Howard Hughes exhibit that was pretty neat.
After the museum I went to BrewHub. They got bought out by a group of people and are separating the taproom from the brewery businesses. The taproom hasn’t changed since I was there last. I was told they are going to be making some changes over the next few months. Joe, the old GM, also left to GM for someone in North Carolina.
After leaving BrewHub I drove downtown to hit up a couple other breweries and found a First Friday event happening. They closed off several streets downtown and local businesses lined the sidewalks in tents. They had a DJ and live music. They were also doing a Mardi Gras thing where they threw beads down to the crowd off of a balcony. The best part was the car show. It was mostly the same old Mustangs, Challengers, and Camaros, but there was a Ford factory SEMA truck and a Packard 120 pickup.
After walking through the festival I went to The Joinery. This is kinda like Brewhalla at Drekker. It’s an old warehouse converted into a food hall and brewery. It was really busy, but the bartenders were nice and it was fun watching them make drinks. I walked to Swan Brewing next. This place was packed and they had a band inside. The band was quite good and I want to try some more of their beers. I mostly had stouts and porters today and they had a few more that I want to try.
