Editor in Chief David Warner touches on some of the exciting news and events covered in this week's issue of Creative Loafing.
by David WarnerIt’s always kind of a crapshoot for CL when, once a year, we offer up our cover to the highest bidder as part of our holiday auction to benefit The Children’s Home. But so far we’ve lucked out, with delis, doctors and Dough (the restaurant) among the winners. And this year we were pleased to learn that top bidder Kent Bailey wanted to use the cover to promote something very close to our hearts, not to mention our offices:
He’s opening a big new brewery on the outskirts of Ybor. And I do mean big — Coppertail Brewing Co. will occupy a 35,000-square-foot
warehouse (home in previous lives to a Hellmann’s mayonnaise factory and the Sevilla Olive Packing Company) just off Adamo Drive, near Ikea. With an opening estimated for late May, Bailey aims for Coppertail to be on par eventually with Cigar City —“to have the production capacity they have in a few years.”
A transplant from Washington, D.C. and a longtime wine enthusiast, Bailey says Cigar City helped get him excited about beer. Then, once he started homebrewing in 2012, “it was all over for me.” A passing interest “became kind of an all-consuming hobby,” and the hobby is now an all-consuming profession: He left his job as in-house counsel for an investment firm “to follow my passion.”
Even though the brewery is not yet open, one of its beers has already won an award: a silver medal in the 2014 Best Florida Beer Championships for its Belgian-style Tripel. Head brewer Casey Hughes “loves that style,” says Bailey, so Belgian-American hybrids and hoppy beers are sure to be among the offerings in the Coppertail line. An oyster stout has also proven popular in tastings, with “just a little hint of saltiness and chocolate. It really grabs people’s attention.”
The labels should be attention-getters, too; that’s the label illustration for Coppertail’s porter (by Portland artist Evan Harris) on our cover. Bailey says he ran across CL’s holiday auction on the Internet last year, and “it clicked in my head that it’d be a really cool way to introduce our brewery to the market.”
So thanks for that, Coppertail — and thanks to all of the bidders who helped us raise more than $20,000 for The Children’s Home and its programs for abused and neglected children.
Elsewhere in this week’s issue, let me draw your attention to Mitch Perry’s story about the sad and expensive spectacle that the race for Congress has become in Pinellas. Even if you’re not in Congressional District 13, and so aren’t voting on Tuesday, you are probably aware of this race; the onslaught of attack ads — many of them, as Mitch points out, paid for by Super PACS — has been inescapable and infuriating. I know who I’d vote for if I lived in the district, but I don’t like the way either of the major party candidates, and particularly either of the national party committees who support them, have run this race.
Finally, a quick note to tell you about something I’m very excited about: Gasp!, a multi-disciplinary performing arts fest CL is doing at the Tampa Museum of Art on Friday, Mar. 28, from 6-10 p.m. It’s a smorgasbord of theater, dance, video, improv, music and more, inspired by the innovative, eclectic spirit of fringe festivals from Edinburgh to Orlando, and by the fantastic (in all senses of the word) Graphicstudio retrospective now at the Museum. That show will be open exclusively to Gasp! attendees during the festival, which could be reason enough for you to drop by. Learn more at gasptampa.com.