Bob Sylvester doesn’t make the hippest beer in Tampa Bay.Like the industrial storage space located in the northernmost climes of Tarpon Springs where he’s brewed his own take on Belgian-style farmhouse ales for more than eight years, Saint Somewhere could be considered a little off the beaten path for newbie local craft-beer aficionados drawn to trendier brands. You gotta do a little looking around to find it, and while plenty of Tampa’s longtime homebrew fans and Old World traditionalists have long since sworn allegiance, a large chunk of the folks quaffing IPAs in some “in-transition” neighborhood may not have even heard of it.
Oh, well — for now, Sylvester will just have to console himself with the fact that his award-winning small-batch brews are in demand in 42 states and five countries, and highly rated on every beer site that counts.
“Granted, we fill a very small niche, and I figured out early on that Florida was never going to be able to support us,” he says. “Not because the market wasn’t here, but just because there weren’t enough farmhouse beer drinkers. We had to expand out of the state — it was either that, or die.”
As America’s fascination with craft beer, and all things organic/artisanal, has grown, so has Saint Somewhere’s profile; four years ago, Sylvester was able to quit the part-time job he held in order to qualify for affordable insurance for his two daughters. And as the Bay area’s own beer scene continues to flourish, so does Saint Somewhere’s local cachet. “Occupy” bottle-swap events at the brewery — so named because a friend with keys “occupied” the space and threw a party while Sylvester was out of town, beginning the tradition — draw ever larger crowds (the next one is scheduled for October 18), and Sylvester is now ready to add the only thing his operation, in his opinion, is really lacking.
“Yeah, we are moving,” he says. “Hopefully within the year. We’re staying in Tarpon. The main reason is to open a tasting room, and expand the brewery a little bit, but not much.
“Honestly, not having a tasting room was a mistake from the beginning,” Sylvester says. “But I had nobody to look up to. The business model in 2006 was, you were either a production brewery or a brewpub — and I wanted nothing to do with the restaurant business.”
A place for beer fans to gather and taste his product will definitely heighten awareness of Saint Somewhere locally, but the addition of a tasting room shouldn’t be taken as an indication that Sylvester is interested in anything beyond continuing to craft small batches of his beers, to his own standards of purity and satisfaction.
Favorite local beer that isn’t his:“One that really blew me away was a lavender saison [Crimes of Passion] from 7venth Sun. Other than that, [Cigar City Brewing’s] Jai Alai.”
His signature Saint Somewhere beer: “Cynthiana. It’s not our flagship, but it’s my favorite of the bunch. We only brew it once a year.”
Saint Somewhere Brewing Company
1441 Savannah Ave. #E, Tarpon Springs
813-503-6181