Given Pair O’ Dice Brewing’s name and graphics, one might be tempted to assume proprietors Ken and Julia Rosenthal are big fans of gambling.
Nope. The Clearwater brewery and tasting room’s identity is actually a twist on the couple’s love for their home state. The two met while both were engineering students at the University of Florida, and while their subsequent work and travels took them across the country, they always looked forward to their trips back home to Ken’s Pinellas stomping grounds.
“We always knew we’d come back at some point,” he says. “And every time we packed our bags to come back here, we’d say we were heading back to paradise.”
After stints working at different Anheuser-Busch facilities — Julia in operations and Ken in the brewhouse — and catching the craft-beer bug early by visiting then-emerging scenes in cities like Austin, Texas, and San Diego, they returned to the Bay area and began meticulously homebrewing their own beers, and planning their new business venture.
Paradise. Pair O’ Dice. Get it?
After the usual fits and starts associated with getting any new company off the ground, the brewery and tasting room opened last Halloween. And now, as their first anniversary approaches, the Rosenthals are distributing Pair O’ Dice brews to more than 100 retail accounts in Pinellas, as well as 50-plus in Hillsborough.
“We do plan to expand to a few new counties over the next six months, and that’s really just to kind of get our capacity to where it can be,” Julia says. “Eventually, we want to be able to afford a canning line. But we’re not looking to borrow a ton of money to expand. We’re in this for the long haul.”
“We’re in it because we love it,” Ken adds. “But we want to grow the business organically, the word of mouth is getting there. We don’t want to distribute [right now] anywhere more than one day away from the brewery — if you want a Pair O’ Dice beer, you’ve gotta come to paradise.”
Favorite local beer that isn’t theirs: Julia: “Rapp Brewing is just three miles down the road, we love [Greg Rapp’s] Lichtenhainer, it’s just different and fun, you can’t get it anywhere else around here, it’s very unique.” Ken: “It’s very refreshing, got a nice sourness to it, a nice smokiness, I really like it.”
Their signature Pair O’ Dice beer: Ken: “I think it’s the Fowler’s Bluff IPA, it’s nice, light-bodied, beautiful aromatics, hoppy. It’s poetry in a glass.” Julia: “That’s the one we’d say today, but with our anniversary coming up, we’ll be releasing our Stick Man Double IPA and Pit Boss Triple, and both of those will be embodying the sort of beer we want to be known for.”
Pair O’ Dice Brewing
4400 118th Ave. N. #208, Clearwater
727-755-3423