Trendsetters: West Palm Beach, Florida

I've been south for the past few weeks escaping the frozen hell-scape that is Nebraska during the winter.  Exchanging snowdrifts for sunshine and enjoying the fact I can walk outside without worrying about bits of me turning blue and dropping off.

City Place, West Palm Beach

I stopped by City Place near downtown West Palm beach.  It is one of the growing number of entertainment districts popping up around the country.  If you've visited Universal City Walk on either coast, you kind of have an idea what I am talking about.  It's a city block literally designed as a place for people to go and spend money.

At City Place there is a brewery nestled among the shops with things I can't afford and chain restruants designed by reality show chefs that scream a lot on television.  Brewzzi is part of a growing sect of microbrewing that exists because craft beer is popular now.  It's basically a resturant that brews it's own beer, not because they have a real interest in craft brewing but because the public increasingly does.

Here's the thing, they only have three regular beers on tap; a light beer, and amber and a dark beer, and they seem rather satisfied that this encapsulates the entirety of the wide world of craft brewing.  You kind of get the feeling that they might be missing the point, but it might be my personal geek-snobbery finding a target at which to be snobbishly snobbish.

In addition to their three regular beers, they have a rotating selection of two additional beers which I believe exist to keep beer snobs like me somewhat happy.  I get the feeling that those are the two beers where the brewmaster get's to roll up his sleeves and get creative with some grain.  Ideally I would have tried all five of their beers, but they don't have a tasters flight of beers.  They will pour a sample of any beer you request, but the servers get downright irate if you ask for a sample of each.  So I went with the following three, both of the rotating beers they have on tap along with one of their three regular beers.

Hurricane Hefe: This is a Belgian wheat beer with the tell-tale bannana clove aroma.  The flavor is about the same with just a bit of spice and a fairly strong hop presence in the back of the palate.  It's pretty good, but the herbal hops in the back just seem out of place and they kind of clash.

Belgian Double:  This beer has a rasin caramel aroma.  The flavor is malty with a kind of cider flavor up front with some very slight nutty notes mixed in as well.  It ends suprisingly dry with a bitter coffee flavor.

Black Duke: This is their dark selection.  I have to say I was plesantly suprised by the amout of flavor in this beer.  It has a charcoal coffee aroma.  The flavor adds some liqorice notes among the standard coffee and woody flavors.  It has a creamy feel to it and is a very good beer overall.