Naples recommendations

If you can swing Fort Myers/Cape Coral, I'd hit up Point Ybel and Palm City. Should be just pushing your 45 minute limit.

 

Not thay exciting of a place but Brass Tap always has a great tap list. You should be able to find it on their website.

Naples Beach Brewery is solid, probably as good as it gets.

 

I’d commented on Naples suggestion threads a few times over the last few months, so I’d try to search and look at those.

Breweries: Palm City is on Alico in Fort Myers (just north of Estero), they do pretty good hazy stuff and porters/stouts. At their best they are fantastic but can be a bit inconsistent. Point Ybel in fort Myers is my favorite brewery in the area but will be a decent drive from Naples (probably around 40 mins at least from north Naples maybe more) but their sours are fantastic, and they do a variety of styles really well. Fort Myers Brewing is the original brewery here and is ok, focusing more on traditional styles and not doing much innovative. Momentum Brewing is in Bonita and does a really good barley wine, there other stuff can be hit or miss. South Cypress is in the Naples Brass Tap (more on that bar later) and does a lot of good stuff especially their dark beers. Other notable Naples breweries are Bone Hook and Naples Beach, I don’t have much experience with them but I’ve heard good things.

Bars/Restaurants: In Naples i’d check out the Brass Tap, it’s a super solid beer bar with a lot of good options on tap. Unfortunately the food is meh. Make sure you go to the Naples location instead of the Coconut Point one as the one in coconut doesn’t have nearly as good of a selection. Lowbrow Pizza has dope food and a really good selection of local beers. A new beer bar opened up last month in Naples by 5th ave called Southern Lattitudes, they have 70 or so taps but I haven’t been down there yet. South Street is also a good restaurant with a good tap list (30ish with a good mix of local and out of state). Fit and a Fuel cafe does light lunch bites and has a good tap list as well.

Further north, Fort Myers has a few good options. Marlins Brewhouse probably has the best selection out of the bars in the area, with 40ish taps with pretty good stuff on them. The majority are Florida beers. World of Beer is forgettable and not worth going to either location. Stillwater Grille has an amazing craft beer selection, but the majority of the bartenders there don’t know much about it (except for Eric the guy who’s in charge of the selection). Cape Coral is a bit of a haul but my favorite craft beer place in the area is Nice Guys Pizza. The food is amazing, the atmosphere is insanely cool and the selection of beer is good. 10 taps but a solid curated selection. No 3 craft Beers is across the street and the only bottle shop in the area, a spot I like a lot.

Buying beer: Total Wine is going to have the largest selection (3 locations) but a lot of their beer is old so check dates on the ipa cans. If you’re coming from out of state, they do have a very good selection of Funky Buddha stuff, last time I checked the Naples total wine had a bunch of Maple Bacon Coffee Porter left. No 3 has a good selection as well and it’s well curated. Point Ybel puts out cans occasionally, and Palm City usually has cans available at the brewery. Most breweries in the area do crowlers, but unless the brewery purged them with CO2 the shelf life will be pretty bad (point Ybel are the only ones I know that purge with co2).

Overall I’d say the best two “must hit” breweries in the area are Point Ybel and Palm City. As far as bars, Nice Guys is probably too far for you so i’d say make sure you hit the Naples Brass Tap, and then Marlins Brewhouse.

If you’ve got any other questions shoot me a message, I’m local to fort Myers and have lived around here most of my (albeit young) life