Hello southern beer lovers. I've recently been coaxed into a trip to Disney with the family. I will be heading down in mid April and was hoping for some advice. I am going to be making a side trip to Tampa but mostly need advice on what I should be looking out for. My wife and I are the beer geeks of the family so something that would meet our needs but also something that might quench the masses would be good as well. My family is big into Sam Adams etc but generally follow my lead. I am planning on hitting up Cigar city but is there anything else that is a must? Whats the best place to buy beer in the Disney area? Thanks you so much -Daniel
Orlando: Bottle Shops: Knightly Spirits on OBT (About 25 mins or so from Disney depending on where you're staying) and Total Wine at Millennia (30-45 mins). If you head into the city and more towards UCF, Big C's, Shamrock and another Total Wine near Downtown. Bars: Redlight Redlight, Oblivion, tap & grind. All are Downtown or further though. There is a World of Beer in the Dr. Philips area near Universal Studios. Disney now serves the core CCB beers in a lot of locations though. Cask & Larder is worth the trip to Winter Park and all beers are brewed on location. Tampa: Breweries: I may miss a few but Cycle Brewing, Green Bench, 7venth Sun, Rapp, 3 Daughters, Tampa Bay Brewing, Big Storm, Dunedin and Angry Chair I believe should be open by April, but I'm sure someone might correct me on that. All are in driving distance of Tampa or so, and a lot make great beer. Peg's Cantina (Cycle) and Cigar City Brewpub are great brewpubs and Tampa Bay Brewing serves food. Bottle Shops: Luekens Liquor always has a great rep. There is a Total Wine right by CCB as well. The Tampa locals can probably point you in the direction of some other places.
Above are the main places for the real small unique breweries in bottles and the major local breweries themselves. But also stop at a few ABC Wine/Spirit chain stores that are all over the place as they have been increasing their craft inventories greatly recently and have good prices. Especially the newly built stores Plus as mentioned they have ABC stores all over down here...
Gnarly Barley, Tap & Grind, Oblivion, Lil' Indies, Cask & Larder, Imperial Beer and Wine Garden, Redlight Redlight are great spots to grab brews in Orlando. As stated before - Knightly Spirits on Orange Blossom Trail and Big C's Liquors in Winter Park are go-to bottle shops. Total Wine on Colonial and different ABC's have a good selection of bottles as well.
I'll chime in about Disney. They just dove into the craft beer scene. You can get a ton of craft beer now all over WDW, excluding the Magic Kingdom which only has beer at Be Our Guest Restaurant. They have selection from CCB to Sam Adams to GI to Bell's, even some West Coast breweries IIRC. Your best bet is to download the app "Beers and Ears". It'll tell you where to find a particular brew or find beer by location, even being GPS enabled.
In the Tampa Bay area you also have St. Somewhere, Three Plams, Wild Rover, and Pair 'O Dice. Coopertail Brewing Co should be open in Ybor by then. As well as JDub's, Big Top, Motorworks, and Darwin's if you are feeling frisky and want to drive down to Bradenton/Sarasota should all be close to opening by then as well. Also the Berliner Fest could be going on at Peg's sometime in April.
