BeerWise Podcast
The BeerWise Podcast, hosted by Mark DeNote, editor of Florida Beer News, delves into the dynamic world of craft beer, offering listeners a comprehensive look at industry trends, news, and in-depth interviews with key figures shaping the beer landscape.
Each episode explores the past, present, and future of brewing, providing insights into the evolution of beer styles, brewing techniques, and the stories behind renowned breweries. Whether you're a seasoned beer enthusiast or new to the craft beer scene, BeerWise serves as an engaging platform to expand your knowledge and appreciation for the art of brewing and craft beer culture.
BeerWise Podcast
Ep. 41: Jordan Copher of Late Start Brewing
From late-night homebrew sessions to downtown Tampa's newest craft beer destination, Jordan Copher's journey with Late Start Brewing embodies the passion and persistence that defines Florida's craft beer scene.
The name "Late Start" began as a joke about how Jordan and his cousin Tyler Sankey would begin brewing after 9 PM, continuing until sunrise. Over time, it evolved into a wry commentary on their decade-long path to opening a brick-and-mortar location. Now, as the current brewer at Late Start's permanent home on Cass Street, Copher and Late Start are redefining what a neighborhood brewery can be in Tampa's competitive market.
What makes Late Start unique isn't just their diverse beer offerings but their approach to community building. Opening at 8 AM with coffee and breakfast tacos, the brewery transforms throughout the day, becoming an extended living room for downtown residents. "We have people who will close the bar on Friday night and then be here for coffee and breakfast eight hours later on Saturday," Jordan explains, beaming with pride at creating a space where regulars feel at home.
Though currently contract brewing through industry friends at Angry Chair and Magnanimous while finalizing their in-house system, Jordan's brewing philosophy already shines through. He values subtlety over excess, finding more creative fulfillment in the nuanced balance of a West Coast IPA or lager than in trendy hazy IPAs. This thoughtfulness extends to their diverse tap list, which includes everything from classic styles to fruited sours like their standout mango Thai tea sour.
The partnership with food provider Mighty Fine, helmed by chef Nathan Harden, offers what Jordan confidently calls "the best smash burgers in town," providing another reason for guests to linger. This holistic approach to hospitality reflects Jordan's observation about changes in the craft beer landscape: "You have to provide non-beer drinkers a reason to come, sit, and stay."
As Late Start prepares to begin brewing on-site, Jordan looks forward to reviving beloved recipes from their homebrewing days and repaying the many collaboration brews they owe to fellow breweries. His greatest lesson after years in the industry? "Not every beer needs to be perfect. Some beer is just meant for utility, and even if I don't think it's perfect, it might be somebody else's favorite beer."
Ready to experience Tampa's newest craft beer destination? Visit Late Start Brewing on Cass Street and be part of the community they're building—whether you're a craft beer aficionado or simply looking for a welcoming space to enjoy excellent food, drinks, and conversation.
Hello and welcome back to the BeerWise podcast. This is the podcast that looks at what's going on in the world beer-wise. Hello and welcome back to the BeerWise podcast. I'm your host, mark D'Anotte, and I'm the editor of Florida Beer News. This episode I'm joined by Jordan Koffer, the current brewer at Late Start Brewery, one of Tampa Bay's newest craft breweries. In a manner of speaking, jordan is no stranger to Florida craft beer, working at many breweries, most recently Angry Chair Brewing, where he was an integral part of the beers they produced there an integral part of the beers they produced there, along with his friend and cousin, tyler Sankey.
Speaker 1:Late Start Brewing has been a name in Tampa Bay craft beer for a while, but has just now recently, found its forever home on Cass Street near downtown Tampa. Late Start has been in production and distribution for a while. Previously housed in Tampa's Poor House Craft Beer Bar, their current home features breakfast tacos, smash burgers and much more from food partner Mighty Fine. Helmed by chef Nathan Harden, jordan talks about the name, the current status of Late Start and the brewery's future. Before the interview, though, I need to thank our sponsor, copper Tail Brewing. Copper Tail Brewing has been crafting Florida-inspired beers since 2014 in its brewery and tasting room located just outside Ybor City. Enjoy a Freedive IPA, cloud Dweller, new England IPA, night Swim Porter or Unholy Triple, wherever fine ales and lagers are sold. And now here's my conversation with Jordan Koffer of Late Start Brewing.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time and hanging out and talking Late Start. I got questions for you, but really it's just. It's nice to see the space yeah and it's nice to see you guys in this space and finding a home, yeah finally yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:so can you? Before we get started, though, I like to? One of the things I like about the podcast is being able to catalog everybody's origin story in beer, so can you talk a little bit about how you got into beer and brewing and what your start was before Late Start?
Speaker 3:Yeah, going back to college. My business partner, tyler and I we went to college together in Gainesville and we were drinking, you know, macro beer, and a guy I was mounting tires at Sam's Club and a guy I worked with introduced me to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. And he told me about the Pale Ale, but instead of getting that, I went and got the Bigfoot, the barley wine, and I thought it was awful, it was atrocious. So I'm like, all right, let me go try the Pale Ale. And that just started the whole spiral. Then we just tried as much as we could find in Gainesville at the time. This is in 2006, 2007.
Speaker 3:And there wasn't much going on. I think Swamp Head did exist, but we weren't privy to going to breweries at the time. We were just going to the grocery stores, the local little health food stores and stuff that had good selections. And then we moved home. Tyler got a job at World of Beer and that was kind of like my beer school at the time. No, not the original, the one in New Tampa. Okay, I'll buy Tampa Palms, okay. So going there all the time, you know, doing the beer club thing, trying to get beers on the under my belt as possible, um, and then spending way too much money and we're both like, hey, let's just make it at home. So tyler was making good money, world of beer was popping off and he kind of funded it, bought all the equipment and I'm like, if you buy it all, I'll figure out how to do it. So that's how we started. And then I think, like we made a Sierra Nevada clone for batch number one, an extract batch, and then that wasn't enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:That wasn't enough, so we probably took a few months off. And then the second batch was all grain and I think that we made, uh, it might've been a like a roasted pumpkin porter, okay. And then I remember batch three was uh, uh, strawberry, lime, lichtenheimer, like a smoked sour, and then sours became a thing for us, um, and kind of say the thing, so I guess an ambitious like jump into weird styles so what was the?
Speaker 2:what was the inspiration behind a made you go lichtenheimer?
Speaker 3:uh, probably like okay, and then just reading about weird styles. We were into drinking a bunch of saint somewhere at the the time too. So just funky stuff, just creative stuff too. Yeah, we did that strawberry lime, we did a chipotle lime, lichtenhainer, and that was awesome. I still miss that beer, but I think everybody would hate it. These days it would take a long time to sell in the tasting room.
Speaker 2:I think of Dade City Brewhouse. They won an award for their Grzycki. Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think that got stuck around for for quite a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I bet so yeah if it's challenging to sell Saison's, try selling the one that you can't pronounce Unfortunately yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then when you guys were in college, oh man, me and Tyler we're family, we're cousins, we're like third cousins. But my mother and his mother were college roommates also. Oh wow. So we grew up as if we were first cousins, just hanging out, since we were like two years old, okay.
Speaker 2:And then. So how did the?
Speaker 3:you guys kind of went your own way in beer and then kind of mixed that, yeah, yeah, we've guys kind of went your own way in beer and then kind of, yeah, yeah, we've always kind of our paths have been intertwined for a long time. But we worked at a health food store together too, okay, and while we were there we got our beer license and the grocery manager let me manage the beer, and Tyler was working there at the time. He was working there and at world of beer, so it's kind of all intertwined. And then Tyler got a job at cigar city after world of beer and I had been trying to get into the, the brewery side, for for forever.
Speaker 3:I was emailing Tony Derby my resume like monthly, yeah and um, I was also working for loco cuisine at the time. We were doing those events, catered events at cigar city. So she kind of saw me one day and she's like are you the guy who's emailing me all the time? And I'm like, yeah, that's me. And she's like, and you work for John? I'm like, yeah, so we, we were kind of cool. And then Larry, who was a packaging manager who I'd met through John Loscazo, also through one of the events at, uh, cold storage brewing oh, my gosh, um, which, which then turned into brew bus and then turned into angry chair.
Speaker 3:And then I worked at that location for three years. Um, so like full circle world. But yeah, I met Larry at cold storage and then he's like, hey, can you start on Monday? And I was like, absolutely, so I quit my job. Didn't give him two weeks, unfortunately, and uh, yeah, it started there. Um went through the packaging department for a year or something and then went to Seller Brewer after that. Meanwhile Tyler was at, I think at this point he was working for Copper Tail, the back of the house. He was a packaging team lead and yeah, I mean, during that whole time, let's see where was I when we opened up Pourhouse. Well, I guess that's a little too far fast forward. We were pouring beers as Late Start since 2014, I think 2013. Actually, before I even started at Cigar City in 2013, we were pouring full, like at local cuisine events, pouring homebrew. So late start has been a thing since before I ever started my career in beer.
Speaker 2:So what? So then, where did the name come from?
Speaker 3:Oh man, we were, we were working both so much multiple jobs and we wouldn't. We would, we would homebrew and we wouldn't mash in until like 9 or 10 at night and then brew until the sun came up. So it was always based on poor timeliness of executing our homebrew, I guess. So, and then it turned into even when we were at Cigar City. We would steal some hot liquor and put it in coolers and we would mash it in at Cigar City We'd call it a mobile mash Our igloo cooler is full of hot liquor Dump some grain in and then transport it to the house and then brew into the night at the house and we'd go home and lauder and and uh, again brewing until sunrise.
Speaker 3:So that kind of it kind of stuck around the late start thing. And then then it kind of turned into this thing of like when the hell are you guys actually going to open? You know, we it had been like a 10 year old project and it was kind of kind of became like a little joke. Um, and we embraced it, that's fine. And uh, here we are, years later and yeah, we're, we're definitely late to the tampa industry in a in a market that's maybe saturated, maybe not quite that's well, and that's that's.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's a great segue to why you picked the busiest market, the most most crowded market in the state of Florida and possibly the Southeast. But yet how did you find your way into it? And then, why? Why here? Why now, when you were comfortable gypsy brewing and you were comfortable in jobs previously?
Speaker 3:Um, the the whole dream had turned from just learning beer and being a creative brewer to being an entrepreneur and like owning that creativity. And I looked up to a lot of the people I worked for as successful business people. Um, you know, working for joey and working for ryan dowdle um, those guys inspired me to want to get out on my own and own my creativity and own my labor and kind of make a mark in the Tampa beer industry. Okay, that grew me up.
Speaker 3:And then Tyler and I are both from Tampa, so, born and raised in the area, we always wanted to be in Tampa. There was never really much thought about being outside of Tampa. We looked at a couple buildings up in Lutes, which I still think somebody should put a brewery up there, and then we looked at Riverview and stuff like that, but it was never as exciting as wanting to be downtown. Even the book that you wrote years ago I don't know what 10. 10 years ago we were a snippet in it, but that was to go back then. It's funny to see that written in that book that we finally did land downtown. So we hit the goal.
Speaker 2:Downtown is still somewhat underserved and there's lots of possibility down here. The one thing there isn't is parking, which is a challenge for everybody, but any downtown is that way. So then, where did so? Now you're at this point, and what's the next? So I mean, you just got here, you're still relatively new. Um, what's the next goal that you need to accomplish?
Speaker 3:um, well, right now everything we're making is contract brews. We're doing that at angry chair, which you know. I worked there for nine and a half years and I've got a great relationship with those guys. The team there is great, so I'm in and out of there all the time helping to to shepherd the the contracts that we're doing there. And then we make some other beers at, uh, magnanimous. So they make great beer. Um, also, you know we've had a relationship with mike since.
Speaker 3:Before, either, tyler and I worked at cigar city, um, when he was working at seven sun I think he was bartending still at the time, not even brewing, um. So, yeah, it's chose a couple of breweries that make awesome products and who we trust to to ensure quality, and so we're doing that. And now we're we're nearly done setting up the brewery space here. Uh, we got our chiller up and running yesterday and so now we've got to just set up the controls on these tanks. Um, it's taken a while. We kind of were on a shoestring budget for everything in the brewery side and we wanted to try to not spare any expense on the tasting room side. Okay, so I think that's why maybe you can see a contrast between the quality we're sitting in and then how we got some mismatched tanks over there and a lot of used equipment. Some of it looks a little busted but it's still going to work. So, yeah, it's definitely delayed. I wish I was already filling these tanks, but that's.
Speaker 3:The next thing is to build, build back that creativity. It's. It's okay. You can't be super creative with contracts. I think okay, um, I think it's easier to just give people styles that they're good at making to contract. Um, like mag is awesome at at making uh hazy ipa, double ipa. They made a coles for us that's gonna come out soon.
Speaker 3:Angry chairs, very well-rounded, making great sours and they make great IPA too. We've made our double IPA there and While I was there I was kind of Trying to make some more classic styles red ale, dry stouts, stuff like that. So we've got that on tap too. We've got a robust porter and a dry Irish that we made at Angry Chair. But I guess back to the question before I get too far. Yeah, just growing into the creativity of the space. It's kind of an inspiring space and the customers you know we're open eight to ten, eight to midnight the people that are here are very inspiring, like the customers. So just growing in the space, man, it's really cool to have that home base. Like you mentioned before, for the first time ever that's not a shared space like Poor House. Was I'm ready to get to work with it, man, it's, I'm ready to get to work with it, man it's, I'm anxious to get there so in all these places, in all the places that you've worked and all that you've seen um who, how is your customer different here?
Speaker 2:who is your customer?
Speaker 3:this customer base is very diverse. Um, which I've not been so familiar with, I think that the, the craft beer nerds that cigar city was bringing were just that, craft beer nerds. And then I really sink deeper into that community, even with angry chair, with all the specialty beers we were making and all the stouts and you know, angry chair was kind of leading the way on that bottle culture like we talked about earlier. So here it is definitely not we're not packing the house with craft beer nerds and that could be because we're not. You know, we're not making the beer on site yet we're not. We don't have that super creative outlet, we don't have kind of that freedom, we're still stuck to contracts and and maybe we can start bringing those people in.
Speaker 3:I do see, um, some, some old faces and I would really like to facilitate some more beer for them. You know, some more creative stuff, stuff they've never tried before. Bring back some old stuff that we're making a poor house, um, but we've got a lot of young kids coming from ut. Okay, uh, we've got a lot of people who don't care for beer. That's why we we've got the, the wine spritzes on tap, we've got high noons, we've got surf sides and it's. You know, it's not really my thing. I want to stick to to craft beer or even classic styles, but we want to have a little bit for everybody, okay, and I feel like here downtown, in this location, there's kind of no limit to the customer base right now. Okay, and everybody loves burgers, so that brings a lot of people, sure.
Speaker 2:Sure. So that brings me to a question about choosing. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. I want to stick to a little bit. What's been your biggest surprise to this point?
Speaker 3:I don't know. That's a good question. I think that I'm lucky enough to have a a rounded career and I've seen a lot and I've gone through expansions at angry chair I got I got to dive into a high level of production brewing at cigar city. So I don't think we've been thrown a curve ball yet. Luckily, even even like we knew the city was going to be difficult to deal with. That's probably been the most difficult, but I don't know. Unfortunately, I don't think it was surprising. So we've worked with enough breweries.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, to know, the permitting sucks and and inspection suck. Um, we the city wanted us to put a new water main in, and that's another reason that we're not brewing yet. About a month ago, we finally convinced them that we don't need a two-inch water main for a five-barrel system, and before that we had made an agreement that we weren't gonna brew on site until that construction was done. And now, now our water permits closed out and we can actually like get to brewing. But that was another major delay. We considered very much just like doing it, but we still weren't set up. But if we were set up, we probably would have done it under the table, um, but yeah, so all like, we're still operating on a temporary shit to give it an occupancy, which is we've been open since september. So, okay, like now, that's. That's been a huge hurdle and I think it's almost over.
Speaker 3:We gotta, we gotta close out and do our finals now, okay, and and we'll get our regular CO, which will be great, you know, it's just, it's more moving to like managing the business and being an entrepreneur and having to deal with things that have nothing to do with beer and having to deal with things that have nothing to do with beer. You know, yesterday we had our sanitary pipes, our drainage, clog up and it's like, oh, here's a quick $650 to the plumber to go clear out the toilets, like great. Here's $10,000 for insurance, here's $10, grand for property taxes, it's just like they're. So I guess that's the surprising part is all the unknowns of all the unknown bills that you're going to encounter, all the things they don't teach you during school, yeah, and we thought we had a pretty good grasp on all of it and they still pop up, new ones will pop up. So I guess that's the biggest surprise. Okay, the random bills, well, and random taxes, yeah yeah, and you gotta shell out right now.
Speaker 2:It's not like they can wait, or yeah, yeah, um, what made you guys so moving, now that you're open and now that you've gone from the opening phase to the maintenance and creating hopefully sooner creativity phase? Um, what made you decide to open so early? Because you are probably the most open brewery, at 8 to 10 or 8 to 12.
Speaker 3:Oh, um, I think a lot of it is just, you know, if I'm gonna pay, whatever it is, if, if I'm going to pay for the square footage, why not optimize it? Um, sure, that's maybe going back, this is silly, maybe. But going back to the health food store days, um, I worked at this place called nutrition smart and we packed the house with product Like you'd have to weave through the aisles and I'd always ask, like, why is it so crowded? Why don't we like make it a little more comfortable or less cluttered or something? And he's like well, we pay for the square footage, so why not like pack it with as much as we can? And if we have more product available, more people are going to come. I'm like okay, that kind of makes sense. So we love coffee. Why not open up for coffee? The, the? Um, when we kind of signed on to bring them into lease the space for the kitchen, um, they wanted to do breakfast tacos and stuff from the jump. So it just fit really well. Um, and if we can make a few dollars in the morning and and and then as much as we thought we might make in the in the evenings, um, might as well do it.
Speaker 3:I think another, another aspect when we were kind of breaking it all down is just the community feel like we want. We want those regulars to come and feel comfortable and we've got people that come in, sometimes breakfast, lunch and dinner, like they'll there's, there's folks that will come in and, lucky for us, we've made the space comfortable enough that they'll be here for eight hours, like I've started a shift and somebody's at the bar or at a table and I'll leave my shift and they're still here and it's not. They're not like getting sloshed, they're not getting hammered, they're just comfortable, sure, and they're. They're munching on some, some food. They'll get a beer, they'll get a coffee, they'll get a juice, whatever it is. Um, so that that's like very fulfilling for me to see like that community vibe. And we're in this little pocket of downtown that is its own neighborhood, um, so it's awesome that these people are coming from these buildings right behind us and kind of making this their little second home or their expanded living room, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really cool. What, um? So what's the first beer that you're going to brew on the system when it's active?
Speaker 3:I'll probably see her in about a pale ale clone. Okay, that's a joke. But maybe, um, you do you, you do you? Yeah, I don't. I don't know, man, I think probably a base sour, because we love to do our treatments on on sour beers. So that's gonna fill some tap lines and give us the opportunity to get back to some of those old beers. We've made some of those cocktail inspired beers, and then we need to do a stout.
Speaker 3:We were lacking majorly in the Imperial Stout bottle game, like we used to hit when we were open at Angry Chair. Well, we did do some at Angry Chair, but when we were open at Poor House, probably lager. We cannot keep enough lager in-house here. We contract a lager out of Angry Chair and we run through that and we can't keep that on tap. Whenever we can't have that, we keep Kolsch or Weinstephaner Original on, so I definitely need to keep lager on. We've got serving tanks actually in the cooler that we haven't filled yet, so so we're going to be shipping beer from this corner of the building over to the tasting room cooler, and they're laid down kind of like lager tanks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know, there's really no limit. We're getting very close to that point, though, of making that first decision. We did have an original list. In that sense, that's gone to the wind. What are we going to brew before we open in September? And now, who knows where that list has gone, but we'll make a new one. Um, I think one thing I want to execute is on a large scale is the mango Thai tea sour that we make. Okay, and we've only ever done small half barrel treatments of that, and we're going to need to do more of it, cause we can't keep that on tap either.
Speaker 3:We run through a couple of case of that every week and it's super unique and it's a bright beer. It's kind of um attractive you that every week, and it's super unique and it's a bright beer. It's kind of um attractive, you know it's it's bright orange, like a tie to you would be, and it's it's like a head turner. People like, well, what is that? What is that? And it's like an intro beer. It's not super fruity, um, it's, it's forward. A lot of people like tighty, a lot of people don't know what it is, but it's a very unique beer. That that kind of has been an intro for some folks who aren't into craft beer to be like oh, this is cool, I like, I like tight tea, I like boba or whatever. Um, let me try the other sours then.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we'll probably make a five barrel batch of that so there's one thing I haven't heard you really say, then is is ipa as being the the biggest, the most attractive style in craft beer? Uh, for years. Do you feel a pressing need to put a hazy on?
Speaker 3:or I mean, you've got one yeah, so magnanimous makes our hazy ipa called sunset junkie and they execute it really well and we're going to keep that on. We're going to keep that contract there, where that that's in distribution. We've got a lot of good accounts that rely on that beer, um, so we're going to keep that there. We are going to absolutely make IPA here, probably start with West coast, though, to be honest, um, why is that IPA? Oh, I just love it. It's like I don't love hazies.
Speaker 3:Hazies are probably my least favorite. I never drink them. I'll try them and I think they're fine. I think they facilitate people who want a lot of hop flavor without any bitterness. I don't think they're quite balanced Beers, I think, if anything, I like the balance in the opposite direction. I want some bitterness in my beer, I want some oomph to it. It doesn't need to be a hair razor or anything, but um, as I grow older in my palate, I I can't get enough bitterness. I think in a lot of beers that I try which is unfortunate, which it used to be the opposite, you know, it used used to be like how many ivs can we get in here? Let's do, let's try, 100 ivs, um, and I miss that, and I also just personally taste wise like. One of my favorite beverages is campari and soda or campari on ice. So I also.
Speaker 3:I also really like malort and and it's like I love the bitterness Okay, and so West Coast kind of brushes on that for me and Hazy's just don't do it. So, but there's no doubt with what you're saying is like for me IPA is. It doesn't fulfill me to be creative with an IPA very much, unless it's maybe got some fruit added to it or something, or if you're going a weird direction. For me it's very much a utility beer. I almost find that I can be more creative as a brewer with lager because it's nuanced and that's a little more attractive to me Like hazy IPA. It's just like how many hops can you fit in there and then wait until the hop burn's gone and then it's like a good enough beer.
Speaker 2:I love what you're saying, though when is in lager? Where do you find the creative piece?
Speaker 3:I think, just in the subtlety of the malt bill, just like little brush strokes of specialty malts, fooling around with different lager strains and fermentation temperatures and even fooling around with carbonation Okay, um, even even fooling around with carbonation, okay, um. I just find that more again, more fulfilling or more fascinating to like. It's like creativity and subtlety, rather than and that and that's just with lager. But, um sure, rather than just like seeing, like being extreme and seeing how much of something I can add to a beer.
Speaker 2:Do you? Do you find that subtlety is appreciated the same way that?
Speaker 3:excesses? Oh, I don't, I don't think so. Um, it's maybe more of a personal quest, but uh, I think that there's uh, funny enough, angry chairs got the beer called full circle, which is the the American light lager, which is the the American light lager, which is like always on point, I think, and those guys are are making it really well there. Um, but I, I think the market is kind of coming full circle. I don't know if people are appreciating the subtlety, but people are appreciating, uh, a quality product that they don't have to kind of think about when they're drinking. Okay, um, and that's that's kind of how I get fulfilled with beer is if I can have a great beer and not have to like think about it. If I'm sitting there like analyzing a beer for too long, it's probably because something's wrong with it or something so unique about it that I can't quite figure out. Um, but I don't know if the, the normal customer, if the, if the majority of people, are concerned about the subtlety. I'm not sure. Sure, that's a good question.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's. It's a thought too, because I mean, I'm the nerd that'll sit there and pick out. Is this a fear? Is this Topaz? Is this lemon dry, dry like what?
Speaker 1:is that.
Speaker 2:But I don't know that. I know I'm pretty much. I'm not the average beer consumer anymore yeah, of course not. I don't know if you've ever had this I mean I was at one point because it was I was, I was trendy, so when I started it was all belgians or all yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then now it's like I like beer yeah I want, I want what you're having, I want what you, yeah, what I, the brewer's drinking, and I want to know why that's an unfortunate thing that Belgian beers are not as sought after or as consumed as they used to be.
Speaker 2:That's another beer that has the levels of subtlety that I think people should seek out and find their favorite one, and there's so many but I'll tell you, in teaching beer classes and shopping for beer, they're not in anymore Like the stores that used to have feet and feet and feet of Belgian beer. Now, that's all fizzy, that's all seltzers.
Speaker 3:That's all.
Speaker 2:THC, cbd in the beverage category and the grocery store cooler Like craft beer, was getting its butt kicked for a while. It's taken back some space now, but it's frustrating because for every Orval or every Duval it goes away, it's like what's taking its place is nowhere near as confident. No, no.
Speaker 3:Those are two beers well, not Duval, but we've got Saison, dupont and Orval on the cooler and those are two beers we'll never not have in house. And and people we've got. We've had people come in. You were like I don't drink beer, whatever. And now we've got them drinking those beers. Okay, you know. So it's cool to like. Just like I was educated at a beer bar, I like to do the same thing for people.
Speaker 2:Now I think, I think I think we all were at one point, or you know, most craft beer people can point to this, this one spot, yeah, that that I mean. For me it was Oldsmar Taphouse and it was just like they took the time and they had the beer and you could just sit there with the publican and just, or the brewer and just go through.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's that beer experience, that touch point that sets it all in motion, I mean my wallet, and my life has never been the same. Yeah, but man, what a taste journey it's been.
Speaker 3:We had this little Tyler and I had this little beer triangle, kind of it was the World of Beer Table Palms, dunderbox, and then what is it called, mr Beverage? Um, what's it called? Uh, mr Beverage, not Mr Beverage.
Speaker 2:Oh, um.
Speaker 3:Over there on like 45th street or something.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Um, beer, beer, castle Beer. Yes, beverage castle, Beverage, castle, beverage castle. Yeah, yeah, and they had a great selection, man, the crazy, weird stuff that you'll never see on the shelf again. Yeah, you know, like they had, they had belgian mustard beers and stuff like that, which, like most people, even even craft brewers that I talked to, have no idea what a belgian mustard beer is, or a belgian holiday ale, and and it's because, where do you find it?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, do you remember? Uh, there was so much like the the fritz bean yes, absolutely of those old school beers that you got and then we're like and sometimes it failed because there was oh, um. Now I'm going back. It was the brewery sprecker, uh mbege, where they made a banana sorghum beer for people. Okay, drink yeah regular and it was remarkably terrible.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like it was it was supposed to be. Because you're not supposed to, it doesn't have any. It was all millet and sorghum there was no barley.
Speaker 3:Oh man, a gluten free ale. Yeah, wow, yeah, back before. I don't know if I ever had that one, it was you couldn't pay people to take it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was so awful, but they tried something and they did it. No, no, dig on sprecker yeah but it was one of those things that you had it and it's like, okay, this is, we only go up from here yeah, this is something.
Speaker 3:Maybe you can help me recall this one. There was um, and we used to they. They had a case that probably stayed on the shelf at beverage castle for years, but it was, uh, a belgian imperial stout, a brett beer with blueberries added to it. Do you recall this?
Speaker 2:Was it Streusel that did that.
Speaker 3:It probably was. It could have been a Streusel label the way it looked. I remember how it looked, oh man, like paper label kind of peeling off. But yeah, I've been trying to. I Googled it for an hour the other day and couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 2:That's. I mean, that sounds like that kind of beer, I know.
Speaker 3:DuPont made a stout, but nothing with Brett, nothing to that level. Yeah, it wasn't good, but it was creative and like nobody else was doing that and probably has done it since you know, Well, back then.
Speaker 2:I mean mean brett beers. We don't see hardly any brett beers unfortunately.
Speaker 3:Well, orval is the closest thing, probably, to any commercial level I mean, and the ones that do come over from belgium or I mean, who's gonna?
Speaker 2:who's gonna bring it in, because most people don't know what it is anymore. Well, we've gone down a rabbit hole. I do want to talk about the, the taproom experience here, though, and what do you? What do you want to be known for? What do you, what do you hope to bring, what do you hope people take out of this space?
Speaker 3:I think that level of of comfortability, man, I think I want to. I want to see people come in and then say, hey, uh, I'll see you tomorrow, okay. Or like this is my first time in, it was great, I'll be back. I promise I'll be back, like that's. That's awesome when people do that and then you see them again. I mean we've got people that will close the bar on a friday night and then they're here for coffee and breakfast eight hours later on saturday. That's really cool. That's that's that community vibe that we wanted. And being from tamp Tampa and being able to do that in downtown and seeing how the community is growing downtown, where it's like people didn't used to live downtown, you know it's kind of a dead zone. That's all changing. Downtown Tampa is turning into a neighborhood.
Speaker 2:That's fascinating, because most downtowns board up at five o'clock on friday, yeah, and so people are living here and enough enough that you, you guys, brought this place here and it feels comfortable. Like you can, you're filling it on weekends. Yeah, filling it on sundays it's nice man awesome, awesome, um, so now, now one question. I've had you guys have done a ton of collaborations, yeah, do you have like? Do you have a lineup, a line of people?
Speaker 3:no, but that's that's another thing. Um, that I was thinking about before. This podcast actually is, uh, what we might talk about, and that's something I'm super excited about, because we owe a lot of people return collabs and I can't wait to get them in here and and host those people as well, as well as we've been hosted, you know, over the years. Um, I don't have a list of people set up right now. It's probably quite long. Yeah, we, you know, probably we're talking 30 breweries that we want to. We want to see again, we want to see their faces again and make something cool with them. Um, and then and then new people.
Speaker 3:There's so many good new brewers out that in florida and the southeast and really everywhere, that are like inspiring me to be more creative and and making beers.
Speaker 3:I've never really thought about making um, but yeah, that's, that's always been a very thing and that goes back to like the community of beer that I wanna see invigorated. I think craft beer is kind of in this weird rocky realm right now that people aren't sure what the direction is or or really how to choose a direction. Maybe I'm not, I'm not quite sure how to put it, but it feels a little unstable. Um, so I want to I don't know kind of like what we were just talking about Like let's get back to the beer, let's get back to the community of of beer and and find places you can learn about and be comfortable and and get an education for beer like across the bar and let's, and I think, like we were talking about those touch points, that we all had that kind of set us off, like on creative binges, where we want to go see what else is out there.
Speaker 2:I think maybe that I think that's one of the things that might be lacking for this upcoming generation of drinkers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's definitely odd. You know a lot of the younger people. They come in they want a light lager or they're drinking the seltzer selection that we have. So we've got some seltzers on tap. We've got Anger Chair Seltzer. We've got our own Cucumber Gimlet Seltzer that used at seltzer. That used to be a sour ale that we're, that we used to make. So now we're making it as a seltzer, kind of to broaden that opportunity to feed people, um, who might not like beer.
Speaker 2:But it's a different generation of kids, man do you feel like you've got your tap list filled out for all the different types of drinkers?
Speaker 3:oh no, I don't know if that's possible that's fair.
Speaker 2:Well, when the brown ale crowd comes yeah, yeah, right when we find them yeah, we've.
Speaker 3:We do definitely a lot of classic styles. Um, like I said, we've got the coles, the gyre irish, uh, the the robust porter. What else do we have? I mean that we've got four IPAs on tap right now too. So I love classic styles. So, man, english beers, especially, like we want to bring back. We used to make a beer called Cass Street Pub Ale before we even moved to Cass Street, because we had the building. But the building took two and a half years to build out. So we kind of wanted it to be a core beer of sorts, and we haven't really had the opportunity to brew it yet. Okay so, but yeah, just an old school English style bitter. Okay, we'll see how many people drink it. Maybe we brew it one time and that's it. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Or maybe it becomes a perennial favorite. Yeah, yeah, Okay. What made you guys decide in this home? What made you decide to have food here?
Speaker 3:Again, with that changing market for craft beer, I think that you have to provide non-beer drinkers a reason to come and sit Okay, and stay, sit okay and and stay. I think that breweries that don't offer food, um, they see a little bit more of a challenge. Okay to to bring customers who don't care about beer. You know it's. It's kind of maybe, maybe in a group of friends you've got a buddy who loves craft beer and he's dragging all his friends to a brewery and then they're all like all right, where are we going to next? But if you can have a list of products that satisfies everybody, including food, then they're going to stay for a few hours, maybe they're going to stay all night, okay, so and then how did you go about choosing?
Speaker 2:how did you choose this food partner and decide on burgers?
Speaker 3:This goes back to the Poor House days. We were friends. Nate Harden is the chef here. He was regular at Poor House. We made friends with him back in the day. We've always just talked about doing something together, bounce ideas off of each other, doing pop-ups together. At the time he was the chef at Stielbach, which is a nice spot kind of over on Armature Works Okay, I don't know if you would call it a steakhouse, I guess American cuisine Okay, super good though. So his qualities have—he's proved himself as a as a chef in tampa for a long time and he's very easy to work with. He's cool, he's our age, um, you know, he's inspiring himself with with everything that he does, so it's just a really easy fit. Okay, and he's not a lot of a lot of chefs you find or have a little ego to him and Nate is not that way, which is awesome. And he's a great manager. He manages the kitchen very well.
Speaker 3:Burgers, to be straight up, I wasn't pumped about burgers. Originally. He wanted to do like a Tex-Mex thing. Ok, and honestly that was selfish of me. But I was like, yeah, let's, let's make like the best corn tortillas ofex thing. Okay, and honestly that that was selfish of me. But I was like, yeah, let's, let's make like the best corn tortillas of all time, right, um, but and? And I wanted um out past door tacos. That was like. I was like pumped about that. But then he, he switched up the, the food, the menu and everything and we sublet the space to them. It's not up to me, and the burgers are are a hit and you know I'll eat my words on saying that southwest would have been better because the burgers are a hit. I, I do truly think they make the best smash burgers in town and it's kind of unquestionable, undeniable.
Speaker 2:Do you see a partnership there? In terms of business, obviously, but in terms of food?
Speaker 3:and beer.
Speaker 2:Do you see potential there? Do you guys have anything on the books yet?
Speaker 3:We don't have anything on the books right now. I don't know if we were to do something in the future, I don't know if it would have the same dynamic where he's leasing the space. If anything, we might partner with him on something, so it doesn't have this lease or leasee type relationship. But yeah, I'd love to work with him on another project. I know he's very ambitious. He's already got well, even before. Here. He's got a catering company called Gather and they facilitate great private parties and stuff like that. So he's constantly doing that along with Mighty Fine, and I think he's branching out on another project which I don't know all the details on, kind of in the gasworks area. I'm pretty sure I don't know if it's all set in stone. But you know, like I said, he's ambitious and that's, it's cool, it's inspiring to me and, um, it's it's awesome to be surrounded by people who I can look up to and and kind of be challenged by and want to make myself better because of that's awesome.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Well, jordan, I want to. I want to be respectful of your time, but I like to do. It's a nice way to wind down. I like to end each interview with six rapid fire questions. Okay, all right, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. So the first question is what is your current favorite beer?
Speaker 3:of all time. Oh, that's not rapid fire, or of all okay, well, you can, you can take, you can take time if you need to uh.
Speaker 2:Next, if you could only brew one style, what would it be? And obviously you're going to be drinking this style.
Speaker 3:Session West Coast IPA Okay.
Speaker 2:What's the last beer you had that changed your mind?
Speaker 3:Goodness, I don't know. That's a, that's a.
Speaker 2:So the example I always give, the example I always give is Duchess de Bourgogne for me. Where it was, it was dark, it was vinegary, it was sour. I never I didn't like sours until that beer. And then that beer really changed my mind about sours because it presented them in a way that I had never been challenged with before.
Speaker 3:Damn. Hmm, I don't know if I have an answer to that. Okay, I'll keep thinking about it, though, okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, next, when it comes to beer, what do you wish? You really understood?
Speaker 3:Yeast more than I do.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's a popular one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's like.
Speaker 2:Yeast and customers are probably the top two on that one.
Speaker 3:Customers. You'll never understand customers. That's too big of a challenge. Yeast though I think I've only worked at a couple breweries. I've worked there, worked at them for a long time but I think you really need to handle a lot of different yeasts to have a really good grasp on it. I've handled a handful of yeast, but you know there's a hundred different yeast strains that I haven't tried.
Speaker 2:Okay, next, what's one thing you wish everyone knew about your brewery?
Speaker 3:That we're open and ready to serve.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then, uh, finally, what is the greatest lesson you've learned in beer?
Speaker 3:To not try to make every beer perfect, that some beer is just meant for utility and even if I don't think that it's perfect, it might be somebody else's favorite beer. Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's awesome. That's a great way to end. Thank you very much again, jordan, for taking the time and talking with me. It's been really great.
Speaker 3:Thanks, mark, I appreciate it, cheers.
Speaker 1:That was my conversation with Jordan Kofor of Late Start Brewing. My thanks to Jordan Tyler and the Late Start crew for their conversation and their hospitality. My thanks also go out to this episode's sponsor, copper Tail Brewing Company, located just outside Ybor City, across from Ikea. Stop in for a Florida-inspired ale or lager today and enjoy Copper Tail Brewing's beers wherever fine ales and lagers are sold. Are there any guests you'd like to hear on the show? Reach out. I'm on social media at flbeernews or mark at floridabeernewscom, and let me know what's going on in your world beer-wise. Please remember to like, subscribe and follow beer-wise on your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss an episode. Also, please remember to review the show on your favorite platform. Thank you. In hopes of making some exciting updates and changes, check out patreoncom slash floridabeernews spelled out for information on how you and your business can help fuel our growth and receive some cool rewards. That's all for now, until next time when I'll be back to talk about what's going on in the world beer wise. Cheers, thank you.
