Miami's FIRST Craft Beer Market | Miami, Florida

This is probably one of the best hours I've had. Hi guys, David Hoffman here from David's Been Here. Today I'm headed to Miami's first craft beer market. It's located in Wynwood and it's called Box Elder. They have over 20 beers on tap, Miami beers, Florida beers, U.S. beers and international beers and we're going to meet with Adam, the owner. We're going to try some beers, we're going to talk to him about his idea, the concept behind the craft beer market and how they got established. Let's go to Wynwood. Here it is, Box Elder. How are you doing? I thought you were a little late. How are you? That's alright. Yeah, yeah, I'm rocking this shirt obviously. Oh man. How's everything? Good, good. How are you? This is a computer machine. It's from Aslan. This is an IPA? IPA, yeah, for sure. What's the alcohol percentage on this? 6.7 is called computer machine? They are in Virginia. Virginia? Very nice. It's good, right? Yeah. I'm Adam Darnell. Box Elder is a craft beer market. We're a bar and bottle shop. My wife and I have traveled around going to various bars, bottle shops, whatnot, and found kind of a lack of the two of them being combined. There's definitely some obstacles in doing that. We decided we wanted to do that. At the time, that was about two and a half years ago, Miami was still kind of in its infancy as far as brewing. Wynwood Brewing had just opened, MIA Brewing Company and Jay Wakefield, and we opened just shortly after those guys and it was kind of, it was a nice time, it made sense to do it in Miami. My wife's from Miami. A lot more breweries opened, which is great, kind of getting the knowledge out there that craft beer is a thing to be appreciated and enjoyed. And we don't have dedicated lines, so we don't have anything that is the same beer all the time. So you come in two days later, the beer you just had might not be on. And we have 20 different taps, beers from throughout the country and internationally as well. Definitely try to focus on some local stuff as well. We have three other taps that are non-alcoholics. We have a local kombucha on draft, cold brewed coffee and cold brewed tea, and then we do have a bottle selection. We have just over 500 bottles. We're really happy with the selection we have. It's some tougher to find beers. So yeah, we're really tickled with the bottle selection. And bottles are available, you know, you can drink them here or they're heavily discounted to-go. Try to, on to-go prices, try to compete with places like Total Wine as much as we can. A very narrow focus on our bottle selection, but we are happy with it and I think a lot of people are. One that stands out in my mind is Grimm Artisan Ales. They're up in Brooklyn. It's a husband and wife team. We love their stuff, so when it comes down, I get all of it that I can. I think it's kind of catching on down here. They don't stay on the shelves as long as they used to. Another one would be American Solera. They just opened there in Oklahoma and it's kind of highly sought after and hard to get. So we get that stuff like a case at a time, but we're always really tickled when we can get that kind of stuff in. Yeah, we try to have a selection of, you know, first of all, local, national, international. We try to cover all that. Within that, we try to keep certain styles on tap. So definitely Pilsner, IPAs, we usually have a few IPAs on three to four. Stouts, we'll have a couple Stouts on. We really like Sours. I personally really like Sours, so we do put a lot of Sour beer on. I think at any given time, we'll have four or five Sours on. We're on Northwest 2nd Avenue, just between 28th and 29th Street. Kind of the epicenter, I guess, would be like around Panther Coffee is down on 24th, 25th. So we're a few blocks north of that, parking out back. So let's go have a few flights. So here we have our flight. Six beers, all different beers. Start with the lightest. This is Computer Machine, again, from Aslan Brewing. Cheers. Yeah. Oh, it's nice. I had a whole pint of this already. Yeah, this is great. We love this. I'm one of these guys, really happy to get this stuff in. I like that it's not too hoppy. No, it's not. It's nice. It doesn't have that bite that some of them get. Yeah. It's really nice. So this is Arctic Saison. Saison with retinamice. Yeah, exactly. Retinamice. You can even smell the barnyard-ness from that. Oh, yeah. So that's got that super dry finish, almost like a really soft, dry white wine or something. Yeah, I feel like this could be like a French beer. Yeah, this is one of our favorites, for sure. This is one of my personal favorites. Yeah, this is really good. I mean, this is another beer you can drink. You know, drink a few of them. For sure. All right, this one is Digital Camo. This is a New England-style double IPA from Civil Society. Again, one of our favorites in Florida. They're up in Jupiter. Cheers. Again, it's not too hoppy, but you feel the thickness, you know? Yeah, definitely. And it looks like juices. Again, this is a double IPA, so I think it's 8.6%. So you might not want to drink them all day long, but good. Me too. It tastes good enough. For sure. Yeah. Cheers. All right, number four is... Number four is the Cherry Sourette from Crooked Stave. So this is the first sour that we're getting into here. Again, aged on cherries, and it's a wild ale, so it's a proper sour. It's been barrel-aged. The yeast that's in the barrels inoculates the beer. Cherries go in with that. Yeah, so it's not like a treatment or whatever, which is pretty popular to do as well. It's actually fermented with the fruit, so a lot of the sugars and stuff get fermented out. Sorry, I beat you to it. Nah, it's all right. Cheers. Since it is fall, and it was just cold, yeah, this is the Pumpkin Smash. Pumpkin Smash. It is Halloween coming up. Yeah, this is a sour, barrel-aged pumpkin beer, single malt, single hop. Dude, that's amazing. So you definitely get that, like... You get the whole mix. Pumpkin. Yeah, it's all of it. It's sour. A little bit of cinnamon-y, like whatever, and then the finish of sour. I think you can taste the barrel here too, right? Yeah, for sure. You definitely get some oakiness. But this is probably one of the best sours I've had. I have to say, well, this is like, yeah, these guys are that good that this is. Number six. Number six, this is Boris the Crusher. This is the Imperial Oatmeal Stout. And they call it Boris because Boris is very Russian. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, right? I mean, Imperial Stout comes from Russia, right? Yeah, yeah. It's a Russian thing. It's got that roastiness on the nose. Oh, dude. I'd kill for this in a frozen day. Yeah, yeah. Super smooth, super velvety. Definitely get chocolate notes, a little bit of coffee notes. So you'll see this here periodically, yeah, once a month or so. I'm coming here once a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, for me, for sure, that was probably number one. But the one we just had. The Pumpkin Smash. That's good, yeah. That was number two. So like, if you guys come here to Miami and you come to Wynwood, for sure come here before going to any of the breweries so you can try a few of the different flavors. But we do have a good selection. We have a wide variety, so you can get a little bit of everything. So what's next? What's next? Oh, man, I don't know. So here we have the Sizer half cider, half mead, which is honey wine. And where does this come from? From Green Bench up in St. Pete. Another Florida favorite of ours. Let's see what you think. Looks fantastic. Honey on the back end. It has it both. It starts off as cider, finishes as mead. So if you don't know what cider is, that's basically apples that have been converted into like an apple wine in a way. No, it's a sparkling alcoholic drink. You know, it's fermented apples, basically. Fermented apple juice. You're definitely sizing me down. This is a beer from Stone Brewing. They do it once a year. It's winter spice mocha style. They put a bunch of stuff in there. This is Tina. She's the manager. Oh, hi. We're having the Pinchy Cheek on nitro. This is a bourbon barrel pumpkin ale on nitro. Wow. I can taste the bourbon for sure right there. Oh, man. How about the pumpkin? Yeah. I mean, it's all around smooth. Very creamy. So tonight is September 27th. And today drops season two of Stranger Things. And they have... The Demi Gorgon from Six Point Brewing Company. It's a double box. So it's a German style dark lager kind of beer. Cheers. Almost feels like a porter. No? No, I see what you're saying. Yeah, it does have that kind of... That body feel. Yeah, exactly. This is fire. Yeah, it's Friday. Every Friday at 4 o'clock, anybody at the bar gets a can of beer and a shotgun for free. We all go out back. We all shotgun a beer to kick off happy hour. Every single Friday. That's what we're doing right now. So, we're getting ready. Yeah, we're almost there. We're almost there. It's Box Elder, Wyoming. Fitted hats. What? Look. This one. Yeah, that one's awesome. Adam's saying that this one looks the best. This one's the best one because you can see it from very far away. Two minutes. Anybody who wants a shotgun? We're at Shotgunning at Six Point College. So, every Friday at 4pm, whoever's here gets a shotgun of a beer. Ready? Open this up. Chug. Three, two, one. Cheers. I believe that. So, Box Elder. First craft beer market in Miami. Twenty beers on tap. You have a few other things on tap, but you have so many other things bottled. Over 500 bottles, yeah. We got a very wide selection of stuff. Hey, love everything, man. Appreciate it, man. Thanks so much. Good to hang out. For sure. Nice to meet you. So, that's it. We visited the only craft beer market in Miami, Box Elder. Every beer is amazing. If you haven't tried beers, if you don't know about the new craft beer industry, you have to come here when you're in Miami. It's so different. You can try everything from Sours to Pilsners, Imperial Stouts. They have a big mix. They also have a lot of Barrel Age beers, which is something I love. Adam is amazing. The owner. I got myself the Demi Gorgon, which is the beer for Stranger Things. Demi Gorgon, obviously. Yeah, we're going home. Hey, Adam. Thank you so much. Love you. Peace.