THE FIRST BREWERY IN WESTCHESTER | Miami, Florida

I'm a huge beer fan. Hey everyone, David Hoffman here from davidsbeenhere.com. I'm here in my hometown of Miami, and today I'm headed to Lincoln's Beard Brewery. It's located on Burr Road and 73rd Avenue. If you guys know about the craft beer scene in South Florida or in Miami, it's exploding. This is one of over a dozen breweries in the area. You know me, I love craft beer, I can't get enough of it. I love going to new breweries all the time. I've never been here, so I'm excited. And what Scott and John, the owners, did is they dedicated their brewery to President Abraham Lincoln, so Lincoln's Beard obviously is the name, and they have pennies all over the place inside. I've heard so many good things about their browns, their IPA, and their ales. And John Falco, the brewmaster and co-founder, he's gonna give me a tour of the brewery, and then after I'm gonna interview my friend Donna Irene, the Sunny Traveler, for my Travel Talk series. So let's go over there and try some beer. Hey guys, I am Donna, I am the Sunny Traveler, and I'm excited to talk to you about my travels today. We're here in Lincoln's Beard Brewery, we're gonna have a beer, we're gonna get a tour, let's go. So excited. This is John Falco, brewmaster and co-founder, and he's gonna give us a tour of the brewery today. Now John, tell me a little bit about your brewery. So the brewery here, about 4,000 square foot or so, it's a very big tavern, we're in a very tiny brewery, as you can see behind me there. Seven barrel system, we oversize brew about eight barrels, what does that mean? It's about 2,000 pints of your favorite brewski that you have here. So this place here, we opened a little over a year ago, May 18th, last year, I don't know, people seem to dig it, we're in Westchester, way out west, which is pretty awesome. Only brew out here for now, yeah, where I'm from, so, old Westchester boy, so. Beers, beers, so we have a couple different staples that we try to keep on, but people drink them too fast, it's Lincoln's Best, which is sparkling ale, old classic vintage recipe, Avenged Me, which is our Irish red, and then we have P. Swayze, which is our most popular beer, and that is our IPA. All right, you know what, let me try that IPA. Yeah, man. All right. So this is Happy Birthday Swayze, this was a little tweak we did on our standard Swayze, but we changed the mouth a little bit, but same house as our original. So it's called Happy Birthday? This one's called Happy Birthday Swayze, we have a series of beers, we call them Happy Birthday beers. Okay. And since Pat Swayze's birthday is August 18th, we decided to whip one up for him. Okay, because I saw P. Swayze and I was like, what is it, okay, perfect, awesome. Oh man, I love it. I'm all about IPA, so I'm like, keep drinking them. Donna, you joining us? Yeah, I'm here. Sorry. I'm a huge beer fan. I'm sorry. So good. We got three seven barrel fermenters, here, boom, boom, boom, right here, that's the only fermentation capacity we have today. We have three 15 barrel fermenters, and a little two barrel, just to mess around with some different projects. So that's essentially gonna triple, more than triple our current production capacity, which will make sure, one, that our stables are on, and two, it gives us the opportunity to brew some crazy stuff, and get back into the Belgians, and stuff like that, it takes a little longer, some lodgers and whatnot. It's an experiment. Yeah, absolutely. So they brew over here, they ferment here. Yep, and then we push right into here, nice chilly 38 degrees, where we have five serving tanks, generally anywhere from about four to about eight of our beers on tap, eight is very rare, four is much more likely. But once we get that, we'll be able to keep some of those cores on, so we get to flex a little bit. Hey, Chet. So John's gonna pour us a flight, for the interview. So this is Lincoln's Best. That's our sparkling ale, we carve it pretty hot. This is Happy Birthday Swayze, which we talked about earlier. This is a tweak on our standard IPA, which is P. Swayze. This is Avenging, which is our house outers for red. This is Chet, our triple. This is Donna's drink right now. Yeah. Carved that pretty well too. Is that good though? Yeah, it's perfect. Thank you so much. Thanks. We will. Thank you. Good? All right. Very easy. All right, it's gonna be a joke, I mean, we're just gonna talk. Where's your beer? Where's your other beer? I guess I'm trying to, oh, I drank it really quick. You drank it? Yeah, yeah. See, I drink too fast. I'm like, sometimes with brewers I'm like, I run into my beer, they're like, no, no, you gotta wait, I'm like, oh my God, no. All right guys, so I'm getting a growler. So how much is in a growler? 64 ounces? 64 ounces, yes sir. All right, and then that's way more affordable. You can only take it home. Yes sir. You can't drink it here, you gotta take it home and share it with your friends. Oh man. All right. What would you like? Let me see. I think I'm going with the Belgian, the triple Belgian. All right. You got it, coming right up, bro. Back here with John Falco, brewmaster. And John, sorry about last time. Oh, no worries, man, no worries. I'm always here, so you can catch me here all the time. Awesome. So we're having a flight. Yeah. And these are all your beers. Yes, yes. These are the five we're going to tap now, have on tap now. You know, we just, I don't know if just today, we set up three 15 barrel fermenters, which is going to triple our capacity. And hopefully take this from about five to about 10 to 12. Well, we're always going to feature some guest taps, you know, because we, you know, it's all about the community here. So, but this is what we got today, man. Right here we have Lincoln's Best. So that is a very traditional, like turn of the century. It's Lincoln's Best sparkling ale. So everybody was drinking at the turn of the century. Yeah, exactly. Basically, probably not this well crafted and not pat ourselves on the back, but we have a lot of technology now that they didn't have back then. Second, we have a Vegemite, which is our Irish red, traditional Irish red, a little bit of caramel, a little bit of toast, a little bit of roastiness. So really, really nice. One of our best sellers here. Third up here, we have Chet. So what Chet is, is a Belgian style triple. So on the higher end, it's close to 8%. You're gonna get a little bit of spice, a little bit of banana extract. More closely related with like Belgian triples and it's more American style triples. I love it. It's really dry. Second to last, we have a special release, that's Candleman. So Candleman is Belgian pale ale. So it's a traditional pale ale, like malt. It's like a real complex, savory beer almost. Nice. Last but not least, that is Happy Birthday Swayze, which is a special release as well, once a year. We're here for Patrick Swayze's birthday on August 18th. And it's a twist on our house IPA. Our house IPA is Peace Swayze, which we don't have on. We brew that one. I mean, there's an art in making all these beers. It is, it is. It's different malts, different hops, different techniques. The color of your beer is determined by, in most part, by the malt selection. And there's thousands of different malts out there. Yeah, yeah, there's tons. There's tons, right? There's one. So very light. Very light. A little bit of, like a corny sweetness in the back. But it's crafty, so it's not a mineralite, it's not a Bud Light. No, no. That's like water. Yeah. This is like something different. Yeah, so we got the red here, man. A veg meat. I love this. So right off the bat, you get a little bit of toast in there, a little bit of caramel, and it finishes with like a dry roastiness. This feels like, if I go to like Germany or something, this is sort of what I would get. Chet, which is our Belgian triple. Chet. I think you might've had one of these before. I think I actually got a, a what's it called? A grounder. Ah, that's good. I could do Belgians all day. What makes Belgian beers is the yeast. Oh man, so we, next one we have, Canton of Man, right? Salmon on a cedar plank without the salmon. Okay. So first, I love salmon, by the way. I love salmon too. Okay, awesome. So let's take this over, you don't taste, there's no fish in this. So if you smell around the back, you're going to get some of the oak, and you're going to get that lemongrass kind of dill, like almost savory kind of spiciness on the nose. Nice fruity smell. Yeah, man. Grassy. Right. I like it. The last one we have here, is Happy Birthday Swayze. Really simple malt milk, where you dry hop this s***, or we hop this s***, and dry this s***. We have three of America's favorite hops. Citra, Mosaic, and Simcoe. Salute, man. Cheers, bro. Cheers, thank you. I'm in. So we're going to go outside and see the fermenting pans. Yeah, man. Where are they? How big are they? Let's do it. 15 barrels, baby. 15 barrels. Check them out. Look at that stuff, man. That's sick. Dude. That's sick. We got three 15 barrel fermenters, source them from standard kegs, which is local guys up and coming. Good buddy of mine. He's sourcing some local breweries in the area. Yeah, this will allow us to trip our capacity. So we got that going for us. Yeah, man. This is Taco Crew. They're Tacos and Tattoos. We're here six days a week, every day except for Monday, where we have Mr. PB&J pop up in the front. I'd say go with the Carnitas Cali Fries. Is that what they're having? Carnitas Cali Fries? Carnitas Palmo Nachos. Perfect. That's right there. This is their Carnitas Nachos. This little food truck behind it. It's pretty amazing. You have a brewery and then you have food behind. It's great. So it's not a brew pub, brewery. Remember. And you got pork, which is really good. My boy Nestor here from Puerto Rico. Yes. Havana. Nice to meet you. Hey, pleasure. This is how I end everything. Good? I gotta go though. Take care. All right, so that's Lincoln Beards Brewery. Sorry I switched this up. The thing is that he had to go and then we couldn't finish this. So big shout out to my girl, Donna. Donna Irene. She's gonna be my Travel Talk series. I filmed her here. Yeah, guys. I hope you enjoyed Lincoln Beard Brewery. John Falco is amazing. They're making some delicious beers. I'll see you on the road, okay? Let's go.