The

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

is home to over 250

breweries A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of bee ...

. The state's first brewery, Florida Brewing Company, opened in 1896. The industry was dominated by mid-sized regional breweries until the 1950s, when national macrobreweries came to the fore, and built their own facilities in the state. Since the 1980s, and especially since legal changes in 2001, Florida has become home to many

brewpub Craft beer is a beer that has been made by craft breweries. They produce smaller amounts of beer, typically less than large breweries, and are often independently owned. Such breweries are generally perceived and marketed as having an emphasis o ...

restaurants and

craft breweries A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale prod ...

Background

Laws and definitions

Florida state licensing provides for two types of breweries:

s, or restaurants that produce limited quantities of beer primarily for sale on premises, and production breweries that distribute beer offsite. By state law, Florida production breweries may have on-site taprooms, and some brewpubs also distribute offsite. A three-tiered distribution system governs offsite sales: breweries must sell their beer to a

distributor A distributor is an enclosed rotating switch used in spark-ignition internal combustion engines that have mechanically timed ignition. The distributor's main function is to route high voltage current from the ignition coil to the spark plugs ...

who then sells it to retailers. The

Brewers Association The Brewers Association (BA) is an American trade group of over 5,400 brewers, breweries in planning, suppliers, distributors, craft beer retailers, and individuals particularly concerned with the promotion of craft beer and homebrewing. Two of ...

defines several categories of breweries, all of which are present in Florida.

Craft breweries A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale prod ...

are independently-owned breweries producing under 6 million barrels a year using traditional processes; most of these are

microbreweries Craft beer is a beer that has been made by craft breweries. They produce smaller amounts of beer, typically less than large breweries, and are often independently owned. Such breweries are generally perceived and marketed as having an emphasis o ...

producing under 15,000 barrels a year. Regional breweries produce between 15,000 and 6 million barrels a year. Macrobreweries, also called megabreweries, produce over 6 million barrels a year.

History

The earliest brewery in Florida was

Tampa Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough County ...

's Florida Brewing Company, a regional brewery founded in 1896. Another regional brewery,

Jax Brewing Company Jax Brewing Company, originally Jacksonville Brewing Company, was a regional brewery in Jacksonville, Florida operating from 1913 to 1956. It was the second brewery to open in the state, after Florida Brewing Company in Tampa in 1896. Histo ...

, opened in 1913 in

Jacksonville Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...

. Both shifted to other products during

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...

, and recommenced brewing when it ended. Several additional regional breweries opened in Florida after Prohibition. From the 1950s, Florida's regional breweries suffered from competition with large-scale national breweries, and all ultimately closed. National companies built their own breweries in the state:

Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company The Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company was an American brewery based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and once the largest producer of beer in the United States. Its namesake beer, Schlitz (), was known as "The beer that made Milwaukee famous" and was adve ...

built a brewery in 1958 in Tampa, now owned by D. G. Yuengling & Son, while

Anheuser-Busch Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC is an American brewing company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Since 2008, it has been wholly owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (AB InBev), now the world's largest brewing company, which owns multiple glo ...

built breweries at

Busch Gardens Tampa Busch Gardens Tampa Bay is a animal theme park located in Tampa, Florida, United States, with the entire park landscaped and designed around themes of Africa and Asia. Owned and operated by SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, the park opened on Ju ...

in 1959 (now closed) and in Jacksonville in 1969. Brewpubs emerged in Florida during the microbrewery boom of the 1980s and '90s, but growth remained limited by state laws banning non-standard container sizes popular among

. Governor

Jeb Bush John Ellis "Jeb" Bush (born February 11, 1953) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. Bush, who grew up in Houston, was the second son of former President George H. W. Bush a ...

signed legislation reducing these restrictions in 2001, and from about 2005 the state saw substantial growth in brewpubs and craft production breweries. According to the

, there are 151 craft breweries in Florida , 11th most in the United States, but 43rd per capita; these breweries produce 1,207,936 barrels a year and have an annual economic impact of over $2 million.

Breweries

Closed breweries

Notes

References

* * * * {{Lists of United States breweries Brewing companies

Breweries A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of bee ...