NEWS

From theledger.com

LAKELAND | Lakeland has all manner of celebrations built around libations - from margaritas to martinis. Now suds are to get their due.

The city's first craft beer festival, called "The Brewz Crewz," is scheduled for Feb. 20 in Munn Park. The event is a fundraiser for Downtown Lakeland Partnership, a nonprofit organization that markets and promotes the city's amenities and its merchants.

Given the growing interest in craft, or artisanal, beers, and the proliferation of beer festivals in nearby Tampa, St. Petersburg and Orlando, organizers of Lakeland's event don't want to be left out.

"We want to do it right. We're planning for it to be an annual event, something for people all over Polk and neighboring counties to come to and enjoy," said Julie Townsend, executive director of the downtown partnership.

There are plenty of craft-like beers on the market, like Blue Moon, a Belgian-inspired light wheat ale flavored with orange and coriander. It's made by MillerCoors, a brewing giant.

A true craft beer, according to the Brewers Association, is made by a small, independent brewery with annual production of less than 2 million barrels, half of which must be an all-malt product.

Brewers of craft beer have been battling for shelf space in retail markets where brands made by Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors have dominated for years. But the smaller guys are gaining ground to keep up with the demand for more creative and flavorful beers.

The lexicon of epicures today is rife with beer styles like India pale ale, imperial stout, lambic and dunkelweiss, terms that have been around for centuries throughout much of Europe. American craft brewers are building on these classics, often creating beverages with extreme flavors and doubling or tripling the amounts of hops and malted grains called for in normal recipes.

These are the beers that festival organizers hope to profile in February, along with foods cooked up by area restaurants where craft beers are sold.

Eric Belvin, a partner in a seven-store chain called Linksters Tap Room, which has locations in Lakeland and Davenport, carries several craft beers in draft form, including Abita Purple Haze from Louisiana and Shipyard IPA out of Maine. Belvin, a member of the downtown partnership's board of directors, said his Polk customers are slowly warming up to craft beer. "I guess one of the reasons for bringing this craft festival to Lakeland is to try to educate people in Polk County that there's more than Budweiser and Miller Lite," he said. "Just like there are different levels of wine. They all taste different."

Jimmy Mela, an owner of Vintage Wine Cellars in Lakeland and Tampa, helps organize one of Tampa's largest beer festivals, WaZoo, which raised more than $100,000 for Lowry Park Zoo each of the last four years. He sees growing demand in Lakeland for fancier beer, and has high hopes for a successful February festival, albeit on a much smaller scale than WaZoo, which started out 14 years ago with 60 kinds of beer and 600 attendees.

This year's WaZoo, held Aug. 1, drew 70 breweries, 250 varieties of beer and roughly 4,000 customers, Mela said. Advance tickets were $50 and included food samples. Tapped to help plan and promote Lakeland's event, Mela envisions many of the world's better-known brewers to be on hand, names like Boston Beer Company, makers of Samuel Adams; Widmer Brothers Brewing Company out of Oregon; even brewers from Belgium. Also expected are a slew of local brewers whose wares can be found in stores throughout Central Florida, names like Cigar City Brewing Company, Saint Somewhere Brewing and Dunedin Brewery.

"We're just riding the wave of these expanding beer (brands) right now," Mela said. "It's going to take some promotion with the breweries, telling them what we're trying to do so hopefully we'll attract the kind of breweries we want."