There’s one thing for a statewide restaurant concept to support local beers and have them on tap. It’s far better when they have their own house beers that are brewed by one of those local brewery partners.
One of our favorite pizza chains, Oak & Stone, is awesome enough to have not one, but two house brews now. We had mentioned Snowbird Pilsner in a previous article.
Now here we go again with another one, Wicked Paradise (Hazy IPA, 6.5% ABV, 30 IBU) from Palm City Brewing.
It was a contest to figure out the name of this Hazy IPA that reflected Oak & Stone’s home base of Sarasota, and Wicked Paradise was the winner. It comes from combining the paradise reflecting the tropical nature of the Gulf Coast and wicked hearkening back to the rather transient nature of the aforementioned snowbirds who apparently come from Boston.
Regardless, the beer is pretty solid. I expect nothing less from Palm City, they are a fantastically workable brewery that makes well crafted beers, no matter what variety they’re doing.
Medium in hue, posessed with a carry-on of good tropical notes of papaya, orange, and lemon. The flavor is maybe a touch better, just a little bit of citrus in there, but most of the hops went towards bringing a nice fruitiness to the beer.
A lot of mango, white grape, orange and tangerine, with a touch of grapefruit. Malt is light, bitterness is controlled, and it’s a very easy to drink beer for the warmth of the winter months that those snowbirds are trying so desperately to avoid.
This leads one to wonder when the next exclusive beer is going to go on tap at Oak and Stone. Honestly, it seems like a perfectly doable plan for them. I feel they’ve got enough taps to where they can probably have four or five exclusive ones, or maybe even a couple tabs devoted to seasonal rotating exclusive beers from whomever is around their locations.
I’m not sure myself, but maybe I’ll go in the summer when I don’t have so many snowbirds to deal with.
Drink Florida Craft,
Dave
@floridabeerblog
[email protected]
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