Savage Lyfe Beer Co. is coming to Fort Lauderdale in 2023 — but you can try its stout now
Samuel Phanor’s new Fort Lauderdale brewery Savage Lyfe Beer Co. won’t open until next year, but for those who can’t wait, he’s introducing his newest beer with a party this weekend in Pompano Beach.
Dubbed “Sam’s Stout,” Phanor’s namesake recipe is a lightly carbonated, oak barrelaged imperial stout punched with notes of blackberries, black plums, dark chocolate and fresh espresso. Phanor, who brewed the complex stout in collaboration with Odd Breed Wild Ales in Pompano Beach, plans to release it at that brewery at 5 p.m. Saturday, with all proceeds heading to Kristi House, a Miami nonprofit fighting child abuse and child sex trafficking.
Bottles will cost $20 apiece, and only 100 bottles were produced, Phanor says. Separately, one 5-gallon keg of Sam’s Stout will be available on draft. While Phanor encourages drinkers to sample the stout right away, he says the recipe has wild yeast strains that will keep aging the beer the longer it remains in the bottle.
“These types of beers, the longer they mature in the bottle, the better it becomes,” Phanor says. “It just hits that pinnacle of full-bodied complexity.”
Phanor’s stout is one recipe of many that will distinguish Savage Lyfe, whose taproom will specialize in barrel-aged beers. The 37-year-old homebrewer is still scouting locations in Fort Lauderdale, planning to sign a lease once his current recipes — including another stout, doppelbock, barley wine and lager — have finished maturing in barrels.
For now, Savage Lyfe remains a nomad brewery, with Phanor and his homebrewing partner, Jim Walsh, temporarily using the beermaking tanks out of Hialeah’s Unbranded Brewing Co.
An Iraq War veteran and a retired Margate Police Department officer, Phanor cut his teeth in craft beer during the pandemic’s outset in 2020, when he created recipes with Walsh, eventually winning a homebrew competition at Fort Lauderdale’s Gulf Stream Brewing Co. But he fell in love with barrel-aging beers after attending Master Brewer Academy in Miami, taught by Odd Breed brewmaster Matt Manthe.
“There’s really no playbook in aging beer, “Phanor says, adding that the key ingredient in barrel-aging is time. “You can’t take shortcuts with it. Most brewers will coax the sweetness they want by adding lactose or sugars to the recipe, but we just let the wood dictate the flavor. You get subtle, wonderful flavors with it.”
Saturday’s fundraiser won’t be Phanor’s first turn at charity; his career, for years, has dovetailed with social and humanitarian causes. Phanor says he and his church visited Haiti in 2016 and raised more than $11,000 for an organization called WATERisLIFE, which transported drinking water to families. In 2021, he hosted beer releases at Yeasty Brews in Lauderhill and 3 Sons Brewing Co. in Dania Beach, rais
ing $3,000 for Kristi House, which operates drop-in centers and gives mentalhealth support for victims of child sex trafficking and other childhood traumas.
“I think I do it because I care about people who don’t have a voice,” says Phanor, who says he responded to his fair share of sex-trafficking calls as a Margate community service officer. “These humans are being taken advantage of and are being exploited, and it happens all around us.”
To brew Sam’s Stout, Phanor collaborated with Manthe, whose Odd Breed specializes in wild ales, so named for craft brews enhanced by adding active bacteria strains. The pair brewed Sam’s Stout in
June 2021, fermented with Norwegian farmhouse ale yeast, and then aged it in American oak barrels for another six months before it was bottled in December.
Now that it has aged in Odd Breed’s oak barrel, Sam’s Stout has, over time, morphed “into a completely different beer,” Manthe says.
“I really like the stout he gave me, and his recipe is great. A stout already has some roasty, nutty flavors, but what aging it did was accentuate the dark fruit notes.”
Savage Lyfe Beer Co.’s “Sam’s Stout” will be released during a party at 5 p.m. Saturday at Odd Breed Wild Ales, 50 NE First St., Pompano Beach. Bottles will be $20. Visit SavageLyfeBeerCo.com or call 754-220-6099.