Due South’s beer heads due north
Boynton craft brewer’s products available next month in Philadelphia.
Florida is no longer big enough to contain the little brewery from Boynton Beach.
Due South Brewing, just three years old but already the best-selling craft beer brand in Palm Beach County, will become the first of the county’s seven breweries to distribute outside the state, its owner said Friday.
Beginning Sept. 1, three of its flagship beers — Caramel Cream Ale, Category 3 India Pale Ale and Category 5 imperial IPA — will be available in craft beer specialty stores in Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania, said Mike Halker, Due South’s co-owner and head brewer.
“Philly has a great beer culture and all of our beer has been well-received there,” said Halker, who is also president of the Florida Brewer’s Guild, which was instrumental in relaxing the regulations on these smaller, independent beer breweries.
Due South recently expanded its operation and wrestled with whether to expand to other Florida markets first, such as Tampa, or send its surplus to one of the biggest beer markets in the country, Pennsylvania, Halker said.
The expansion — it added tanks to allow it to ferment about 40 percent more beer — allowed Due South to more than meet demand in South Florida during high season.
But rather than expand to Tampa or Jacksonville and risk not being able to keep up with demand during Florida’s high season, it chose to expand to a market that would tolerate occasional dry periods in which most of the beer Due South brewed had to remain in Florida during the peak of tourist season.
“South Florida will get beer before anybody else,” Halker said. “If we run out of beer for Philly, they’re OK with that. If we run out of beer in Florida, people are going to show up with pitchforks.”
Florida now has a foothold in what fellow brewer Fran Andrewlevich, who owns Tequesta Brewing Co. and Twisted Trunk Brewing in Palm Beach Gardens, calls “one of the great beer cities in the country, if not the world.”
“It’s a testament to the great beer Due South is making,” Andrewlevich said. “It’s a nice feather in their cap to be represented in that beer market.”
Craft beer is big business and a growing trend in Florida.
Independent craft breweries brewed enough beer to fill killer whale Shamu’s tank 6½ times — 35 million gallons — with plenty to spare, last year alone. In 2012, the last year for which statistics are available, they contributed $875 million to Florida’s economy.
Since it opened in 2012, Due South has been a model for that growth. It brewed 1,200 barrels (about 39,000 gallons) its first year and nearly doubled production every year since, Halker said.
This year, it expects to produce about 9,000 barrels — almost 300,000 gallons of craft beer. And next year, it is planning a major expansion to reach nearly 25,000 barrels of beer (about 825,000 gallons).