South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Brewing up a buzz
How 3 Sons Brewing became South Florida’s hottest new brewery
In January, 3 Sons Brewing Co. in Dania Beach received an award as best new brewer in the world. Corey Artanis, 3 Sons’ owner and head brewer, assumed it was a mistake. But it was true: Two months before 3 Sons opened its taproom to the public, the craft-beer website RateBeer.com had, in fact, ranked the brewery at 236 N. Federal Highway, Dania Beach, No. 1 in 2018.
If the accolade left Artanis scratching his head, the award seemed to surprise none of 3 Sons’ nearly 15,000 Instagram followers. “Congrats dude, long time coming,” wrote the Instagram user nycbeersociety on the post. “So, so well deserved,” agreed the user residentculture. “Dope people making dope beer.”
Fueled by an admiring (and often ravenous) socialmedia fanbase — its Instagram following was higher
than any South Florida brewery before an opening day — 3 Sons is arguably the hottest brewery opening since the Funky Buddha debuted its Oakland Park taproom in 2013. On a recent taproom visit, Artanis, warm and soft-spoken behind an orange, lumberjack-length beard, sounds humble about
3 Sons’ success and circumspect about how it happened.
“I mean, it has to be wordof-mouth, right?” says Artanis, of Davie. “I just don’t know. We took our time with opening and I tried to slowroll the bottle releases to help build hype and awareness.”
At 11,000 square feet, the brewhouse and taproom occupy a warehouse tucked behind a Federal Highway strip mall. They specialize in sweet, mouth-puckering “dessert beers” (mostly stouts) that have raised Artanis’ profile at beer festivals, where he has won 18 gold medals for brewing since he began entering contests in
2014, he says. His awardwinning beers include Summation, a bourbon barrelaged imperial vanilla and coffee stout, and Boysen Tha Hood, now on tap, a Berliner Weisse infused with tart boysenberries and black currants.
“I want to make beer for people who don’t drink craft beer, but also beer that enthusiasts will love,” Artanis says. “My wife doesn’t drink craft beer, so I try to make beer that doesn’t taste like beer.”
Here’s what else you should know about 3 Sons Brewing.
What’s at the brewery?
Four gigantic, stainlesssteel fermentation tanks behind the taproom counter are the first things to greet patrons at the entrance to 3 Sons Brewing. There’s an upstairs mezzanine, home to a wraparound balcony, second-floor offices and a soonto-come quality-control laboratory. 3 Sons’ groundfloor, 20-barrel brewhouse is capable of pumping out about 157,500 gallons of beer annually.
There’s even a 1,400-square-foot taproom basement that will be converted into a cellar for vintage wine bottles and 3 Sons’ mixed-culture fermentation program, where Artanis says wild yeasts and bacteria are blended to produce “much funkier beer flavors.”
What’s the story, Corey?
A former emergency paramedic for Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Artanis took up homebrewing in 2006. After treating beer as a hobby for several years, he got serious in 2011, snapping up used brewing equipment and drilling holes into stainlesssteel pots.
After a stint trading suds at bottle-share events in Wynwood, Artanis found himself pouring his first hit brew, Summation, at Cigar City Brewing’s Hunahpu’s Day Festival 2015. (The following year, the festival awarded him twice for “best beer” and “best brewery.”) Artanis later became the head brewer at Flagler Village Brewery in Fort Lauderdale in 2016, where he concocted new beers before quitting his job in November to focus on 3 Sons.
Artanis named the brewery after his three sons Tristan, 10, Alexzander, 9, and Jaxson, 5.
What’s on tap right now?
The brewery’s 22 taps will rotate new flavors often, but right now there’s Boysen Tha Hood; Baby Scoop on Nitro, a Neapolitan ice-cream stout with notes of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate; McGorray’s Irish Stout, a dry Irish stout loaded with chocolate, caramel and coffee; Ocean Park Pils, a hoppy, American-style pilsner; Antique Alley, an amber ale named after the row of shops along U.S. 1 in Dania Beach; and Tropical Acres, a tart, tropical Berliner Weisse with notes of mango and white peach, pineapple and passionfruit. Soon to come: Vanilla Face, a bourbon barrelaged stout with Tahitian and Madagascar vanilla beans.
There are also handcrafted Italian sparking sodas, a menu of white and red wines, and bottles of limited-release beer ($20-$45) for sale.
There’s food?
There is. 3 Sons’ kitchen includes a custom woodburning pizza oven, which is manned by executive chef Nicolay Adinaguev (Steak 954, Diplomat Prime). The menu also includes charcuterie-and-cheese boards, salads, sandwiches, smoked St. Louis-style ribs and, for dessert, house-made frozen custard.
3 Sons Brewing Co. is open
noon-10 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, noon-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday and noon-7 p.m. Sundays at 236 N. Federal Highway, No. 104, in Dania Beach. Call 954-601-3833 or go to 3SonsBrewingCo.com.