You might know that my husband and I like to take spontaneous trips. Our last spontaneous trip was over Memorial Day and this weekend, we took a similar trip to check out breweries in the Port Saint Lucie and Stuart area.
Back in December, we bought a Hop Passport. Basically, it’s a “passport” of breweries in the state. At each brewery, you get you buy one get one once and you also get a stamp on the page. The goal is to complete the booklet. We thought this would be a fun way of exploring Florida, plus we are obsessed with breweries, so it’s win-win for us!
How we ended up in Port Saint Lucie, Florida
For this trip, we decided that each of us would open up the Hop Passport to a random page. Then we would pick our favorite brewery of the two on the page we opened it up to. After we both picked a random brewery, we’d decide as a couple which one of our picks to go to (or we’d flip a coin if we couldn’t agree). I picked a brewery in Gainesville and my husband picked Hop Life Brewing Company. We both agreed to go to Hop Life. Ironically, Port Saint Lucie was the town we’d picked from our random cities bucket in May. We ended up in Fort Pierce instead when we realized halfway through our drive there that they have an Islamorada Brewing Company there. Fort Pierce ended up being so much fun that we never made it to Port Saint Lucie.
We were extra excited to revisit the area because when we visited in May, we stumbled upon an oceanfront hotel we really wanted to stay in and they had availability!
Hop Life Brewing Company
Port Saint Lucie is a little under 3 hours from us, and we got to Hop Life around 2:30. I wanted to try every single beer on their menu! For our first round, I started with a key lime coconut IPA and my husband got a pineapple blonde ale. Mine came with the option of adding slushee to the beer, which I obviously did, and it was incredible. My husband’s beer was delicious, too, and we loved having them on their covered outdoor area. Florida’s daily 3:00 storm rolled through while we were there, which made it even more perfect (since we were able to stay dry while enjoying the rain under the covered porch!)
After our beers, we shared a flight consisting of blood orange (IPA with orange), blue lite (a light lager with pureed blueberries), naranja wit (a summer ale with orange zest), and puckered up (mango and pineapple gose). We genuinely loved every single one, even puckered up, and I don’t usually like sours. My favorite was the blue lite and we got a growler of it to take with us to the hotel but it was a tough choice between that and the key lime coconut IPA.
I didn’t want to leave this place, but I was excited to check out the next brewery and make our way towards the beach.
Side Door Brewing
Our next stop was Side Door Brewing. I wasn’t expecting to like their beers because when I checked out their selection ahead of time, it seemed like it was mostly sours. But I really wanted to collect that Hop Passport stamp and more importantly, my husband loves sours so I knew he’d be happy. I was so wrong about finding a beer that I’d like. Their Mango Salsa beer might be my favorite of all time. It’s listed as a fruit beer on their website, so I incorrectly assumed it would be sour. Thankfully the beertender recommended it and OH. MY. GOSH. I love mango, it wasn’t too sweet for me, and I love spicy beers (which it was). You can get an extra shot of the hot sauce in it, which I did, and probably didn’t need (ha). I got a growler to go without the extra shot and I wish I would have bought two.
My husband asked to try the Guava Sour and the beertender recommended mixing it 50/50 with Tropical Twister Sour. He absolutely loved it. It was too sour for me, but that’s to be expected since I don’t like sours. We love when beertenders make recommendations and we both took a growler to go. They also had a taco food truck outside, and the tacos were so good!
We went to Ocean Republic Brewing (one of my favorites from May) as our last stop so that we could get our favorite appetizer ever, mac and cheese eggrolls. My husband got Hoppy Daze Ocean (an IPA) and I got their Cucumber Ale. Both were fantastic.
I hope you enjoyed our weekend adventure finding breweries in Port Saint Lucie and Stuart. A little more is to come of our hotel experience, but I’ll leave you with this for now!
