USA, FL: Four Stacks Brewing to open in Apollo Beach in August

Apollo Beach will get its first craft brewery and taproom sometime in August when Four Stacks Brewing Company, which has been in the works for a year under the name Monument Brewing Co., opens its headquarters at 5469 N. U.S. Highway 41, Creative Loafing Tampa reported on July 2.

Instead of fighting to maintain its identity as Monument Brewing — there’s a similarly named spot operating in Maryland as Monument City Brewing Company — brewmaster Nathan Hangen says he and co-owner Shawn Christenson wanted to put money into their beer instead of legal fees.

“The new name speaks to the brewery’s roots, and it’s something people can identify with,“ Hangen says. When motorists make their way down Interstate 75 near Apollo Beach, they see the four tall smokestacks of TECO Energy’s Big Bend Power Station, which manatees started flocking to in 1986.

“We haven’t done the full name change yet, but people love it,” Hangen says.

Two years ago, Hangen and Christenson, beer enthusiasts who have been running a software company together for four years or so, got serious about launching Four Stacks Brewing during one of their regular trips to San Diego. Hangen, a Ruskin resident, says the duo wanted to open a brewery outside of Tampa, and a place where the Apollo Beach community would feel at home.

In its 2,500-square-foot space, Four Stacks Brewing, will debut as a nanobrewery with the capacity of a barrel and a half.

“We want to make the taproom an experience,” Hangen says. “We want to make it approachable.”

03 July, 2015