CIGAR CITY BREWING (USA)

Tampa native Joey Redner founded Cigar City Brewing in 2007 after holding a sales position with Dunedin Brewery (Florida’s oldest microbrewery) and a beer writer position with the Tampa Bay Times. He hired Wayne Wambles as his brewmaster in 2008 and the pair brewed the first batch of Cigar City Beer, a batch of Maduro Brown Ale, on January 30, 2009. Additional brands followed, including Jai Alai IPA and Florida Cracker Belgian-style White Ale. Cigar City's Spruce Street brewery has expanded to include a 15 bbl and 30 bbl brewhouse, a packaging hall and a tasting room. The company has grown to produce 60,000 barrels of beer annually with distribution throughout Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New York. Florida currently accounts for over 95% of Cigar City's sales.

Since 2010, Cigar City has released Hunahpu's Imperial Stout every March with a large beer festival to celebrate the release. Each year over 5,000 beer fans attend and brewers from all over the world have poured their beer at the festival. Attending the Hunahpu's Day Festival is the only way to acquire bottles of Hunahpu's Imperial Stout.

Honours:

• #9 Top Ranked Beer, Double Barrel-aged Hunahpu's, beeradvocate.com
• #3 Brewer in the World, 2010, ratebeer.com