Steam Horse Brewing will join Palm Beach County’s emerging beer scene next year. (Cox Newspapers)
The craft beer minds behind Tequesta Brewing Company and Twisted Trunk Brewing will join West Palm Beach’s rising food and drink scene next year. They will open Steam Horse Brewing near downtown West Palm Beach, says co-owner Fran Andrewlevich.
The new brewery is headed to The Warehouse District, a sprawling urban complex that’s now under construction in West Palm Beach’s industrial district. When completed, The District will serve as its own mini-neighborhood and will be home to Grange Hall Market, an eclectic food hall, and other food and beverage spots. It’s located in the industrial zone that sits off Elizabeth Avenue, just southwest of the Palm Beach County Convention Center, near downtown West Palm Beach.
Andrewlevich and brewery partner Matt Webster hope to open next year by late spring or early summer. They tapped into the vintage rail theme in naming the new brewery. An abandoned rail spur on the property inspired images of old locomotives billowing great clouds of smoke. And so Steam Horse was born.
The brewery and large tasting room will breathe new, hoppy life into a 6000-square-foot space currently occupied by a cabinet shop. Andrewlevich notes the space, which will be mostly devoted to Steam Horse’s tasting room, is about the same size as Twisted Trunk on PGA Boulevard.
“We’re hoping to get in there by January to start the renovation. Hopefully, permits will move smoothly,” says Andrewlevich, who says building has begun on the brewing equipment for the place.
About the beers to be brewed, the brewmaster promises a “wide variety.” And while the brewery will offer no food, patrons can order from nearby restaurants and have food delivered to the tasting room.
Steam Horse: Vintage steam locomotives inspired the brewery’s name. (Cox Newspapers file photo)
Andrewlevich, who was the original brewmaster at the now-defunct Brewzzi brewpub in CityPlace, believes Steam Horse will be the city’s first true brewery.
“I’ve been researching this and I haven’t found any other breweries. Brewzzi was a brewpub, which is different,” he says.
He says he is most excited about joining the city’s burgeoning dining and entertainment scene. Just as Tequesta and Twisted Trunk breweries have their distinctive personalities and crowds, he expects the West Palm brewery to draw from the city’s hipster demographic.
“The market as a whole is young and vibrant and it’s Ubers and people going out. It’s a little trendier, a little more cosmopolitan,” says Andrewlevich. “We just love what’s happening in the restaurant scene, the art scene, the music scene here. Everything that’s alive is here.”
Steam Horse will join an emerging, countywide craft beer scene and native breweries that include Funky Buddha and Barrel of Monks in Boca Raton, Saltwater in Delray Beach, Due South, Copperpoint and Devour in Boynton Beach, plus Tequesta Brewing in Tequesta and Twisted Trunk in the Gardens.
Follow: For Steam Horse updates, follow its siblings, Twisted Trunk and Tequesta Brewing.
