Hyderhead Brewery – Deland, FL

What a gem! This place is a true Scottish pub serving only traditional food and beers using only imported ingredients from Europe. The owner and brewer is a real Scottsman and has the place looking much like a pub you would find in Scotland. Step through the door and you will be transported to the small town of Inverness with red & green decor, rustic bar, bag pipes, friendly staff and Celtic music. Offering a great list of a dozen or so beers, we had the Scottish red Wee Heavy and the Frontal Lobotomy IPA. Both beers were great topped with some malt for fun!

McK’s Tavern & Brewery – Daytona Beach, FL

Technically a brewery since they do have about six of their own beers but more like an Irish Pub. Since we were desparate for a brewery, we fought through the tourists and street performers downtown to check out their drafts and get some grub. Serving up traditional irish fare, typical bar food and about 30 drafts including guest beers, we ordered the chicken pot pie and the french dip along with their pale ale and red ale. For a tourist trap Irish pub, everything wasn’t too bad.

Jack’s BBQ and Brewery – St. Augustine, FL

Not your average brewery! It’s rare to find a barbeque place and a brewery that has a swimming pool. The beertender refer to this sprawling drinking complex as having an “old Florida” side and a “new Florida” side. The old side was a simple bar on the corner originating in the 1940’s. Over the years, each new owner added on further north including the restaurant, dance floor witj stage, swimming pool and finally the brewery. We tried the Marzen & Hey Boo Boo west coast IPA along with a pulled pork sandwich and half chicken. The food and beer were good but nothing as memorable as the place itself.

Old Coast Ales – St. Augustine, FL

Two words: beer heaven……..if you are a lover of hazy IPA’s. Recommended by the beertender at at Ancient City and specializing in hazy’s, half of their beers on the menu are IPA’s. With all that deliciousness, we had to do a flight and were delighted to see their flights had a whopping 6 beers. Boom! We ordered a well-balanced plank of their Lite-House blonde ale, Low Tide session hazy, Anniversary hazy, Static Haze hazy, Backpedalin’ hazy and Ol’ Horner ESB. See, balanced out the hazy’s with a blonde and an english ale! All the beers were top-notch so this place is a must-stop next year for the Daytona 500.

Dog Rose Brewing – St. Augustine, FL

Happy Friday eve! We are getting an early start on the weekend by checking off another brewery here in town before heading to the track tomorrow. This place is the 3rd of five breweries here in town and up to this point has the best beer. We tried the Lincolnville Lager and the Roadside IPA. The lager is probably one of the best we have ever had – full of flavor but not too overwhelming at 5% with 26 IBU’s. In hindsight, we should have gotten a flight to try some of the other beers like the red, honey ale, brown and stout.

Ancient City Brewing – St. Augustine, FL

Located in the heart of the Historic Downtown, this is the tap room for the brewing operations located about 20 minutes west off I-95. Nestled in with numerous bars and restaurants, this place has a pub theme serving on 10 beers. We had a couple of pints of The Brown Noise and Anastasia Island IPA paired with a bag of honey mustard pretzels.

The Bog Brewing – St. Augustine, FL

Well, our travel plans were suppose to have us at the track today but it turns out that we can’t check in until Friday so we decided to head north to check out The Oldest City in America. There are four breweries in town so we can hit two per night. Our first stop brings us to this small tap room offering a dozen different brews which all looked pretty good so we went with a flight of Pilsner, Vienna Lager, West King Haze, Snow Rips DIPA and Fun Shy IPA. The pils and vienna were a little flat but the other three had great flavor.

Ormond Beach Brewing – Ormond Beach, FL

Well, not only are we kicking-off a month-long road trip but we are also celebrating another milestone. This brewery is #700! It’s hard to believe we started this tour a little over 7 years ago and we are still on it. Most people are shocked by the number but the math works out to about 100 per year or two a week. Not all that challenging but you need to do a lot of traveling to visit 700 different breweries. It just so happens that this brewery is the kind we love – small, quaint and filled with local adults. They even have a resident cat, Tom, that entertained the patrons. We celebrated with a West Coast IPA and a Cloud 9 hazy IPA – our two favorite styles! After a Cuban sandwich, we went one beer further with a flight of Black Lager, Blueberry & Cream ale, Mango Dreamsicle hazy IPA and Gingerbread Cookie red ale. All the beers here are awesome and a must-visit to this brewery if you are in the Daytona area.

Ormond Garage – Ormond Beach, FL

On the road again! Today begins our month-long road trip starting with the Daytona 500/Speed Weeks then the Atlanta race and wrapping up with our anniversary weekend. This brewery is about 20 minutes north of the track located on the main drag downtown Ormond Beach. They don’t call themselves a brewery but they do brew onsite and offer a nice selection of good beers. They have a little bit of something for everyone PLUS a rockin’ kitchen. We drank their Amber Ale and Oktoberfest along with an order of Spicy Fried Pickles. Yum!

One Trick Pony Brewing – Lansing, IL

So this little brewery has a Dachshund guard dog and a lazy cat that sleeps on the stage. After a nice dinner at Hooters, we swung by this place for a Busia Rose polish pils and a Lothair Marzen before heading back to the hotel. The dog was friendly, the people were nice and the beer was good!