Chance meeting with beer royalty, Rudi Ghequire, from legendary Rodenbach Brewery

Beer Snob Rob and I sometimes travel for work and almost always…well make that always…carve out some time to check out the local craft beer scene. Following a recent meeting in Orlando, we decided to head to Tampa to visit Cigar City and check out a couple other places we had read about. After a flight or so of Cigar City beer (including one of my favorites their Vanilla Maduro), someone recommended that we check out this place called Independent for some great craft beer and some pretty awesome food.

We walked into this really cool converted gas station and sat at the bar (where else would a beer snob sit?). We noticed that one section of the bar was closed in preparation for some sort of event, but we really didn’t pay much attention to it as we were otherwise occupied with draft menu on the chalkboard, the bottle menu and the food menu. [The Independent has 14 constantly rotating taps including some great American craft brews and some outstanding and unique brews from around the wor

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