Ray Roa



“I used to build literal bridges before beermaking was an option,” Tim Ogden says. The 40-year-old New England native is Tampa Bay Brewing Company’s head brewer, but he used to work construction before committing to the suds life. Ogden prefers his new vocation — one spent building proverbial bridges while making beer — to the old life he lived.

It’s been 18 months since a collaboration between his brewery and three Florida bands — Meatwound and Ninehorn from Tampa Bay, plus Thunderclap from Gainesville — connected local beer and music fans with Facemelter. The malty, dry imperial red ale had resin flavors that stuck to your tongue and hung out for minutes after the first sip. Even older hop heads probably recognize Ogden’s name from the recipe for CCB’s infamous Tocobaga Red Ale. The man is no stranger to bodacious brews, and he’s also a constant at concerts in every corner of the Bay area music scene.

On October 21, Ogden crosses a bridge built by Tampa songwriter Shae Krispinsky as TBBC stages a single-day music and beer festival featuring seven beers named for, and inspired by, six local bands.

“Someone started an adventure group and Shae put it out for anyone to join, so I did,” Ogden says. That locally based Facebook group group — Adventures for the Adventureless — is where he met other area songwriters. The group also pushed him to take a deeper dive into lyrics to a cut Krispinsky wrote with her band, Navin Ave.

“A Little Warming” is an American wheat beer brewed with mango and other spices, according to Ogden, and its profile reflects Navin Ave.’s song of the same name. Krispinsky says the cut is about burning down your childhood home.

“The beer is going to have some cayenne and cinnamon to symbolize that burn,” Krispinsky tells CL, adding that Navin Ave. got to help with the brewing process, where Tim shared his passion with the band. “He’s one of the lucky ones — someone who truly loves his day job.”

That day job naturally bleeds into the conversations Odgen has once the sun goes down, and the rest of the beers being shared at Friends Fest all have origins in late-night ideas that somehow made it to the drawing board come morning. Take the “Ephemerality” Red India Pale Lager, for example.

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The brew is named for the closing track on St. Pete post-rock band Set and Setting’s latest album. Ogden drove up to Jacksonville to see the band play before it left for a European tour, and a conversation about beer ensued at the merch table. Drummer Stephen Handal had no clue that a CCB double IPA made for another Sunshine City band (Alexander & the Grapes) was Ogden’s creation. In a few weeks, a new beer — which is available right now — was born and deliberately brewed first for the fest so that drinkers could taste the beer change as the hop profile fades and makes way for the malt.

“Ephemerality is the concept of things only existing briefly, or temporarily, and constantly changing. When I told Tim about the meaning of the word he came up with the concept of the word matching the beer,” Set and Setting guitarist Shane Handal tells CL.

Attention to detail and creativity also mark the highly drinkable yet aggressive helles lager brewed for Tampa rock band Old Vices. Ogden says it goes together with punk the way bacon does with anything else. “I can’t imagine a life without bacon, punk rock or light lager,” he jokes.

“I think the beer surpasses the band. It’s a tasty, easy drinker,” Jeff Brawer, guitar player for Old Vices, says about the working-class beverage. “Fancy folks would probably steer clear of the beer and the band.”

There’s even more humor in a salted lemon lager concocted for Tampa lifer Buck Sands’s band Flat Stanley. Ogden says that he and the band added “a touch of the sea and a bit of lemon to prevent the scurvy.”

Elsewhere, seriousness and a nod to living inspired breathes within the Belgian tripel named for Rodney Smith’s Radermen?, a band whose live show motivates Ogden to be better at everything, and anything he’s doing. “There’s so much nuance, soul and intricacy, packed into a 30-minute set from them. It’s more than enough to find inspiration, and it shouldn’t take many of the beers to have your cheeks a little rosy,” Ogden says.

If the tripel doesn’t do the trick, then “I Like The Whiskey” — a whiskey sour-inspired Florida Weisse that borrows its name from a song by Tampa Americana group Band of Sorrows — will. And anyone who needs an even stronger push should queue up for “Navin’s Sorrow,” a whiskey barrel-aged imperial stout brewed with salted caramel and raspberry. It’s probably the crown jewel of the whole party.

A musician himself, Ogden currently fronts The Path of Increased Indifference. Band of Sorrows frontman Jack Sprouse calls Ogden a good buddy and even had him play bass when another one of his bands, Black Tides Roll, opened for Tampa metal legends Nasty Savage. That mutual appreciation for each other’s craft and the willingness to share stages will be all over Friends Fest, and it’ll likely be the mark of the many more local music collaborations in Ogden’s future. It’s a future that is dependent on the community as a whole, according to him.

“So many awesome folks around here inspire and encourage me every day whether it’s the beer industry, the music scene, or bar scene. We’re all just people, and we got each other’s backs,” Ogden says.

“I need that. I owe it to myself, and to everyone who’s ever encouraged me, to always seek new highs. That’s the nutshell description of Friends Fest — it celebrates community, friendship and collaboration. So come get a spark and pass it on.”

Friends Fest 2017 w/Set and Setting/Band of Sorrows/Navin Ave./Old Vices/Flat Stanley/Radarmen

Sat. Oct. 21, 6 p.m. to midnight

Tampa Bay Brewing Company, 1600 E. 8th Ave., Ybor City. No cover.

More info: local.cltampa.com