The Cigar City portfolio grew to include lager beers as well. "We have really good lager water here. We have to treat our water a little bit to make our IPA, but it’s perfect for lager," explains Joe. And it's been their venture into other approachable styles, with a little tweaking, that has kept Cigar City from becoming a one-hit-wonder brewery like so many others.

"We don’t want to be dominated by an IPA. It’s now less than half our sales, about 45-48%, which isn’t bad. Most people would be happy with that. I’d like it to be a little bit less. We have others beers we want to grow and introduce to our customers, and get those up near Jai Alai numbers. Our Maduro Brown, Tacobaga Red, and Cracker White Ale are getting there together."

The huge variety in the Cigar City portfolio has become the standard in the state, and it's creating a demanding customer. Whenever Joe travels, it's a chance for him to compare notes with other breweries and regions, and after three years of surprising and delighting the Florida craft consumer, sometimes he's a bit surprised by how much things have already changed.

"In many ways Florida craft breweries have strayed further from the way things used to be than any other state. Most breweries in Florida are quite prolific in the variety they produce. They do many versions of different styles, sometimes all with the same base beer. I think our lack of production gave many the attitude that we needed to make a lot of interesting brews to plug the gaps and catch up to the rest of the country. But there's a downside to being prolific. I went to Vermont for vacation this summer and quality of the beer in Vermont is very high. But variety-wise most breweries had 1 to 5 beers on. All well made, but not that many different beers at each brewery. No one complained — in fact people waited in lines to get growlers of them. Back in Florida though, I have literally gotten an email from a person upset with our tap selection because when he visited and we only had 15 different beers on tap."