Intracoastal Brewing Company · Eau Gallie, Florida
Intracoastal.A place in the week.
Three friends opened a brewery. The years since have given people a run to join, a mat to roll out and reasons to recognize one another.
A familiar place is built one return visit at a time.
November 2015 is a long time to keep a run on the calendar.
That is when Intracoastal Brewing Company and The Yogi Perogi say Intra Run Club began. Their yoga gathering goes back further, to January 2014. Those dates caught my attention because they describe a different kind of achievement from opening night. Somebody has kept making room.
A new place asks people to discover it. A familiar place becomes part of how they arrange their lives. The distinction can be as ordinary as knowing where to meet on Wednesday, or having somewhere to go on Sunday where the introduction has already happened.
At Intracoastal, the beer changes. The invitation to return has had time to become recognizable. That continuing invitation is the subject of giving a taproom a life between releases.
Before the regulars
Donald had been brewing. John and Kyle saw a business.
A 2014 Space Coast Living profile traces Intracoastal to Donald Atwell, John Curtis and Kyle Smyth. Atwell brought homebrewing, an environmental science background and an interest in cooking. Curtis and Smyth joined him in turning the idea into a brewery in Melbourne’s Eau Gallie Arts District.
The early account gives their ambition a useful shape. Customers could see the brewing area and fermentation rooms from the tasting room. The place was named for the local waterway. Curtis spoke about wanting the tasting room to belong to the community.
There is a pleasing fit between that ambition and a neighborhood associated with people making things. Beer begins as someone’s work before it becomes anyone’s evening. Seeing where it is made keeps the work present. A glass arrives with a place attached to it.
The three founders also brought different kinds of attention to the enterprise. Brewing, welcoming people and running the operation all have to happen. Friendship may get a venture started; the daily work gives that friendship something demanding to build together.
“Our goal was for the tasting room to be a part of the community.”
John Curtis, quoted in Space Coast Living, 2014
The rhythm that outlasts the launch
Eventually, it is simply where you meet.
Yoga with The Yogi Perogi begins at the brewery.
Intra Run Club begins its shared outings over the Eau Gallie Causeway.
The Yogi Perogi’s own account describes one-mile and three-mile routes that start at Intracoastal, go over the Eau Gallie Causeway and return. Participants can run, jog or walk. The yoga gathering brings another pace and another way to take part.
That range matters. People can arrive with a shared activity before they have a shared history. The route gives them something to do together. Repeating it creates the possibility of recognizing a face, learning a name or picking up a conversation that began the week before.
I admire the patience in an arrangement like that. A business can announce a community in a sentence. A community has to be given time. It grows through invitations that remain available after the novelty has worn off, and through partners willing to keep doing the work.
The Yogi Perogi deserves its place in this story. Its instructors and organizers bring their own skills and relationships. The brewery provides a setting where those activities can become part of a wider social life. The names of both organizations belong on the invitation.
What develops between people is their own. A venue cannot manufacture friendship to order. It can help people find one another often enough for friendship to become possible.
Behind an easy evening
Someone had to think about the kitchen.
One of the most revealing pieces of the Intracoastal story comes from a company that builds small spaces.
Movable Roots describes its project with the brewery as a stationary commercial kitchen built in the form of a food truck. Its team worked with Intracoastal’s owners and kitchen management on the exhaust hood, fresh-air intake and HVAC. These are the particulars behind the inviting idea of getting something to eat while staying for another conversation.
I like the unglamorous specificity of that account. A gathering feels easy to the people enjoying it because other people have dealt with the things that would otherwise make it difficult. Air has to move. The kitchen has to function. The person preparing the food needs a space that supports the work.
Food also changes what a brewery can be in an evening. It gives a group one more reason to settle in. The investment has a social consequence, even though the construction decisions are thoroughly practical.
A district with other people in it
There is room for someone else’s occasion.
The same openness appears in the brewery’s connection to Rocky Water Brew Fest. The festival is presented by the Eau Gallie Rotary Club and identifies Intracoastal as its partner brewery. The brewery hosts the Welcome Brewer’s Party, bringing visiting brewers into a local setting before the festival.
That is a different kind of gathering from the weekly run. It connects the brewery to fellow makers and to Rotary’s charitable work. The festival’s stated beneficiary is the club; the brewery’s contribution has its own place within the larger event.
Intracoastal’s private-event spaces add smaller occasions to that picture. Its Upper Brew Deck looks toward the canning line and brewery operations. The setting retains its working identity even when people are there for their own celebration.
There is character in that. A birthday or a gathering of colleagues does not need to happen in an anonymous room. It can borrow the atmosphere of a place that already has a life, while adding another memory to it.
The ordinary week is worth caring about.
Intracoastal’s current introduction still puts a rotating selection of beers at the center of the company. Curiosity about what is on tap is part of its appeal. So is the possibility of finding something familiar around it.
Those two pleasures can coexist. Try something new. See someone you know. Have a reason to leave the house that does not require organizing an entire occasion from scratch.
For me, the long-running gatherings are what give the company’s early ambition weight. A promise to be part of the community becomes easier to believe when there are years of invitations behind it. The founders gave Eau Gallie a brewery. The people who keep returning help give it a place in the week.
Rob Urban
Intracoastal, in context
The people and partnerships.
Who founded Intracoastal Brewing Company?
Donald Atwell, John Curtis and Kyle Smyth founded Intracoastal Brewing Company in Melbourne’s Eau Gallie Arts District. Early reporting describes Atwell’s homebrewing background and the three friends’ ambition to create a community tasting room.
How did the run club and yoga become part of Intracoastal?
The brewery and its partner, The Yogi Perogi, date their yoga gathering to January 2014 and Intra Run Club to November 2015. They are longstanding parts of the brewery’s recurring activities.
What is Intracoastal’s role in Rocky Water Brew Fest?
The festival identifies Intracoastal as its partner brewery and the host of the Welcome Brewer’s Party. Rocky Water Brew Fest is presented by the Eau Gallie Rotary Club, with proceeds benefiting the club’s charitable work.
Where can I find the current tap list and events?
Use Intracoastal Brewing Company’s official website for its current tap list and event announcements. The brewery is at 652 West Eau Gallie Boulevard in Melbourne, Florida. The Yogi Perogi also publishes information about the shared run and yoga gatherings.