Spanish Marie Brewery Opens in West Kendall

After four years of planning and sampling beers at various festivals and events, Spanish Marie Brewery finally opened last Saturday.

The brewery, run by partners Jaime Medina and Alberto Cespedes, is in a soft-open phase, serving beers from local breweries until it pours its own beginning next week.

Cespedes tells New Times that although there are finishing touches to be done, he's happy to be serving customers. "We're waiting on some more decor, but we have the essentials we need to open a brewery. Right now, no one seems to mind sipping on craft beers sitting on plastic chairs."

The beer maker shared the story of how the partners traveled to an abandoned military base in Salina, Kansas, to pick up their seven-barrel brew system. "We were instructed to drive to the middle of nowhere by some guys from a local winery," Cespedes says. A mummified bobcat guarded the entrance to what looked to be one of the area's old missile sites. As the Miami partners walked through a football-field-length tunnel, Cespedes recalls thinking to himself, "We went to Salina to get murdered." Turns out there was light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a beer-making system. "The guys who owned it didn't want to pay for a facility, so they were using the base as storage."

That system is being used to make Spanish Marie's first two offerings: a cream ale and a blonde. The beers should be ready within the next week, but for now, the taproom is pouring suds from Civil Society, Wynwood Brewing, Bousa, J. Wakefield, MIA, Lincoln's Beard, and others.

Spanish Marie Brewery. 14241 SW 120th St., Suite 109, Miami, 786-780-4872; instagram.com/spanishmarie. Tuesday through Thursday 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., Friday 3 p.m. to 1 a.m., Saturday noon to 1 a.m., Sunday noon to 11 p.m. Closed Monday.