04 February 16  |  Events   |  

Coates Golf Championship Craft Beer Garden Popular Draw at Golden Ocala

The Craft Beer Garden at this week’s Coates Golf Championship presented by R+L Carriers may be one of the most popular spots at the LPGA tournament.

While heavy rain and storms interrupted play Thursday, the Craft Beer Garden remained a popular stop.

We at Golden Ocala Golf & Equestrian Club enjoy a good brewski like most beer lovers, but our Craft Beer Garden holds an especially flavorful place in our culinary hearts.

For those not in the know on all things beer related, let us take a quick trip through the beverage’s history and the evolution of craft beers. In between enjoying some cold ones, historians surmise ancient Egyptians may have been the first beer lovers in human history. Beer may have been the oldest alcoholic libation whipped up for human consumption.

From ancient history we move to chemistry then archeology and onto modern, creative commerce. Chemists say wild yeast can cause sugary cereals to undergo spontaneous fermentation, so historians speculate that perhaps ancient dudes may have happened upon the brew accidentally. Tests of pottery fragments from dig sites reveal traces of fermented material indicating beer lovers were downing their suds more than 7,000 years ago.

Some experts think they’ve discovered ancient beer recipes from religious poems on ancient Sumerian tablets.

While the big breweries of today tend to dominate the beer landscape, smaller producers, called microbreweries or craft breweries, are taking the true connoisseurs by storm, according to the Brewers Association.

Craft breweries are smaller and independently owned, which allows for considerable creativity. The Brewers Association describes craft beer “as 10 minutes of pleasure, pure happiness in a glass, authentic, archetypical, an intellectual beverage that is to be savored not swilled and much, much more.”

“Each glass displays the creativity and passion of its maker and the complexity of its ingredients.”

The breweries at Golden Ocala include: First Magnitude Brewing and Swamp Head of Gainesville and Infinite Ale Works of Ocala. Other breweries were: Big Storm, Edge Brewing, 3 Daughters, Boston Beer Company, Brew Hub, Copp Brewery, Kona Brewing, New Belgium, Shipyard, Sierra Nevada, Small Town Brewery, Sweetweater, Tenth and Blake and Goose Island.

craft beer

An ungraded craft ticket offering is included in the tournament admission to the LPGA event and a traditional sampling glass, according to Coates Golf Championship. The Craft Beer Garden is open 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., Friday.

Tickets are still available: Single-day grounds tickets are $15. Single-day Craft Beer Garden is $25. Ticket packages for the championship are available online.

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