The Tank Brewing Company

In Miami, where local beer is now as ubiquitous as cigars, The Tank Brewing Company celebrates both. In its intimate cigar lounge, patrons can be found puffing a hand-rolled stogie while savoring Frank the Tank, a 10 percent Imperial Stout served in a tulip glass sporting the brewery’s catchphrase, “Sip & Discuss.”

- David Minsky

From an industrial area of unincorporated Miami-Dade County near the Miami International Airport, The Tank Brewing Co. began producing and distributing beer in 2016, opening its expansive taproom and intimate cigar lounge to the public in April 2017. The brewery combines the talents of head brewer Matthew Weintraub and lead brewer Mohsen Saade, both original cultivators of the Magic City’s craft brewing industry, and Carlos Padron, a corporate real estate attorney who also has deep connections in the cigar world. According to Padron, it’s one of the first breweries in the US to combine the two crafts.

“The passion among craft beer makers, cigar makers, and their consumers is very similar,” explains Padron, who founded his own cigar-importing business, Family Tobacco Traders, in 2009 after learning about the industry from Nestor Plasencia (of Plasencia cigar fame). “Not only are there commonalities in the process of making a hand rolled cigar and a beer, but it is a lifestyle that is very similar.”

The seed for The Tank Brewing was planted in 2011, while Saade and Weintraub, both born and raised in Miami, were attending Florida International University. Under the tutelage of professor Barry Gump, Weintraub formed the school’s home brewing club along with Nick Armada and David Rodriguez. (While a member, Saade did not help start the group.) Dubbed B.R.E.W. FIU, the club’s founding members would go on to become an integral part of Miami’s emerging craft brewing industry—these days, Armada educates the next generation of brewers at CerveTech, while Rodriguez is a cellarman at Wynwood Brewing Company.