acksonville, FL, once identified as the ”Bold New City of the South”, now has it’s own local micro brewery. Two locals have opened Jacksonville’s newest brewery under the name Bold City Brewery with the intent of brewing “Bold Beer for a Bold City”. Jacksonville has long been the home of several brewpubs so locals are no stranger to good craft beer but until recently they lacked a local microbrewery. Bold City Brewery wants to give the residents of Jacksonville and the surrounding communities a beer brand they can call their own.

All too often you hear an entrepreneur say “it didn’t happen overnight” but this time it almost did. Last April Brian Miller was working in the IT department of Blue Cross Blue Shield when he started feeling that maybe the 9 to 5 corporate life wasn’t as glamorous as it once sounded. He’d been homebrewing for 6 years and had reached a point where friends and family were requesting more. Meanwhile, Susan Miller, Brian’s mother, was nearing retirement with Blue Cross Blue Shield but was experiencing the need for something new that didn’t include cubicles and water coolers. Brian decided to surprise Susan with a trip to San Diego to the Craft Brewers Conference where she became enamored with the people and culture of craft beer. They made the decision to leave corporate America and started planning their brewery immediately. By late fall of 2008 they were pouring beer. In the business world, that’s almost an overnight startup!

The brewery, located at 2670-7 Roselle St, is just one block off Interstate 10 on the west side of the city. The neighborhood is mostly commercial with an emphasis on small warehouse-style metal buildings. The building at 2670 hides its secret well. Except for a small folding sign near the street and an even smaller sign on the wall between a roll-up garage door and a metal door with a blacked out window, one would never know a brewery lurks within. Upon entering however, you get the odd feeling that you just opened the wrong door. It’s kind of like when Bugs Bunny walked into a tent and when he got inside it was the Taj Mahal. Your brain says you just opened the door to a rather plain commercial warehouse but your eyes say you just walked into a quaint neighborhood pub. The kind of pub where you instantly feel at home, despite having never been there before.

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