When Sky Puppy Brewing opens this summer, it will be steeped in Ybor City history and beer lore right out of the gate.
The brewery and tasting room span the first floor of Casa Bomberos, a retail and office space on the 1300 block of East Eighth Avenue in a historically renovated late 19th-century building that originally housed Ybor’s first firehouse and the second in Tampa. For 22 years, the beloved tavern, restaurant and music venue New World Brewery stood directly next door, before moving out of Ybor in 2017. Sky Puppy’s brewhouse occupies the same space that was once New World’s keg cooler and kitchen. That connection is significant for co-owners, husband and wife Matthew and Danielle McKinnon.
“Our first date was on the other side of this brick wall,” Danielle McKinnon says. “He proposed to me at last call of the last night they were open in that location.”
Matthew McKinnon describes the scene.
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Photo by Kelsey FuseSky Puppy co-owners Matthew and Danielle McKinnon have lived and worked in Ybor for 20 years. “It was 2:30 in the morning,” he recalls. “I had plenty of liquid courage. Everybody was upset because their favorite bar was closing. People were crying. There were like 80 to 100 people but no one was paying attention to us. We were in the middle of this sea of people but we had our own private moment. Plus, it was a very important space to us.”
With that personal significance, the opportunity to open a brewery in this location feels like destiny.
“When we were shown this piece of property, we knew it was magnetic,” Danielle McKinnon says. “The world was pulling us back to this part of Ybor.”
Skinny Puppy has been part of Casa Bomberos, a historic renovation project by Ybor developer Darryl Shaw’s company Casa Ybor, from the ground up - literally.
“We signed our lease in 2021,” Danielle McKinnon says. “On the interior, we pretty much had three brick walls to work with when we started the project. No floors. All the earth was excavated.”
She says Shaw and Casa Ybor have overseen a meticulous renovation to breathe new life into a historic building in severe disrepair. The project includes replacing the building’s front brick wall with a brick wall replicating the exterior - down to the T.F.D. Station No. 2 - as it looked in historic photos from the late 1800s.
Steel encased in columns now supports the building. Bricks from the original front wall were stored off-site during renovation until a local mason used them to rebuild a center wall inside the space that's now the tasting room.
“Just to pay attention to the detail of what the front of this building used to look like and to resurrect it back to the exact way that it was, to store the brick off-site, to save it, to rebuild the center wall, those are things that show people care,” Danielle McKinnon says.
Designing with an eye for detail
Sky Puppy’s design and layout have that same care and attention to detail. Danielle McKinnon, who has extensive experience as a visual manager in the retail industry, put her professional expertise to work on the tasting room’s look and feel. The front area of the tasting room is “light, bright, transient” and welcoming. Arches and curvature create movement and transform a boxy room so “you feel like you are carried through the space without walking into a 90-degree angle everywhere,” she says.
Separated by a wall, the back area of the tasting room is dimly lit and, as Matthew McKinnon puts it, more “cave-like” and “old world” in look and feel. Its bar is a tribute to Fuma Bella, the legendary hole-in-the-wall bar that stood across Eighth Avenue and was known for cash-only service and heavy-handed drink pours.
“It was one of the smallest bars in the Southeast,” Danielle McKinnon says. “I wanted a very small bar in tribute to them. This bar is actually called the ‘Fuma bar’ when you log into our POS (point of sale) system. The architect, when he met with us for the first time, we said, ‘Okay, we’re designing a brewery.’ He said, ‘Okay, we’re gonna run the bar all the way down.’ I said, ‘No, no no, we’re going to only have five seats at the bar.’ He said, ‘Are you crazy, lady?’”
The bar's countertops are white glass, a color contrast that will help patrons see and appreciate the hue of the beer. The bar tops are created by Jeff Downing of Downing Designs in Ybor, who also did the bar top at downtown Tampa Ulele’s outdoor bar. He’s one of several local artists and tradespeople who worked on building out Sky Puppy.
The story behind the name
About this time, you may be wondering, “What’s a sky puppy?”
The brewery takes its name and brand identity from a bat - or sky puppy. New Smyrna Beach artist Copper Tritscheller, whose bronze bat sculptures add to the tasting room’s look and feel, is the inspiration.
“You’ll never forget her because her name is Copper and she does bronze sculpture,” Danielle McKinnon says.
The handles on the tasting room’s 13 beer taps - in honor of the 1313 E. Eighth Ave.
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Kelsey Fuse/Provided by Sky PuppySky Puppy's 13 beer taps have sculptures of 13 bats in flight for tap handles. address - are Tritscheller sculptures arranged to look like bats in flight, delivering beer. Matthew McKinnon points out that a group of bats is called a cauldron, so Sky Puppy has a cauldron of beer bats. Sculptures of bats in flight also decorate a wall in the front area of the tasting room. A larger sculpture of a sea shell bat is on loan through Sky Puppy’s opening phase.
Danielle McKinnon says they want art to be a constant presence in the tasting room and plan to connect with local artists to have rotating artwork on display.
Serious beer brewing chops
Of course, a top-notch brewery needs top-notch beer. That’s where Matthew McKinnon comes in. He brings nearly 20 years of experience, including 14 years at the Tampa Bay Brewing Company and, more recently, 4 ½ years at Coppertail Brewing, where he did raw materials acquisition, selected hops and brewed Free Dive IPA.
McKinnon’s taste runs the gamut - lagers, high gravity stouts, Belgians, and sours. He’s particularly fond of hazy and juicy IPAs and found a juicer from an old Florida farm he can use making them at Ybor antique shop Picker Place Market.
“I’m really excited to be able to do what I want and see how it resonates with our customer base,” he says.
To make tight space work, the brewhouse has stackable fermenters and a storage area for ingredients on a mezzanine between the building’s first and second floors. All the equipment is American-made, except for the German-made twist rinse for the canning system.
Matthew McKinnon points out another interesting feature - the brewhouse floor is 21 inches lower than the floor of the adjacent tasting room.
“A lot of water is involved in the production of beer and the fact that we’re down this low means I can never accidentally flood the tasting room,” he jokes.
The first beer Sky Puppy's brewing is a cold mash sweet stout, Death & All Her Friends. The early menu will focus on hazy pale ales and lagers, with a few other styles in the mix.
A love for Ybor
With Sky Puppy, the McKinnons continue a two-decade-long love affair with Ybor.
“Matthew and I have lived and worked in Ybor for 20 years,” Danielle McKinnon says. “We really, really love it here.”
She remembers exploring the neighborhood by bike when she moved here. She felt the history and loved the brick roads and the weekend markets, but there wasn’t even a coffee shop.
“It was rich with life but it was all at night,” Danielle McKinnon says.
Now, a mix of historic renovation projects and new development is attracting more businesses, residents and activity to Ybor. Two more new Casa Ybor projects, the Casa Marti apartments and Casa Gomez office space, are just up the block from Sky Puppy. The McKinnons want to be part of that revitalization and have people connect with Sky Puppy just like they connected with New World Brewery.
“We’ve been in and out of hundreds and hundreds of breweries,” Matthew McKinnon says. “We wanted to do something a little different. I think we have.”
For more information, go to Sky Puppy Brewing