There’s something wild in the beer at this new art district brewery. It’s a first for Miami
The Bird Road Art District may be due for a name change: Call it the Bird Road Beer District.
Unseen Creatures, a highly anticipated new brewery specializing in farmhouse ales, has opened in the heart of the art district at Bird Road and the Palmetto Expressway. It joins the 3-year-old Lincoln’s Beard Brewery a block away, which helped expand Miami’s craft beer scene west.
As Miami’s beer scene grows, breweries can find their niche by focusing on one style of beer. Unseen Creatures is the first in South Florida to specialize in farmhouse ales.
The unseen creatures in the new brewery’s name refer to the wild yeast strains and local cultures that help give this particular style of beer a funky, complex and often tart taste. Founder Marco Leyte-Vidal foraged for the wild yeasts that bring his beers to life everywhere from flowers in front of his house to the fig tree in his backyard.
“It’s a way to showcase Miami in a more subtle way,” Leyte-Vidal said. “These things influence a beer in a very specific way.”
And the beers are served in a particularly Miami setting: The brewery took over an old shoe factory off the eastern exit ramp of the Palmetto, where expansive windows look out onto the zipping headlights and taillight from the expressway.
Craft beer lovers have been patiently waiting for years for Unseen Creatures, a long-planned brewery from longtime Leyte-Vidal, who runs a popular blog and video interview series, the Craft Commander, with some of the world’s best brewers. His wild ales have been favorites at beer festivals and local bars where Leyte-Vidal has been perfecting his brew.
“We were blessed people thought our beer was good — brewers and consumers,” Leyte-Vidal said.
His beers taste long-perfected, although the brewery has been open less than week. Unseen’s stable of beers — which rely on different strains of local bacteria cultures for flavor in their fermentation — range from extra tart to mildly puckering, offering a refined and gradual range for even novice beer drinkers. The cherry-vanilla No Mountain is creamy and refreshing, while another, First Ray of Light, aged in oak wine barrels — and left uncarbonated — tastes like a cousin to a chardonnay.
And they have more in store. A pair of foeders, large wooden barrels as tall as a person used to age wine and beer, stand ready under auspicious red lights for specially brewed sour and farmhouse beers.
Their Bird Road Art District spot alongside Lincoln’s Beard makes for a new destination for the western suburbs. The brewer John Falco, who helped found Lincoln’s Beard before selling his stake to open a new Kendall brew pub and pizzeria, Strange Beast, recently bought out Lincoln’s Beard to take back control.
Sharing a beer with Leyte-Vidal on a recent Thursday, he said the two have ideas for block parties and shared events to bring Miami diners and beer drinkers to Miami’s oldest art enclave.
“With food and beverage, much like gravity, the more dense the landscape, the greater the pull,” Falco said. “Having two breweries that love the neighborhood and that get along at the level that Marco and I do, creates an incredibly fertile environment for collaboration and some next-level guest experience.”
On a recent Thursday night, the brew house was buzzing with new visitors — but Leyte-Vidal isn’t giving up his day job yet. A Florida International law grad, he continues a career as a lobbyist, and his wife and partner, Vicky, is a full-time accountant who runs the brewery’s business side.
“It’s a passion project for us,” Leyte-Vidal said. “We’re building this as a family. It’s a special place for us.”
Details: 4178 SW 74th Ct., Miami. UnseenCreatures.com.
This story was originally published December 20, 2019 at 5:25 PM.
