Drinks with Lemonstreet Brewing Co. 🍋 🍻

Danay, here! Having a chat with the owner of one of my favorite local breweries, Joe Baez of Lemonstreet Brewing Company.

D: What are you drinking?

J: One of my favorite beers to drink. It’s named Experiment 626 after Lilo and Stitch. Stitch was called Experiment 626. I was a big fan and Isa [Joe’s daughter] loved Lilo and Stitch as a little girl. We watched it a lot, so we have an experimental beer that we made where we just tossed a garbage can full of hops just to see what it would taste like. It was just random hops that we had left over so it’s the name Experiment 626. It actually turned out to be a very tasty beer, so we like it a lot. In fact, the nickname of the beer is actually TastyCakes because it tastes so good.

D: What is it that you do?

J: I manage a brewing enterprise, a budding brewing enterprise, of course. We were just born in September, so that means that we’re not of any consequence to anybody yet. But, we hope to be sometime in the future; we hope people will like us. My job is to manage this business.

D: What is a typical day for you?

J: I still have a “day job”, so my typical day is going to my regular work at an unnamed bank, and then at night I become super brewery manager owner. [Danay interjects: “it’s a busy day”] It is a busy day. So I do that as many days as I can; I take some days off every once in a while. Mondays and Tuesdays we’re closed here, so it’s my weekend, so if you wanna party on a Monday let me know. Nobody ever does. [laughs]

D:What is the best part of your job?

J: I would say meeting people. I love meeting people. I like to spend time with people who come and appreciate the beer that we make. I think it’s an honor; it’s kind of humbling to make something that people really like. It makes you think about how chefs feel. You know like when a chef makes something really good and people give them accolades. That’s how we feel about it, because you know it’s all of us that work here and make it, it’s not just me, I don’t literally make the beer, we all collaborate on recipes and everything but there’s only one brewer, and it’s not me [laughs], so that’s what we like the most.

D: What do you love about Jacksonville?

J: What I like about Jacksonville is that in my other job I got an opportunity to travel all over, and there were some great places. It was fun to go visit other places, but it was always very emotional when I saw the pine trees coming into Jacksonville International Airport. I like it. I like it here. It’s almost like you can’t be separated from where you were raised, so this is what I call home. I love it, warts and all.