After a busy February for the Boa Beer Blog, March has been a bit quiet due to travel. I’m finally settled in back home and ready to post my beer travelogues.

I had a business trip to Tampa last week and I flew down a couple of days early to spend time with family who live in the area. My plane landed at TPA at 11:00 a.m. and by 1:00 p.m. we were walking into Florida Auto Exchange Stadium in Dunedin to watch the Orioles play the Blue Jays in a spring training game.

I had left the doldrums of DC for the warmth of Florida and an afternoon in the sun watching my favorite baseball team in the cozy confines of a 5,000-seat stadium. And life would only get better from there! Here’s the first thing I saw upon entering the stadium:

On my way to my seat I made a quick detour to the Craft Beer Dugout for local brew from one of my favorite breweries: Old Elephant IPA from Tampa Bay Brewing Company. I have a long history of visiting TBBC during trips to Tampa to see my parents. It was awesome to find it on draft at the baseball game, even at $6.75 a pop.

Old Elephant IPA is aggressively hopped and clocks in at 80 IBUs. At 6.8% ABV, it isn’t exactly a session beer so I only had two. In between, I had an easy-drinking Florida Avenue Ale (4.7%), an American wheat ale from Cold Storage Craft Brewery in Tampa.

The baseball game ended in a 6-6 tie, but I couldn’t have asked for a better start to my trip!

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