Every so often, a single business opens that changes how people talk about a town. In Winter Garden, that business was Crooked Can Brewing Company. Now Crooked Can has opened a second, much bigger chapter in Minneola. If you’re watching Lake County’s growth, or thinking about buying a home anywhere near Hancock Road, this is the kind of development worth paying attention to.
A Brand With a Track Record
Crooked Can was founded in 2014 by three Winter Garden friends: Andy Sheeter, Robert Scott, and Jared Czachorowski. They set out to build a brewery rooted in community. The original plan was a standalone taproom on a property occupied by three condemned apartment buildings. Mid-demolition, the trio pivoted to something more ambitious: a multi-vendor indoor food hall with the brewery anchoring it. That became Plant Street Market, which opened in March 2015 and quickly turned into one of the highest-volume taprooms in the state.
For anyone who’s sold or bought a home in downtown Winter Garden over the last decade, Crooked Can’s fingerprints are all over the neighborhood’s rise. It’s the kind of anchor tenant that turns a sleepy downtown into a walkable destination, the sort of amenity buyers ask about by name, right alongside school ratings and commute times. Medals from the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup, plus a partnership with the Orlando Magic, helped the brand grow from that single taproom into a presence covering roughly half of Florida. It added locations in Snellville, Georgia, and inside Orlando’s KIA Center. Now that same track record is landing in Minneola, at a scale nobody in Lake County has seen before.
The New Anchor for a Growing Community
Minneola has been one of the fastest-growing addresses in Central Florida for years, but such growth often outpaces the “sense of place” that makes a community feel like somewhere rather than just a collection of rooftops. That’s exactly the gap Crooked Can’s new facility is built to fill.
The complex runs roughly 42,000 to 43,000 square feet, nearly four times the size of the original Winter Garden. It sits at 1600 Crooked Can Loop, inside the 96-acre Hills City Center at the heart of the Hills of Minneola master-planned community. It opened to the public on July 15, 2026, after breaking ground in April 2025. Developer Skorman Development courted Crooked Can as its first and signature commercial tenant, and it’s easy to see why. The site packs a production brewery, taproom, 11-vendor food hall, outdoor beer garden, live-entertainment stage, and splash pad under one roof and outdoor footprint. Managing partner Alan Delahunt described the design goal as building “a central park right in the middle of the development,” a gathering spot rather than just a restaurant.
That distinction matters for anyone evaluating the area. The Hills of Minneola is planning nearly 4,000 residential units, including a Del Webb active-adult community, as well as a future AdventHealth hospital, medical offices, retail, and an industrial park. A development that size needs a heartbeat, a place where neighbors actually run into each other on a Friday night. Crooked Can is built to be exactly that, which is a meaningful signal for property values and quality of life in the surrounding area over the next several years. Buyers considering new construction in this corridor now have a genuine “third place” to point to, not just a promise on a rendering.
What’s Pouring
None of this works, of course, if the beer isn’t good. Crooked Can’s flagship lineup has earned its following. High Stepper, a 7% ABV American IPA with a big citrus-and-spice hop bill, is the beer most regulars order first. Florida Beer Blog praised its balance, noting “the earthy hops are nicely inviting and the bitterness is assertive, not aggressive.” McSwagger’s Own, the malty American Amber Ale that lends the brand its bowler-hatted mascot, drew similar notice for its dual personality: “a very delicious sweetness from the malt, with lots of caramel and date flavors,” paired with “a big dose of earthy hops, robust and packing quite the bite.” And Cloud Chaser, the German-style Hefeweizen spiced with clove and pepper, has become a taproom favorite in its own right, with Absolute Beer calling out its “voluminous fruit and spice characteristics with prominent banana and clove notes.”
At the Minneola taproom, the tap list opened wider than at any Crooked Can location to date, with at least two dozen taps of craft beer alongside wine, sake, and cider. It’s the kind of variety that keeps people coming back, which is exactly what a growing residential community needs nearby.
Still Coming Together, Good News for Early Movers
Crooked Can has been upfront that opening night was a soft launch. The taproom, beer garden, splash pad, and live music were ready for day one. The food hall is filling in over the coming weeks as its eleven vendors finish their buildouts, among them The Local Butcher and Kitchen, This Little Piggy, Sir Benji’s Donuts, and Kai Kai BBQ and Dumplings. Brewing capacity is still ramping toward the full lineup.
For anyone weighing a move to this part of Lake County, that’s useful information: the full experience is still coming online, which means the neighborhood’s newest amenity has plenty of upside left. The Winter Garden flagship isn’t going anywhere either. It remains open and continues to anchor its own downtown. But Minneola now has its own version of that same magic taking root, and communities built around a gathering place like this tend to hold their value and their appeal for a long time to come.
