Home State Brewing Co.: Hamlin’s Living Room, Brewed On Site
A family-owned brewery with 32 draft lines, a dog-friendly patio, trivia nights and the Homegrown Market at its door — Home State is where Hamlin actually gathers.
3 minute read
Every new town center eventually gets the place where it actually gathers, as opposed to the places where it shops. In Hamlin, that place is Home State Brewing Co. at 16016 New Independence Parkway, Suite 100 — a craft brewery brewing on site, with a taproom, a kitchen, a covered patio and beer garden, and a weekly calendar of the kind of events that turn customers into regulars.
The brewery describes its mission as crafting a “Home State of mind,” and its founder Colin Vanatta has described the business in interviews as family-owned, rooted in western Orange County, and built to be a community hub. The beer is produced on site in Winter Garden; the company’s own materials describe 20 unique beers across 32 total draft lines split between its indoor bar and its covered, weather-protected patio. Distribution has begun beyond the taproom to cities across Florida, but the Hamlin room remains the only Home State location — a genuine local, in a district where much of the dining row is made up of regional and national names.
What to drink, and what to eat with it
The tap list rotates, so treat any specific beer name as a snapshot rather than a promise. Names that recur across the brewery’s listings and coverage include the Oh My Gatos! IPA, Party Goblin, Dark Helmet and Camper Van, alongside a hefeweizen and seasonal seltzers — a Florida-leaning lineup that suits the patio. The kitchen is a real part of the offer rather than an afterthought: coverage and the brewery’s own presence point to gastropub-style food, with a spicy pimento grilled cheese and tostones among the items guests single out. Order food. A brewery that feeds people well keeps them for the second pint, and Home State clearly knows it.
Inside the same address sits a second business worth knowing: Filigree Coffee, described by local guides as a multi-roaster specialty coffee shop located inside Home State Brewing. It is an unusual and sensible pairing — coffee in the morning, beer by evening, one community room serving both halves of the day. Filigree also appears in our Hamlin breakfast and coffee guide.
The patio is the product
Home State’s covered patio and beer garden are dog-friendly, per Hamlin’s own listings, and that single fact explains much of its role in Horizon West life. This is where run clubs finish, where trivia and jukebox bingo nights fill the week, where live music lands on weekends, and where families can bring the dog instead of arranging the evening around leaving it home. Guest accounts consistently describe weekly events — run club, trivia, bingo — as the reason it became their regular spot, which is exactly what a town-center brewery is supposed to do.
The brewery also anchors Hamlin’s Sunday ritual. The Homegrown Market, held on the first and third Sundays, sets up adjacent to Home State and Filigree, with food vendors, live music and a yoga class among its draws — see our guide to Hamlin’s market and events. Market morning flowing into a brewery lunch is the most local sequence Hamlin offers, and it starts here.
How to use it well
Come for an event, not just a beer. Check the brewery’s own calendar before you go — trivia, bingo, run club and live music rotate through the week, and the room is at its best when something is on. Sit on the patio when the weather allows, which in this part of Florida is most of the year outside a summer downpour. And if you are building a full Hamlin evening, Home State works at either end of it: an early pint before dinner on the row, or the last stop after a film at Cinépolis.
One honest note on scope: Home State is a brewery taproom, not a restaurant row unto itself, and it is at its best when you treat it as Hamlin’s living room rather than its dining destination. For dinner proper, start with our where-to-eat guide, then come back here for the nightcap.
Find Home State on the Hamlin hub and the Orlando Top Spots Map. Hamlin has newer attractions and bigger dining rooms, but it has only one brewery, and the brewery understood the assignment: make the beer on site, open the patio to dogs and neighbors, put something on the calendar every week, and let a new town recognize itself in the mirror of a full taproom.
Orlando Citizen by email
The weekly edition, in your inbox
One email, every Saturday: the week’s edition of Orlando Citizen — the week’s stories, rankings and winners, gathered in one place. Free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Related Stories
Editor’s Picks
Spotted an error? Tell us — corrections · How we rank