The Dunedin Brewery Trail, Stop One: Cueni Brewing
For a city of its size, Dunedin has an unusual number of breweries. They are close enough together that you can move between several of them on foot or by bike, most of them sit on or near the Pinellas Trail, and together they form something close to an actual trail of their own. Over the next while, I want to walk that trail in print, one brewery at a time, and introduce each of them properly.
I am starting with Cueni Brewing, on Huntley Avenue.
A word on how I am writing this series. I am not a beer critic, and I am not going to pretend to be one. I have been to Cueni a handful of times over the past few years, enough to know the place and like it, not enough to claim I have worked through the whole tap list. So treat this as an introduction from a Dunedin resident, not a review from an expert. I will tell you what the brewery is, where it came from, and what to expect when you walk in. What you order when you get there is between you and whoever is behind the bar.
A Kitchen-Stove Dream That Found Its Way to Dunedin
Cueni Brewing, pronounced “Q-Knee,” is named for its owners, Jon and Bren Cueni. The name throws people. The brewery has more or less made peace with that and now just tells everyone how to say it.
The story of how they got here is a good one, and it is worth knowing because it explains the place. Jon started out like a lot of brewers do, with a homebrew kit bought online, working on the kitchen stove in Columbus, Ohio. He spent years at it. Friends and family kept telling him the beer was good enough to sell. At some point the couple decided to actually do it, to build a brewery and a life around it.
The first plan was Costa Rica. They took a three-week trip in pursuit of that idea, and it did not survive contact with reality. So they came back to cold, snowy Ohio and started over on the question of where. The Tampa Bay area came up because the cost of living was close to what they knew in Columbus. In August 2015 they came down and did the sensible thing for two people about to open a brewery. They visited every brewery that was open. They kept being pulled toward Safety Harbor and Dunedin, and they found their space in the downtown Dunedin core.
The way they describe it, they did not pick Dunedin so much as Dunedin picked them. They wanted a city with a friendly community, walkability, water nearby, and a beer scene that was already growing. That is a fair description of Dunedin, then and now. Cueni Brewing opened its doors on November 17, 2016.
What the Place Actually Is
Cueni is a small operation, and that is a feature, not a limitation. It runs on a four-barrel electric brewing system, which in brewery terms is genuinely modest. They brew in small batches, on site, and they serve only their own beer. When you drink at Cueni, you are drinking what was made in the building.
The taproom sits at 945 Huntley Avenue, one block south of Skinner off Bayshore Boulevard, right off the Pinellas Trail. The trail location matters. Cueni is set up for the way people actually move around Dunedin. There are bike racks for the cyclists who pull off the trail. There is a large outdoor area in back, which is where most of the seating is, and the indoor bar space is smaller and more functional. Dogs are welcome in the outdoor space, and Cueni has a real reputation as a dog-friendly stop, which for a trail-side brewery in a town full of dog walkers is exactly right. Food trucks park on site Thursday through Saturday, so you can usually pair your beer with something.
The vibe is unpretentious. One visitor described it as nothing fancy, just functional, and meant it as a compliment, and I think that is accurate. Cueni is not trying to be a sleek, designed beer-hall experience. It is a working neighborhood brewery with a big backyard, and it leans into being a community spot. They host events that tell you something about who they are, including a monthly book club that reads banned books on the third Wednesday of the month, and annual Pride celebrations. This is a brewery that wants to be part of the life of the town, not just a place that sells beer in it.
The Beer
Here is where I stay honest about the limits of what I can tell you.
Cueni brews across a wide range of styles rather than building its identity around one flagship. Over the years their lineup has included lagers, IPAs in several forms including hazy and cold IPA, Belgian beers, English ales, porter, milk stout, pumpkin ale, pale ale, imperial stout, and gose. On any given visit they have somewhere in the range of a dozen or more of their own beers on tap, and the list rotates. If you are a hop person, they take their IPAs seriously. If you want something easy in the Florida heat, the lagers are built for exactly that.
One genuinely useful thing to know. Nearly all of Cueni’s beer is gluten-reduced. They use an enzyme called Clarity Ferm, from White Labs, during fermentation. For people with gluten intolerance who thought craft beer was off the table, Cueni is worth knowing about specifically for this reason. It is not a gluten-free facility, and anyone with celiac disease should make their own informed decision, but the gluten-reduced approach across nearly the whole lineup is unusual and deliberate.
Beyond beer, they keep wine, cider, seltzers, nitro cold brew coffee, slushies, and soda on hand, so a group where not everyone wants a beer is easily accommodated.
I am not going to tell you which Cueni beer is the best, because the lineup rotates and because the honest answer is that I have not had enough of them to rank anything. What I will tell you is to look at the tap list when you arrive, ask whoever is pouring what is new and what they are proud of that week, and order a flight if you are deciding. A flight is the right move at a brewery like this one, and Cueni is known for a flight board cut in the shape of Florida, which is a nice touch.
One small practical tip from a regular-enough visitor. The beers and prices are posted on chalkboards, and the pricing system can take a minute to parse. Just ask at the bar if anything is unclear before you order. It is the kind of place where asking is normal.
Where It Sits on the Trail
As the first stop in this series, Cueni is a fitting place to start, because it sits so squarely in what makes the Dunedin beer scene work. It is small. It is owner-run by people who moved their whole lives to be here. It is on the trail, built for walkers and cyclists and dogs. It is unpretentious and community-minded. And it has been at it since 2016, which in the timeline of Dunedin’s brewery growth makes it one of the established names rather than a newcomer.
If you are putting together your own Dunedin brewery day, Cueni earns a stop. Pull off the trail, find the backyard, see what is on tap that week, and stay for one. Then keep walking, because there is more of this trail to cover, and I will be writing about the next stop soon.
For more on the trail itself and the town around it, see Dunedin Florida Parks Trails and Waterfront. For the wider picture of what Dunedin offers, see the Ultimate Guide to Dunedin Florida. And for the events that fill the Dunedin calendar through the year, see A Year in Dunedin.
About the author. I am Mark Middleton. I have lived in Dunedin since 2013, and I have been a customer at Cueni Brewing a handful of times over the years, enough to want to introduce it properly as the first stop in this series. I am also a Realtor with Compass, leading Middleton Tampa Bay, though my work on this site is about Dunedin itself rather than real estate. If there is a Dunedin brewery you think I should make sure to include as the series continues, I would like to hear about it.
