The 3 o'clock droopies were setting in as a long day extended endlessly up U.S. 19. I needed something to stay awake, and cast my eyes about for a Starbucks or other caffeine pumps.

No, what I needed was a beer.

Or rather beer and coffee. And I was soon at Dunedin Brewery, where proprietor Kandi Bryant pulled me a glass from the tap on a fresh keg of coffee beer.

The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee jolted me awake while the glass of Biere du Cafe was still on the bar in the microbrewery (937 Douglas Ave.; (727) 736-0606, www.dunedinbrewery.com). The nose of coffee lasted longer than the head on the near black ale, but the taste was rich and deep, roasted coffee with notes of dark chocolate. It was clean, crisp hoppy beer and also, unquestionably, coffee flavor.

Yes. Coffee beer, the newest beer flavor since Belgian raspberries, is here and sold in brew pubs and bottled by microbreweries. It's an oddball specialty, but a growing category, especially in winter. Twenty-eight coffee beers entered the judging in last year's Great American Beer Festival in Denver.

The reason is a natural collision of two trendy boutique industries, but the motivation is not just to find a beer for breakfast or brew a twofer hit of America's favorite liquid addictions, with a buzz and a jolt.

More likely the idea comes from imaginative microbrewers who play with all forms of brewing and connoisseurship and, indeed, making drinks from beans and grains.

The newest coffee beers contain the real thing, complete with caffeine. Don't forget that.

"It's a great beer to have when you're starting out the evening,'' says Dunedin brewmaster Mike Bryant. "But one night around 12 we were about to go home when a customer came up raving about this beer and said he had to buy me one.''

Bryant didn't sleep at all.