About the Episode:
Bunny talks to Chris (Stoutmeister) Jackson of Dark Side Brew Crew, “a collective of craft beer-loving writers, who love our bizarre home state and all of its quirkiness, but especially the local breweries,” about all things New Mexico beer including the history of breweries in the state. If you want to learn some awesome facts about how breweries started in the Land of Enchantment or what is going on now in NM, listen to this episode and then go check out their website (linked below)!
Links
Dark Side Brew Crew website
Dark Side Brew Crew Instagram
Dark Side Brew Crew Facebook
NM Beer Guild Events
CNM Brewers Program
Little Toad Creek Distillery
Safe House Distilling Co.
Winter Brew 2023
Bunny’s website
Buy Bunny’s book on Amazon
I Love New Mexico Instagram
I Love New Mexico Facebook
Original Music by: Kene Terry
Featuring:
Chris (Stoutmeister) Jackson
Chris “Stoutmeister” Jackson is the co-founder and editor of the New Mexico Dark Side Brew Crew, a website that has been covering the New Mexico craft beer scene since 2012. An Albuquerque native and Sandia High School graduate, Jackson earned a degree in journalism from the University of Arizona in 2000, and worked at newspapers in Arizona, California, and New Mexico. He is currently working as the nighttime assignment editor at KOB 4 Eyewitness News. In his spare time, he has been writing about craft beer for a decade now, working with an all-volunteer team of friends and associates who form the Crew. The website is not for profit, it is only meant to serve as a central point for all news about the local beer scene. Jackson has also written the book Albuquerque Beer: Duke City History on tap, covering everything from the breweries before Prohibition to the rise of the current craft market in town. When he is not working or at a brewery, you can also find Jackson at New Mexico United and Albuquerque Isotopes games, and attending heavy metal shows at venues near and far.
Episode Transcript
Bunny: (00:00)
Hi there. I’m Bunny Terry, and you’re listening to the I Love New Mexico podcast. Whether you’re a native New Mexican, who’s lived here for your entire life, or you’re just considering a visit, this episode is for you. Join us as we share a lot of New Mexico’s stories. Talk about all things New Mexico, and include topics like what’s magical here, where you ought to visit, what’s happening, and the things you absolutely cannot miss in the land of Enchantment. We’re excited that you’re here and we can’t wait to show you what an amazing place New Mexico is, because let’s face it, I love New Mexico. One of the coolest things about this podcast is that I get to meet people that I never would’ve met otherwise. And I get to talk to people about their passions, and especially people who are really passionate about different, um, scenes and venues and what’s going on in New Mexico. So, um, this morning there’s no exception. In fact, it’s, um, I’m talking to somebody who has one of the coolest, I just told him when we were talking offline, one of the coolest non-pay jobs in New Mexico, but wow, does it pay off in benefits? Um, that can’t be quantified. I’m talking to Chris Jackson, who is also known as Stout Meister. And for those of you who know Chris, you’re already envious of what he does all the time. But, um, for those of you who don’t, I’m gonna let you tell folks who you are, Chris, and how you started this platform that you started, which is amazingly cool, especially for folks who love breweries and craft beer in New Mexico.
Chris: (01:56)
Yeah, so it was background too. I moved, I grew up here in, in New Mexico. I graduated from San Diego High School in 96, um, and I moved back here in ’08. And, you know, old friends introduced me to new friends. And one night we all went out for one of my newer friends bachelor parties, and we did a brewery crawl, and it’s 2011. So back then you could literally try to hit every brewery in one night. We got to six of eight. And, um, how quaint eight breweries. God, that was easy. You know, now there’s five times that number in Albuquerque. Um, but we, we went around all these breweries and stuff, and at the end of the night we were kind of just sitting there, me and my friend John, and he said, you know, I feel like we missed something. You know, we, we missed the two breweries. We didn’t get to. We missed a great beer. And I said, well, we never know when a great beer’s on unless you go there. You have to go to the brewery to actually find out what’s happening. Breweries were not using social media. They were not reaching out, out and really, um, getting the word out. They, they were just relying word of mouth and people coming in and that sort of thing. And, I said, you know, as more breweries are gonna open, this is gonna get harder and harder. Cause I mean, it was already hard enough to hit, you know, go to a brewer day. You’re not hitting everyone in a week back then, nowadays, you could try to go to a brewer every day of the month and you wouldn’t hit all of them. Um, so we just decided there was a gap in news. And you know, like most things, it took a while for us to actually get off our butts and do it. I came up with the name Dark Side Brew Crew. That’s not Star Wars reference. I always have to point that out so Disney doesn’t sue me. It was cuz we all like dark beers, stouts and porters, and we we’re all, you know, a bunch of metalheads. And so we all we were a lot of black anyway, so we just called ourselves that. And the idea was just to have a group of people write about the beer scene. And that way, rather than being one person, it could be multiple voices. And we were gonna, you know, we were ambitious. We were gonna do like, oh, you know, weekly beer updates. We were gonna do, you know, interviews we were gonna do like home brewing tutorials as if we knew anything back then.
Chris: (04:08)
And so of our original group of seven, there’s about me and friends Brandon’s still here, , but the other guys, you know, like life and careers and stuff kind of took them away. So we, I ended up having to add some other writers, uh, who I now counted by my friends. And we, we, we’ve never made a a profit off this. We’ve just done it for, you know, whatever citizen bloggers for the good of the community. It’s just been a sense that, you know, even with Burs now using social media with 40 plus in Albuquerque and nearly a hundred now in the state, um, it’s hard for anyone to go around, you know, Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever and try and see everything that’s happening. So we just want ’em still have that centralized news place. And I think because we, we made it about news, we didn’t make it about our opinions. I mean, believe me, we’re a bunch of opinionated, you know what? But, um, we just decided, let’s, let’s just treat it as a news site. We’re just gonna say the who, the what, the, when, the where, the why, the how much and that kind of thing. And take the pictures and we’ll let the brewers and the brewery owners and staff members just tell us their stories. And it’s worked Now we’re, we’re actually today is our 11th anniversary, so,
Bunny: (05:29)
Wow. Well, cool. Yeah. Cool. I’m glad I get to talk to you, uh, on that rather auspicious day. And, and I want folks to know that you’re not just talking now about Albuquerque breweries. I mean, you, um, I, and I looked at the list and I didn’t try to count. I mean, I, first of all, I looked this, this is a great service. You do these posts about, um, like who was open on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. You do do really informational post for somebody who’s, um, headed out to a brewery wherever they are in New Mexico, right? I mean, it feels to me like it’s a statewide
Chris: (06:08)
Look. Yeah, yeah. It’s you know, we, we try to be statewide. I mean, it’s obviously hard for us to get down to like dry Landsbury and Lovington that one’s a bit, that, that one’s usually a bit out of our reach. But, uh, yeah, kinda everything up and down, sort of the central Rio Grande corridor, I 25, whatever you gonna call it. Um, you know, Luke, Luke lives in Santa Fe, so he’s got that covered. Um, Reid started out writing for us just kind of covering bathtub, bro. Los Alamos. Yeah, cuz he works for the labs. And, um, he, he lives down in Santa Fe now, but he still handles Bathtub Row and like the events they have up there in El Rito. But we do try to get out to, you know, I did a story on Comanche Creek Brew in an Eagle Nest. Luke usually goes up to Red River Octoberfest. Uh, last year, Luke Ander and I went to, um, like Lost Hiker, Ruidoso, Cloudcroft Brewery, bonito Valley and Lincoln. Um, you know, we, we we, we do try to get outside of the, the two main metro areas where the beer is. Um, and it’s been fun to see the growth of those breweries too, because, you know, even like 10 years ago, a lot of them were, there weren’t very many of them, but, um, they weren’t producing the best beer because there was no competition. But as the Albuquerque and Santa Fe breweries distributed more and more and more, those breweries had to kind of raise their game because otherwise the bar down the street had better local beer than they did. So it’s been it’s, it’s, it’s been, it’s been fascinating to see the, the evolution.
Bunny: (07:34)
Well, and the other thing that’s cool that I, that I saw on your side is that you’re also saying what new Bruce they’re introducing. I mean, I don’t remember how many you talked about in that last blog post, but it was like every brewery had something new coming out. Is that because it was seasonal or is that just how it works?
Chris: (07:53)
There is literally no pattern to it. It’s, you know, even, even people working in the brewer will tell you, like all of a sudden it’s just like, you know, three beers go off. So, but the next three on, and, and it’s just sort of like that. And, and sometimes yeah, they, they just all surge in together. These days the most seasonal of, of the, the beers is the, are the October Fest beers, you know the Fest beers and, but even those kind of are spread out a bit. Uh, Santa Fe came out with theirs, I think at the end of July. They sort of followed the Sam Adams pattern of super early release. And then La Cumbre was after that, and the rest of them, I mean, there were still those beers coming out and even into October when technically Octoberfest is over. So, but yeah that one, especially for us, you know, for us as, as beer drinkers, the right the week ahead and beer is the most valuable thing we do. So we know like, Hey, where do you wanna go? Oh yeah, there’s a new Dole box over at, uh, ex Noble, let’s go check it out. Cool, let’s go. You know, that, that sort of settles the debate of like, okay, there’s 40 breweries. Which one do we pick today? It fits you know, we’re, because we we’re all about my, my mom finds it fa fascinating cause I don’t, I I’ve always been a picky eater, but I’ll try to spend any beer. And I’m like, I, you know, she’s like, that drives me nuts. I’m like, sorry mom .
Bunny: (09:10)
Well, I’ll too, in fact, we go to breweries and my husband will always choose something and I’ll say, bring me a flight. I just, I wanna know. Well, I’m not a picky beer drinker at all. Mm-hmm. , so I get it. I’m, you wrote a book too, I wanna talk about that. Hold it up. Let’s see, what’s the name of that?
Chris: (09:31)
Albuquerque Beer, duke City History on Tap. The, the only thing I regret is I, I found out about six months after the book was published that there would’ve been an even better story if I’d gone back like three more years in history. I would’ve had an even better story to lead the book. The, um, the first, first Southwestern Brewery in Albuquerque. Um, about a year until their operation, they are on their second door. The second brewer went to a, a saloon one day, told everybody he’d been fired, but he was gonna take his gun and go get what was his. And, uh, so the brewery owner was told this, the landlord who was a different person was told this. They all showed up with their guns and had a old West shootout.
Bunny: (10:14)
What?
Chris: (10:16)
Yep. The brewer was killed. And the brewery owner and the landlord basically went bankrupt trying to stay out of jail.
Bunny: (10:27)
So, what year was this, do you think?
Chris: (10:29)
1884.
Bunny: (10:31)
And where was the brewery?
Chris: (10:33)
So that version of the Southwest Brewery would’ve been located on the west side of the train tracks north of what is today, Lomas, the second Southwestern brewery, which opened in 1889 with a different group of people involved. Um, it was called Southwestern Brewery and Ice Company. Um, that one opened in 1889 on, um, the east side of the tracks. But South of Lomas, part of that building is still standing, if you’ve ever seen, it’s owned by the Garcias, the, the automotive family. Uhhuh . Um, it’s, it’s still there. It looks like almost like a castle. And, uh, it says on the train track side, a home ofta beer. Cause you know, well it was the Southwestern Brewery. They, all their beers were labeled Asta andGloria, they basically, yeah, Gloria, they just called him Tta Lagr, Gloria Bachta, you know, uh, Pilsner and all sorts of things back in the, you know, that lasted from 1889 until about, um, you know, when prohibition kicked in in 1918. But they probably stopped making beer in 1917 cuz New Mexico actually enacted prohibition before the federal government. And they, they stayed open as an ice company until the 1970s. And then, um, most of the complex was burned to the ground by a fire in 1997. And only that building still stands. So the, the building was it’s about four stories tall. It was the tallest building in Albuquerque at the time of its completion. And the reason it was so tall was because the, the brewhouse was inside it, and it was gravity fed. They didn’t have the pumps. So it was gravity fed with oil lighting in this dark place where somehow they turned out 30,000 barrels of beer a year. That’s more beer than marble produces now on an annual basis. And only Santa Fe brewing now produces more than, uh, than this brewery that existed, you know, during the turn of the century and World War I and all of this stuff. So,
Bunny: (12:34)
Wow. I wonder what the population of the state was at that time. Somebody was drinking a lot of beer.
Chris: (12:40)
Well, they were shipping it cuz they’re on the rail lines. Okay. They would ship it out to California and, uh, east Oklahoma. So, I mean, it really was the Southwestern brewery. It was the brewery of the Southwest. Uh, it wasn’t until later that, um, Coors up in, uh, golden Colorado became bigger. And, um, you know, and of course when prohibition ended in 1933, everyone was like, are you gonna start brewing beer again? And the owners of that time were like, no. Cause they, it had been sold to different owners who weren’t involved in the brewing side of things. The original brewmaster Jacob Lobe had died in 1907, and then his successor Otto Van Deman. And yes, they were all Germans back then. Uh, he died in 1915. So he, he had died before I never found out the name of who took over as the brewer, the head brewer, brewmaster, um, in the last couple years that it was still here. But by that point, all of the original owners who had included this family from Pennsylvania, they, um, they had sold their shares to all local people like the, I believe the former mayor of Albuquerque was at that time, was one of the owners of the brewery. When prohibition hit.
Bunny: (13:53)
So do you, when you did your research, did you find that, um, a specific group of immigrants brought beer making to New Mexico? Or was it just sort of random?
Chris: (14:06)
It Was German. It was Germans, yeah. Almost entirely Germans. Almost every, every brewer in the state back then. You know, the, the breweries in Santa Fe Las Vegas Deming little towns that don’t exist anymore, you know, the various mining camps. There was two Army outposts that had their own breweries. Uh, just, just all these little places. It was almost entirely Germans that, that, uh, that brewed. Sometimes they were the owners, but sometimes they were just the brewers. But yeah, I mean, back then, you know, and then you have to think about too, like in, in beer parlance, loggers take longer, so ails for sails. But back then, you know, these were Germans. They brought loggers and loggers have to be brewed at a colder temperature. Loggers have to take, you know, a month or more to, to, to go through the fermentation process. And yet that’s what they made. And you think about it like they had to be part of an ice company to have the ice, to keep the beer cold. It’s not like today where you have all those fancy glycol lines running along the ceiling to keep the beer in the fermentors cold. Um, you know, the, the reason we kind of, besides ales for sails, you know, the reason we switched over, I mean, that was a big reason, you know, craft brewing when it was first in its nascent stages in the eighties and nineties, um, they went to, um, you know, more of like British ales and, and that sort of thing, because they were just faster to brew and, and easier to make. So it was it was very much a shift away from where things were back in the day. But now it’s, it’s interesting to see that loggers have again, become hugely popular. Um, you know, I, I knew the brewers are drinking. They might sit there at the brewers after their shifts and they’d always ordered, you know, they don’t, they don’t order IPAs, they don’t order imperial stouts. Uh, they don’t order like kettle sours most of the time. They, they, they order a logger. And that’s, that’s how they, they finish their day. And I think gradually the public came to realize that too. And I think it’s just part of sort of the push of, you know, I wanna have a beer, but I don’t wanna be like afterwards going, oh man, that hit me hard
Bunny: (16:13)
. Right, right. So I’m curious about the, how the book, I mean, were you doing, were you doing this other thing and you got interested in the history, or did you always think, I wanna write this history book about beer?
Chris: (16:29)
I had not really thought, I know I love history right. My, my dad, my dad’s an ex army guy. He always instilled that love of history. But I never thought about writing a book. I never thought I’d, you know, I never thought that, you know, my unpaid website would turn into me writing a book. But, um, the, the, the publisher, um, here, which is, uh, Arcadia Publishing and the, through their sidearm, the History Press, uh, they, they had done a book called New Mexico Beer with, um, with John Stott, who’s a professor who had sort of come down and he, he’d spend time in New Mexico. He actually works up in like Canada or something, but he, uh, they asked him, Hey, we’ve done the state series, nobody, like, we wanna do city series of these books. Would you wanna do Albuquerque? And he says, no.
Chris: (17:20)
He says, no, no, no, don’t have time. He’s like, but I got, I got a guy contact this guy. And so they just offered me the gig, you know, which is the rarest thing in publishing I’d, I’d taken like a publishing course. Yeah. Like a, a graduate publishing course at U N m. And, and the professor for that one was just like, you know, it’s almost, he, he was the most disheartening person I’ve ever met. . He just basically would, would tell people constantly through this class, you’re not going to get published. You’re not going to be a successful writer. You know, all this stuff. And we’re like, dude, really? Come on, man. . I mean, there’s realism and then there’s just like Debbie Downer. But, um, yeah, in this case, the publisher contacted me and said, would you like to write this book? And I was like, yeah, , I’d love to. And, um, you know, I, I knew about like, the modern history from talking to the, the owners and stuff, but I, I definitely didn’t know anything about, um, the history of brewing in New Mexico, you know, before prohibition. I didn’t know, uh, John had actually missed in his book. He, he, he basically had it that from prohibition until Santa Fe Brewing opened in 19 80, 89 or 88 that there was no brewing. And I went back and found there was a Shortlived brewery in Albuquerque in the 1930s. And, I didn’t dig deep enough on the name of the guy who, who initially owned it. And he was actually the son-in-law of Bush as in Anheuser Busch, yeah. His son-in-law had, and he had started a brewer out in San Francisco, and then he, he got bought out and then he came to New Mexico and he, he essentially bought this brewery at auction.
Chris: (18:56)
It had lasted a whopping six months. It was just, um, called the New Mexico Brewing Company. It opened in 19 30, 36, and he bought it in January of 37. I think the bank wanted like $25,000. He ended up paying like 7,000 bucks for the whole thing. And, um, by 1938, they turned out 10,000 barrels of beer as the Rio gr first Rio Grande Brewing Company. And then in 1939, the, the place went under. And so from 89 to or 39 to 88, we didn’t have any many beer produced in New Mexico. Um, but that was kind of nation, a nationwide thing, really coming outta the Depression and everything. And then with World War ii, and, and the biggest thing was, is just that the big beer companies in St. Louis and, um, Milwaukee, they owned the lion share of the refrigerated box cars that you needed to transport beer in this country. That’s really where they of the market. And so they, they became hyper dominant over the entire country. Um, and, and yeah, no one, no one here made any beer until, uh, um, an entrepreneur named, uh, Mike Leviis. He used to hang out at the Boulder Beer Company in Colorado. And he was just like, why, why are there no breweries in New Mexico? Mm-hmm. . And so he, he bought Boulder’s original brew house and moved it into a, an unused horse barn on his property in Gallo and created the Santa Fe Brewing Company. And, um, they, yeah, a lot, lot, a lot of great stories from, uh, from that, from that place. I really lucked out and met their original brewer, Brad Krause. He, Brad’s semi-retired now. He, he lives in Panama. And I was out doing research for the book, and I was talking to the owner of Sierra a Blanca Brewing mm-hmm. Out in Moriarity. And he’s like, oh, by the way, good timing. I said, oh, how’s that? He’s like, Brad Krause is coming by today. I’m like, Brad Panama, Brad is here today. He’s like, yeah, I told him you were gonna be here. So he’s, he, he’s, he’s done to talk for like half an hour. I’m like, okay, . Wow. Super, super lucked out cuz after Brad left Santa Fe Brewing, he came down here and started the first Rio Bravo brewery and restaurant. He was, he was their brewer in that place that was down on Central in the middle of downtown. Mm-hmm. . And then he went on to, um, and the, the important guy he hired as his second assistant brewer there as Daniel Ha who was just one of the cooks at the time. Daniel is now director of brewing operations at La Cumbre. And, and that’s kinda the other fun thing is once you get into that, it’s just like, this guy worked here and this guy worked there, and then here and then there, and then, you know, you, you kind of get how all the brewers are very intertwined in how they’ve come up through, uh, through the industry in this town. And, you know, some of ’em obviously date back to the nineties, and, and then now you have all the young ones now who, you know, they’ll cut their teeth and marble or La cumbre and then they’ll get a, a head brew gig somewhere else. And so it’s, it’s been really fascinating to see sort of that, uh, developmental system of brewers in this town. And, you know, most people are like, oh, it’s only going on recently. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, this guy hired this guy that you’ve been drinking beer from for years, so
Bunny: (22:14)
That’s so cool. And, and I want folks to know that we’re gonna put a link to where they can find your book. So we’ll wanna we’ll, we’ll wanna put that on the podcast and I wanna read it, but so, so as our listeners always get in touch and say things like, well, okay, but I mean, they look for, you know, I’m gonna be in Albuquerque for two days
Chris: (22:42)
Mm-hmm.
Bunny: (22:42)
, you know, what should I not miss? And I know that you’re just providing news, but if somebody was gonna hit, I don’t know. I, you know, I like the idea isn’t broken. Isn’t Bow and Arrow the one that’s owned by two women?
Chris: (22:59)
Yes, yes. Two Native American women
Bunny: (23:01)
And, and breweries were not, um, traditionally started by women. Were they? I mean,
Chris: (23:07)
No, no. You have to go back to like ancient Egypt to find when women Wow. Actually were the, were the brewers and stuff. Yeah. Men, men just kind of took it over. And even to this day, uh, the, you know, you go to a, like a good size brewery and you’re there out front, you’re gonna be like, there’s a lot of female employees and yeah, a lot of them working as servers and beer tenders and stuff. There’s, there’s a lot who work in like, for the bigger breweries with those types of like an office staff. You know, they’ll, you’ll often find like general managers and uh, like sort of pr media relations, social media, um, sales team, you know. Um, but on the brewing side, at the ownership level, there’s, there’s very few. There’s very few. It’s still, um, and this is nationwide and it’s a white male dominated industry at the ownership level. And, really at the brewery on the brewing side of things, most head brewers and brewmaster are white guys. Um, but that’s, that’s, it’s changing. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s slowly, slowly changing. Um, you know, you can talk about the different reasons it was economic, um, you know, just where breweries were located initially. You know, you look, think about Portland, Oregon is, it’s pretty white. Um, but I think down, down here in, in New Mexico, it’s, it’s actually, I find our, you know, haven’t been outta state to a lot of breweries. Our breweries are far more diverse than, um, than others. And I, and I think there’s a sense of, well, yeah, of course they’re albuquerque’s diverse, you know, , so there’s, there’s a lot of diversity at, at the brewing level. I, I know there’s still a push though to get more women in involved really in the hands-on brewing process than, than before. We have, uh, our local chapter of the Pink Boot Society, right. Which is sort of a nationwide advocacy and educational group. They’ve done a great job. Uh, and there are a lot more women going through the C N M program now that we have that, um, you know, where it’s, it’s almost, I’d say, I don’t know what class this was, but there was a class recently where it was 50 50.
Bunny: (25:15)
So wait, hang on just a second. C N M is the community college in? Yeah, I don’t, know what it is that Central New Mexico? I can’t remember what it stands for.
Chris: (25:25)
Those, yeah, Central New Mexico.
Bunny: (25:27)
And, and they offer classes.
Chris: (25:30)
Oh yeah. They, they have a whole, they have a whole marine program. They actually have hired Antonio Fernandez, who won back to, who did almost Impossible Fe, he won back to back gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival in the World Beer Cup. Wow. For his Italian pilsner know same beer, two golds in a row. Um, and, and he’s a fantastic brewer. He has great communicator. He’s, he’s very, he’s exactly the kind of guy you look at and you’re like, man, I wish I had a teacher like him, you know, when you were growing up or something, or a professor like him in college. And so now he’s running their marine program so that they’ve actually built a whole new building there, um, on the C N M campus and the main campus on university. And they have multiple functional brew houses inside now. I’m not sure if they’ve fired it all up. You know, this has all come together pretty recently, but yeah, they, they basically, the students get hands on experience learning how to brewer and stuff. They’ll, they’ll still go to breweries too with a, you know, have a day with a different brewer and hear a different perspective. But yeah, essentially we, we now have, uh, much like the isotopes of the farm team for the Rockies, we now, CNM is now the farm team for breweries where they can actually hire people who’ve had hands on experience. You know, it’s not like back in the day where, well, yeah, I home brewed my garage, you know, nowadays it’s like, no, I’ve actually practiced on a, you know, this five barrel systems, 10 barrel systems. So, um, it’s, it’s a huge advantage now for our buries to actually have, have people going through that. And, um, you’re starting to see more and more of these, uh, newer employees where it’s just like, yeah, I went to CNM, and you’re like, cool. You know, it’s just a really neat thing that’s started, developed over the last, last few years.
Bunny: (27:07)
Well, and I think about, you know, I’m from a small town over near Tucumcari. I’m from Logan, and I just think about, you know, some, somebody, you know, just out of high school who’s doesn’t, you know, everybody doesn’t have to go to college, but that seems like a great idea. Go to, what do they call this?
Chris: (27:26)
It’s literally, I think they just call it like the school brew program at, at C N M. And they’re actually gonna try to expand it now too, and include wine making and distilling since we have, you know, we obviously we’ve had a lot of wineries for a long time. And then, you know, in the last 10 years or so, we’ve had the rise of local craft distilleries too.
Bunny: (27:45)
Well, and then we recently had a change in the alcohol laws, which made everybody’s life better, I think.
Chris: (27:52)
I Mean, yeah, I’d say to a degree, yeah, the reciprocity laws, um, they had existed between brewers and wineries for a while, uh, which is why like breweries could carry ciders made by wineries and they’d carry some wine and stuff, and you go to a winery and they’d have like a couple beer taps, but yeah, uh, distilleries got added to that too. So now you can get you basically pay for like an extra license. And, um, that gives you the ability to, uh, carry New Mexico, made spirits. You can’t carry like Jack Daniels and stuff without still paying way, way more. But you can carry you know, left turn distilling or safe, you know, safe houses stuff, or Vara or, you know, and, and pretty much any, any distillery in New Mexico. And now we’ve actually got, of course, some breweries that have added distilling to their own elements. You know, tractor Brewing has troubled distilling, um, is, its its own, uh, in-house distillery. So it’s, it’s been, it, it’s been a very interesting evolution and it’s certainly beneficial for the people. You know, we all have a couple friends who probably don’t like beer, or maybe they’ve got, you know, a, uh, a gluten issue where they can’t drink beer. And it’s, it’s nice for them to have that. Okay, you grab a beer and I’ll grab a Moscow Mule, you know, that kinda that kinda situation.
Bunny: (29:11)
So Yeah.
Chris: (29:11)
Like, it’s been an, it’s been a nice development and I think it, it’s financially it’s helped the breweries coming out of coming outta Covid. But, there’s still a few that don’t really wanna bring that into there. You know, a few brewers just tell me like, we’re not a bar. We don’t wanna be a bar. And you know, you, you’ll see it at some places where like a line will form all of a sudden, because there’s a bunch of people want cocktails. And which is why I think right now, places like Little Toad Creek and Safe House are making those, you know, the canned cocktails, right? Where all, all they do is they pour a glass over mice, here you go. And that can kind of keep the speed of things going.
Bunny: (29:52)
I gotta tell you, I love Little Tote Creek. We just, we ran into, we went to Silver City for something else, and, and spent like two evenings there because it was, it’s so much fun. So it’s not just, it’s not just the beer, it’s the atmosphere of the brewery itself.
Chris: (30:09)
Yeah. And I think that’s been a huge thing for people. The atmosphere of places is, is big. You know, and we’ve always said if, if the, if the brewery breweries didn’t have good people running them and, and working there and everything else, we would’ve, you know, we would’ve been like, why are we doing this? Why, why are we wasting our spare time doing this? That’s what we know we can drink, but why are we taking the time out to go interview people? So, you know, I think that’s, that’s been a really nice thing about it too, the breweries by and large are really just owned and staffed by just some of the best people you’re gonna meet in the state. And I think that welcoming environment, that positive atmosphere is another attraction for people. You know, they didn’t wanna go to the crummy dive bars anymore. They didn’t wanna go to bouncy clubs and everything. And I think you know, for all of us, as we’ve gotten older, you know, and I started this thing in my thirties and, you know, I’m 44 now, and I can’t go to bars anymore. It’s just like this is not my scene, you know? And I much prefer just kicking back on a patio with a, you know, with a nice pilsner and just watching the clouds roll by. I’m old and boring like that now, but I’ve got my secondary homes all over the country when it comes to that sort of thing. So it’s a nice evolution of the, the socialization aspect of life too.
Bunny: (31:32)
So, what’s coming up? I think, um, is, is Winter Brew…?
Chris: (31:37)
Yes. Yeah. Winter brews
Bunny: (31:39)
What is it that people don’t wanna miss?
Chris: (31:42)
So winter, the next one, that one is on, uh, January 20th. So it’s a Friday night in Santa Fe. It’s at the farmer’s market at the rail yards. So you can take, if you want hop on the rail runner you’ll miss maybe the first hour or so. But, you know, that’s probably, you know, you not drinking too much. Cause when think about Winter Brew is, those are big winter beers, those are barley wines and pure stouts, you can, you can, and you know, your extra thousand feet in elevation. So yeah, winter Brew can hit your heart. So it’s okay to take that extra hour, take the train up, and then the train leaves from the rail yard, right as it’s ending. They basically will end it and just say like, Hey, if you’re catching the train head on out there. So that’s really convenient. It’s a great event. It gives a lot of the Northern New Mexico brewers a chance to showcase themselves alongside the Albuquerque breweries. You know, it’s, it’s, we had to do it last year outside, cuz they’re still a little worried about Covid. We did it at, at Santa Fe Brewings, uh, at the Bridge. So the music venue has a huge patio front. Um, but yeah, so this’ll be the first time back in the farmer’s market since, um, January, 2020. Wow. You know, before Covid. And so it’s a lot of fun. It’s one of our favorites. After that, I think the next one, oh, um, the Brewers Guild, well, we’ll have to see. We, we’ve changed executive directors again at the Guild. Edmondson from rally Pharma Sales. She’s, she’s been their bar manager for years. She’s taking over as executive director now. But I think it’s still on, on the calendar, no date listed yet. It used to be in February, then they switched it to March is the Stout Invitational. So it’s sort of like a mini challenge. Just a single tray of stouts and you get to sample them all, they’re numbered and pick your favorite, um, it’s sort of a no holds barred thing too. You can have imperial stouts, you can have like peanut butter stouts and coffee stouts and, you know, anything you can think of can, can be on that tray. Which was funny cuz last year La Cumbre won just by submitting regular Mal Stout. They’re year round beers.
Bunny: (33:52)
. Yeah.
Chris: (33:53)
And, so that, that one takes place in, in Los Alamos at Bathtub Brewery, which greatly expanded their outdoor seating area. So, but they still do it in like three sessions, you know, there’s just to give people enough time and space. So well you know, when the Guild tells us when that, when they pick a weekend for that one, that’s usually a Saturday event. That one’s coming up. I don’t, there’s there’s nothing else like, set on the calendar yet as far as like big spring events. You know, it usually takes a kind of a while for us to get to, you know, summer season, which usually kicks off with Albuquerque Beer Week at the end of May.
Bunny: (34:30)
Well, and folks can find out about what’s coming up just by checking your site, right?
Chris: (34:37)
Yes. Yeah. Oh yeah. We, we, we keep track of every big event like that cuz you know, that’s just the, you know, that, that that’s almost the easiest. Who, what, when, where, why, how much kind of story we can write, um, just with these events. And we, we do our best to get all the breweries to, you know, sweaty you pour and . Cause I, I just wanna know, cuz you know, I wanna know like, I’m gonna go, if there’s 20 breweries there, I’m like, I’m gonna go around what are the, you know, what are the 10 beers I have to try? So, we’ve got that stuff coming up. I know for the Brewers, uh, world Beer Cup is in and, uh, the Craft Brewers Conference, this happened together. That’ll be in Nashville this year. So they’re all already talking up all the hot chicken they’re gonna go eat. That one moves around Great American Beer Festival, which is the big fall event. That one’s always in Denver. So that’ll be, it’s usually the first weekend of October this year. It’s gonna be in September. Um, I don’t know why. I guess there’s some other event happening in Denver. And, uh, so that’ll be be September and then Yeah. And then we’ll just, we’ll kind of see, you know, we had some new beer festivals come in last year. Um, I don’t know which ones will be back or not, between the great New Mexico Beer Festival we had, like the Enchantment Festival. We had the Brewers and Distillers Cup, which is a brewery fest slash soccer tournament where the breweries created soccer teams and, and played a few of our friends actually suited up for quarter Celtic Wow. And competed for them. Yeah. They play like in these adult soccer leagues. Got that kind of stuff coming up. And then yeah, I mean there’s, there’s, there’s all kinds of fun things that’ll happen and, you know, and, and I like how breweries have become kind of gathering points for other big events. You know, we all watched the World Cup final at, uh, gravity Bound. So that was, that was you know, sort of a fun way just to hang out with a whole bunch of people and find out that everyone was rooting for Argentina. Cuz I guess we all, were all all messy fans. Um, but yeah, you know, there there’s always gonna be a bunch of things coming up. And the breeze themselves, you know, they’re really kinda getting back into the, the groove of having their own fun events that come by on an annual basis. Tractor really went all out again this year for the Stranger Things Arcade Carnival during Halloween. I know Canteen’s already told me they’re gonna bring back the Drink Beer, save Turtles event, which is hav event to help people who raised funds to protect endangered turtles across the country. My mom’s Rio Grande Turtle and Tortoise Club was actually there. People were like, that’s your mom. I’m like, that’s my mom . So, um, yeah, there was a, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of cool things always happening and uh, you know, with, with the breweries help, we, we’ll always have you know, kind of that concise, you know, here’s what’s going on this week and then, you know, individual story breakouts and, and those sorts of things. And we’ve actually got our I think I finally got everybody who’s gonna do it got their, uh, picks for like favorite beer, favorite festival, favorite, you know, weird moment of the year kind of stuff. Favorite beer trip, the trip they wanna take in 23. We’re gonna have that story run tomorrow.
Bunny: (37:46)
Oh, cool. Because that’s what I was gonna ask you. Yeah, I was gonna say like, what are the top picks? But, but instead I want people to go to to, to your website and sign. Obviously they can subscribe, right?
Chris: (37:59)
Yeah, yeah. There, there’s a, there’s a little subscription button. Um, you know, and you can follow us on, uh, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We’ll post updates there. Fa Facebook tends to be the most, uh, what do I wanna say? Re uh, like publicly responsive one. I dunno, New Mexicans are really into Facebook. I’ve talked to beer writers on the East Coast, they’re like, no, it’s all Twitter. I’m like, it’s not here. No. Yeah. All we have to look at is like our little stat thing and it just says like, where do you hear your readers come from? One, the site two Facebook. Yeah. And like, it’s always been that way. But, um, yeah, you know, we, we, we do our best to, uh, to let the baristas utilize social media, keep people up to date and um, you know, cuz we wanna know these things too. So we figure, uh, so do the rest of you. And it’s a lot of fun when we all get to kind of do it together and hang out and have some delicious beer.
Bunny: (38:49)
So Chris, this is usually right at the end. I always say to, I usually ask people, well, what do you love best about New Mexico? And it’s always fun to talk to somebody who grew up here, but I think you just told us. I mean, I think we know what you love best about New Mexico, but go ahead and tell us.
Chris: (39:07)
Oh, I love the creative spirit and, and you know, breweries aren’t just creative in the sense of the beers they make. They’re not just creative and they’re decor, they’re creative in these events. They’re creative in the fact that other creatives come there. I mean, you think about what breweries they become for local musicians, without breweries they would have, you know, a half dozen venues. But with breweries they’ve got like, uh, 30, 40, 50 around the state. Local artists don’t, you know, well, who’s gonna go to a gallery? I don’t know. But I hung out my art at this brewery and people bought my art. People wanna see the art, you know, you, you think of just all these different things, you know to tonight actually I think is tractors, um, poetry and beer night poets get to come hang out at Tractor. You know, we’ve, we’ve had our poet laureates here in Albuquerque, they go perform at Tractor. And you just think about it over and over again. Breweries have become these creative hubs for, for people beyond just the, those that make the beer. And I think it’s a wonderful expression of all things local in our state. And every time there’s a local market and it’s just all these local vendors and artists and creators, and they, they’ve all come together at these places. And I think it, it hammers home the, you know, the support local, I think more than more than anything else we can do short of the farmer’s markets. This is, the breweries have become the local hub. And it’s, it’s a beautiful thing to see. And, um, it just reminds us that through all the, and I work at a TV station now, so I hear all about the bad parts of our state, but I think in, in a weird way, the breweries have become an example of what’s good here. And, I just, I just love that they bring people together, you know, just say, Hey, you know, life’s short. Let’s have some fun. Let’s have some fun. Let’s smile and laugh and dance and sing and, and be creative and, um, you know, let’s, let’s just give everybody that little second home that doesn’t require you to become falling down drunk to enjoy it. And, That’s, kinda the beautiful part of it.
Bunny: (41:22)
Well, Chris, I don’t, I don’t have anything to add to that I love that. And thank you for being here. You’re welcome. I’m gonna become a follower. Thank you so much, much.
Chris: (41:34)
Oh, thank you.