Lately we’ve been hearing a great deal about the worsening state of craft brewing on the national stage. Since 2020, increases in shipping, supply, and labor costs have completely changed the landscape for breweries all over America. For many New Mexico breweries, this new landscape feels less like the exciting undiscovered flora and fauna-rich beer frontier it once was, and more like a post-apocalyptic irradiated wasteland.

Couple that with the arrival of Gen Z, the new kids on non-beer drinking block, and drinkers in general who are drinking less beer than ever, and you’ll find that operating a brewery these days has become a bit tougher to sustain.

Yet, amid all the growing uncertainty, there are pockets of hope, havens of healthy craft scenes, and breweries that have found their sweet spot, the right model for their size and aspirations with a little room to grow.

I’m relieved to report that one brewery in Santa Fe is not only feeling comfortable for the first time in years; I dare say, they’re hitting their stride.

Recently I sat down with president and brewmaster Rod Tweet and newly appointed head brewer Will Harrer of Second Street Brewery to talk about what that looks like for Santa Fe’s second largest brewery.

“We had a good year,” Tweet said with assured smile.

With both restaurant/taproom locations humming along nicely, Tweet said he believes, for Second Street Brewery at least, that the worst of the pandemic was left behind at the beginning of 2023.

For Second Street staff, 2023 was less about catching up and more about carrying on.

“We made some improvements at both locations and got some really good staffing in place,” Tweet said. “And, it’s all kind of gelled. We’re stable.”

2023 was their first full year after closing the original location on its namesake street, and they’ve had enough time to put a little emotional distance between them and that hallowed space.

“It was a sad moment for a lot of people, and for us as well, but from a business point of view, (closing the original location) definitely worked out in our favor,” Tweet said.

Second Street is still currently doing better sales out of two locations than they were out of three, Tweet told us.

“We’re not spreading ourselves so thin anymore, in business resources and our bandwidth, honestly,” he said.

Second Street still feels the rise in the cost of malt, shipping, and labor (on the restaurant side). For them, it has leveled off to a manageable state, but it’s taken some time.

In terms of restaurant labor, for Second Street to run an operation of their size is a whole different world than it was a few years ago.

Tweet attributed that to a rapidly changing market rate for new hires and current employees.

“Coming out of the pandemic, it’s been an industry-wide change, and you know, just like everybody else in the restaurant business, we’ve raised our prices to make it all work,” he said. “We haven’t done any funky things with checks. We don’t tack things on. That’s not been our approach. We’ve done price increases, but food is up. Food is expensive, too, now, and we’ve just been scaling appropriately.”

But, despite that, or rather because of it, Second Street has had three solid years of sales increases, and they’re up this year over last year’s first quarter.

Right now, Second Street Brewery is right where they want to be.

“We’re in a pretty good spot. Business is back to being good,” Tweet said. “We’re well managed. I feel fortunate in saying that we’re getting growth on both the wholesale side and the restaurant side. I’ve got really strong, key staff in every area of the company now, which is a major thing. It’s taken years to put together honestly. So, yeah, I would indeed say we’re in a good spot.”

“I think we’re better than ever, honestly, going into summer 2024,” Harrer said of the brewhouse and of the production side of things. “We have all these new tanks that are pretty much totally online.”

In 2023, Second Street added 220 barrels worth of fermentation tanks, putting them around 500 total capacity along with some extra brite tank storage.

“All of that is online now,” Harrer said. “Everything is working. And, we’ve got a great team right now, where everybody is passionate about their role and just really enjoys being here.”

Speaking of someone who enjoys being here, Harrer was just promoted to the head brewer position, now leading a team of four. He’s been with Second Street since 2018, and has wanted to be a head brewer since he was 17 back in California.

Harrer said he is excited to step up into the role, and really happy about the team that has assembled around him, and he really seems to love what he’s doing. A while back, I was having a conversation about the brewers and who liked to do what job. And the co-worker remarked, “Will would take a turn on the brew deck every day if he could.”

“I think we are the perfect size, because we’re doing a ton of production and making tons of beer,” Harrer said. “It is a big production environment, but we are still small enough that there is room to experiment, and keep 24 taps full as best we can with different offerings. So that is great. And, I think everyone who is working in the brew house is great at what they do.”

It would be tough to speak of Second Street head brewers without acknowledging the contributions of brewer and longtime friend of the crew Tom Ludzia. After many years with Second Street, most of them spent brewing great beer at the OG location, Ludzia has now moved on to the Upaya Zen Center, a new path, perhaps, yet no less in service of the greater good and the community of Santa Fe. His beers and his overwhelming kindness will be missed around the brewery, and his parting is bittersweet for us all.

Another major role that changed at Second Street was that of the director of art and branding, Mariah Cameron Scee. Tweet tells us that Cameron Scee had been wanting to focus more on her freelance artwork for quite a while now.

“She covered a lot of ground for us,” Tweet said, “And so, basically what we did is crafted a modified position for her, where she will continue to do package art for us, and bigger-picture branding art. She’s also heading up the new website for the brewery. Mariah is still actually pretty involved, just more focused towards art.”

And so, Cameron-Scee will still stay on in a limited capacity, and the week-to-week advertising and music program requirements of the brewery will be entrusted into the very capable hands of current bartender extraordinaire Serafina Gluck, whom you’ve no doubt already met if you’ve ever had a beer at Rufina’s rail on a weeknight.

For 2024, Second Street’s focus is on running their two operations at Railyard and Rufina better and more smoothly, and steady growth for their wholesale operation.

And, said new head brewer Harrer, “(The brewing team’s) focus is make a make a ton of beer exceptionally, consistently, and make a lot of it.”

Speaking of which, recently released at the taprooms was the Riwaka Juicy Pale Ale, the first in a series of Southern Hemisphere juicy pale ales. They will also soon be canning Specifico Light Mexican Lager and Tipsy Parrot Pineapple Coconut Cream Ale, which just may reach an Albertsons near you.

Tweet also told us that there will be a couple new entries in the Sloppy Sloth hazy IPA series on the block, brewed with Waiti and Nectaron hops. And, they’re already working on the recipe for a Tropical Pilsner for our favorite Father’s Day weekend festival that you might have heard of — Crab and Pilsner! We’re all so excited that it’s back. I’ll have a full preview with brewery and beer lineup in the weeks to come.

Finally, this year, Second Street will be brewing their 1,000th batch at the Rufina location, but the details of that are yet to be decided. You know we’ll keep you posted.

On the expansion front, there are no major projects in the works for 2024. They’re just working on scaling up the volume of production to fill all the new tanks to meet the needs of the taprooms and wholesale market.

Accounting for around 68 percent of the business, the wholesale program has become the widest avenue for forward progress. Second Street had just started their wholesale operation before the pandemic, pushing their package goods into new markets with a new team. They had never really had a need to keep scaling beyond their capacity, but that’s a good thing. As they now find themselves in a position of having unrealized market penetration and with all the new tanks, they have room to grow.

“The kind of rapid growth that was possible 10 years ago is a little different than now, but we are getting growth. So I’m pretty happy with how it’s going,” Tweet said.

Second Street may not have doubled their production in 2023, but they hit a nice stride and they plan to keep going. They’re on track to produce about 5,000 barrels by the end of this year, up from last years 4,500.

A special thank you to Rod Tweet and Will Harrer for sitting down with the Crew. And, to all the wonderful people in the company, from bartenders to managers, servers, beer truck delivery drivers, sales dudes, cellar persons new and old, and those poor accountants just trying to figure it all out, thank you for helping to maintain a certain standard here in the city limits for how a brewery taproom should feel to friends, families, locals, and visiting, and maintaining a certain standard for how great local beer should taste since 1996.

To all of you fine folk at Second Street, cheers!

— Luke

Luke has been writing for the Dark Side Brew Crew for 9 years, covering the Santa Fe beer scene and beyond.