Downshift Brewing was born out of an idea to downshift in life, to change the perspective and lifestyle of its owners from big-city chaos to small-town tranquility.

Sometimes, though, an opportunity presents itself that cannot be missed, and a little brewing operation suddenly ended up getting bigger overnight. To learn more about this sudden growth spurt, Luke and I utilized a shared day off to travel together to Ruidoso to meet up with Downshift owners Eddie Gutierrez and Shelby Rist-Gutierrez at their new Riverside taproom at 2704 Sudderth Dr.

We met up on the lovely outdoor deck of the building that used to house Sacred Grounds, a longtime local coffee shop that had closed its doors earlier this year.

“I think I was probably, we both probably were way too naive in thinking we could move home and start a business and then life would still be simple and slow-paced,” Eddie said. “Honestly, this was never on our radar. Due to some very, very lucky circumstances, the place became available and we were able to purchase this incredible space. That was never really our intention, though.

“The Hidden Tap, the plan from all along was to build the brewery in the basement and just kind of have that.”

“Which many people said couldn’t be done, but it’s been done, and we did it,” Shelby added.

Downshift has its brewery just a few blocks to the east at 2408 Sudderth, having taken over the former beer bar known as Hidden Tap back in late 2021. While some breweries would think that having two locations separated by a less-than-10-minute walk would simply cannibalize their own customer base, the situation for Eddie and Shelby was different.

“It came on the market in January,” Shelby said. “We’ve always loved this (space). It was Sacred Grounds before, which was a little coffee shop in high school. That was like our spot. Every time we would come back we would want to go there. They would have these bomb ginger cookies, all these great things, and great coffee.

“In 2014, they built this space to expand. It was a lovely couple, the Ponders, but unfortunately he passed away during COVID. They had some people running it, (but) it didn’t work out, so she decided she wanted to sell it. We happened to find out about it, and (Eddie) had talked about if we could build our ideal taproom, what would it look like. This had so many elements of that. It checked so many boxes — it had the views, it had the space, it had the live music space. We’re huge live music people, we do tons of live music at this spot and our other spot. There was not another piece of land in this village that we could have built this space on, so we were not ready to do this, but we had to do this.”

“We were definitely not ready,” Eddie added.

“We closed on (April 17), and in a month we’ve transformed it,” Shelby continued. “It’s been huge in the fact that every single employee that worked here before stayed on with us. It’s their blood, sweat, and tears in this place. Every wall that’s been painted, every deck that’s been refinished, it’s been all hands on deck, literally.”

Downshift Riverside had its official grand opening on Memorial Day weekend, but it was already abuzz the weekend before when we visited. The building feels like it is only one floor when you look from Sudderth, the main road through Ruidoso, but it is built on a hill overlooking the Noisy Water River, so it slopes down. There are multiple outdoor decks, one on the west side where we conducted the interview, and on two separate levels on the north side looking down on the river. The interior features multiple separate rooms, including one that is more for dining, one by the bar, and one for watching live music. It features a full kitchen, the entire Downshift beer lineup of year-round and current seasonal offerings, and a to-go fridge with canned beers.

“That’s been a really cool part of this whole process, getting it done in a month would have impossible with the people we had on day one, but there were so many people who just showed up and said I want to be a part of this thing,” Eddie said. “People from all walks of life, people from all age brackets as well.”

“They were so excited to see it brought back to life, because it had fallen off,” Shelby added.

Eddie said it was the business that had fallen off, as the building itself was in good shape when they took over. It just needed some new paint and a remodel in certain places to make it into the taproom that he and Shelby always wanted.

“Because we have more space here, we get to do more,” she said. “Have more events, have more music, larger scale. We’re planning on doing Rocky Horror Picture Show live in October. We’re going to do some fun stuff that we couldn’t do in our other spaces because they’re (too) small.”

It is still slightly amusing to see the growth of Downshift, since the initial purpose of opening a small brewery in their hometown was to simply downshift in life after Eddie and Shelby spent years caught up in the nonstop go-go-go world of Houston.

“That’s definitely where the name came from, my wife and I were living a really fast-paced life,” Eddie said. “Shelby was in really high-end real estate and working crazy hours. I was the head brewer and production manager and R&D brewer and all the things for st. Arnold. Our first kid was born and COVID hit, and it just really changed our perspective and what we wanted, and what we wanted to focus on in life.

“At least for me, I had never been in a big city like Houston until (I was) living there. You get into the groove and you’re trying to keep up with the Joneses. When we had our kid, it was like a wake-up call. That’s not what I want at all. I’d rather move back to my hometown, do something in a small community, and also just in general in New Mexico.”

“I think it was also a matter of what do we want to do with our lives, is this the direction we want to go?” Shelby added. “Are we making the difference that we set out to make? Are we accomplishing the goals we want for our lives? We only have so many years on this earth. What are we doing that’s going to make an impact?”

That led them to move home to Ruidoso and start their new business, aiming to not only slow things down in their own lives, but to help their original community.

“We’ve been fortunate enough to do a few things for the community here,” Eddie said. “That’s an important part of it. Also, the employees, we’ve got a handful of employees, and again it’s all about perspective. We look at having employees as our responsibility to better their lives, and make sure that we’re doing everything we can to make sure their goals are being met, personally, professionally, whatever they need.”

Through a stroke of luck, Downshift was also able to obtain a presence in Albuquerque with the Outpost 1706 taproom in Old Town. Eddie went to high school with the taproom’s co-owner, Cody Huffmon, and then also knew his uncle, Pete Kassetas, who were trying to open a beer bar, but needed an offsite small brewer license to really get it going since they did not have a kitchen to obtain a beer-and-wine license. In the end, both parties came to an agreement, and Downshift beers have been flowing in New Mexico’s biggest city for many months now.

“If it wasn’t working with Cody and Pete, we would have probably done something up in Albuquerque,” Eddie said. “It’s interesting to see the beer dynamic in New Mexico, it’s very separated. You have Albuquerque and Santa Fe and surrounding areas, and then everybody else. It’s interesting, but it’s separate. This gives us kind of an opportunity to kind of bridge the two, connect it.”

With that dual perspective, we asked Eddie what he viewed as the main differences between the two sets of beer drinkers in New Mexico.

“Ruidoso is an interesting market,” Eddie said. “A lot of people want really light beer. They’re coming out of El Paso, Midland, Lubbock, or even Carlsbad (and) Artesia, so light beer is huge. IPA is obviously everywhere. One nice kind of local (trend), or I feel is mostly local, is for dark beers. Not necessarily heavy dark beer, but just dark beer in general. Ambers, porters, we do this Czech dark lager that’s 4-percent (ABV). It’s a little bit of everything, but the nice thing that we’ve come to find, especially in Ruidoso, is we have a really nice captive audience of locals.”

“They’ll try anything,” Shelby added. “Whatever is new, they’ll try that.”

Eddie said that early on, he brewed a smaller-than-usual batch of Vienna lager, worried that the locals would not like a more amber-colored beer. Instead, he said it was gone in the blink of an eye, as the locals could not get enough. Now it is brewed year-round, known as Hiking Beer on the brewery menu.

“It’s cool to have a captive audience that just go with you wherever you’re going, but I would say in terms of (overall) demand, the beer scenes are similar, Houston and New Mexico,” Eddie said. “I would say the one thing that is different is the way IPAs are built in New Mexico versus Texas. But, that’s probably true between every market.”

While a strong base of local beer drinkers keeps the taps flowing, like other more tourist-centered towns, Ruidoso has its busy seasons, and its slow seasons, which presents its own set of challenges.

“This is biker weekend, that kind of kicks off the summertime,” Shelby said. “The village of Ruidoso is 8,000 people. And then, when we have big weekends, it’s 50,000 people. It’s tough. We have to staff year-round for all of those people, and they expect Houston service or Albuquerque service, and it’s an hour wait. We have only have so many humans that we can fit in this kitchen. It’s tough, we’ve definitely had to roll with the punches on that front, and learn from it in our almost 18 months of business.”

Ruidoso does get a lot of repeat visitors, Shelby added, from folks who just like to come to town from nearby places like El Paso and Juarez, or even those who own a second home in the mountains. That certainly helps in that they become more used to the ebb and flow of the crowds and how it impacts local businesses like Downshift.

As business continues to grow for Downshift, one thing that has become abundantly clear is that the brewery is fairly maxed out in its small space at Hidden Tap. That proved to be another reason for the purchase of the Riverside location, which as a property is bigger than just the building that the taproom now occupies.

“Another thing about this property is this house (to the west) is part of the property, this building is part of the property, and then the next lot over (to the east), which is an empty lot,” Eddie said. “The brewery, the actual production facility will be next door. We’re talking probably five years down the road. That’s the next thing to be done. We would get into grocery (stores), at least locally. Right now we have three accounts in town, because we don’t have the capacity to brew enough beers.”

The house to the west will be converted into a sort of apartment building for the Downshift staff, helping defray the rising costs of living in a popular tourist town like Ruidoso. The lot to the east is the targeted spot for the bigger brewery building.

“We’re going to have to go tall over there because it’s a narrow lot, and it backs down to the river, so he’s like ‘coolship,’” Shelby said.

Hey, it worked for the breweries of the 19th century in New Mexico, including the original Santa Fe Brewing, so that should be a nice throwback for Downshift and its growing customer base.

In the end, this was an exceptionally pleasant visit to Ruidoso. We hit up both Downshift locations, and enjoyed the different vibe that they had to offer. Riverside looks it will be a true gem of a taproom, and with some solid, tasty brews on tap, Downshift has moved into the upper echelon of small-town breweries in New Mexico, right alongside its brewing neighbor, Lost Hiker (which we will feature again next week). The next time you are looking at an in-state vacation, but want to make sure the beers match the locale, make sure to add Ruidoso to your list.

A big thanks to Eddie and Shelby for taking the time to sit down and talk in the midst of opening their new location. We look forward to our next trip down south, and in the meantime, can always hit up Outpost 1706 to keep track of what new beers are rolling out from Downshift.

Keep supporting local statewide!

— Stoutmeister