Call them crazy. Call them ambitious. Call them whatever you want, but Bosque Brewing is growing. Again.

The brewery has announced plans on social media to open three new off-site locations — at the former Lava Rock Brewing on the Westside, at a former Applebee’s at San Mateo and Academy, and at Duke City Beaches on Menaul near Morris. The first two will be similar to their other public houses, with full kitchens and the lineup of Bosque beers, ciders, and cocktails. The latter will be a Drinkery, similar to the Santa Fe location, with just drinks and no kitchen.

It goes against what is a downward trend across the craft beer industry, with sales declining significantly nationwide, and here in the Albuquerque area. After all, we just saw Boxing Bear close its West Downtown taproom after not seeing any growth there for years. B2B Garden Brewery shuttered its doors in the Northeast Heights. Lava Rock, of course, bolted for Moriarty.

There is more, of course. Ex Novo is moving in at Central and Seventh Street downtown, but founder Joel Gregory said that is the extent of any planned expansion. As in ever, or at least that is the plan for now. There are rumors of multiple breweries potentially being put up for sale, with at least a couple (we will not say which ones) even contemplating closing outright. Both Enchanted Circle in Angel Fire and Blü Dragonfly outside Raton have been up for sale for a while now, but no buyers have emerged.

Nationwide, legacy brands are going bankrupt, like Flying Fish in New Jersey, or going out of business entirely, like Anchor in San Francisco. Oregon alone saw 30 breweries and taprooms close in 2023, including stalwarts like Ecliptic and, yes, Ex Novo.

So why would Bosque buck this trend? They told the Albuquerque Journal that they simply could not pass up on the three available properties, and pointed out that they have opened multiple locations within a relatively short timespan in the past. That may be true, but three at the same time is quite an undertaking for any business.

On the bright side, it will mean new jobs are being created, and we will likely see some deserving current Bosque staffers getting promotions into managerial roles at the new locations.

Still, one cannot help but wonder how much debt the brewery is taking on with these maneuvers. As a private company, Bosque is under zero obligation to let local media know full details about their financial status, and we do not ever expect them to let us, much less the public, get a peek at their books. Perhaps they are not taking on any debt, or they are supremely confident that any accrued debt will be quickly erased once the taprooms are open and people flood inside.

As the Boxing Bear leadership told us, however, the more taprooms you have, the less and less any of them become a destination. They simply become neighborhood spots, reaching a certain level of sales that never really grow beyond that mark, becoming stagnant over time. With these openings, Bosque will have two taprooms west of the river and three in the Northeast Heights. While they are fairly spaced apart, they will cannibalize some of the customers who lived at the outer stretches of the prior taprooms’ reach.

It nonetheless has all the makings of a bold move, or perhaps an insane one, depending on how you perceive it. Die-hard Bosque fans, particularly those who live close to one of the new locations, will be stoked. Others will be skeptical, worrying that these are the moves that could plunge the company into disarray.

We will hope for the best, that this all works out the same way it did the first time Bosque expanded, and the second, and the third, and so on. At this point it would be somewhat foolish to believe that the ownership group does not know how to do this properly. But, they have never done this when all the national and local momentum is going against breweries and craft beer. It is a massive gamble, more so than any previous expansion.

Our fingers are crossed, but we cannot help but be but a little worried that this is the very wrong time to seek growth amid an industry in turmoil.

Good luck, Bosque. We hope that you prove all the naysayers wrong and continue to flourish.

— Stoutmeister