When a brewery finds its niche, it should always embrace and expand that comfort zone. For Bombs Away Beer Company, the connection to the military has always been there, and now from a brewing perspective, that niche has been found, too.

I recently caught up with co-owner/head brewer John Degnaro and assistant brewer Ryan Benefield for our Look Back/Look Ahead Series, marking an overdue visit on my part to the brewery located at 9801 Acoma Rd SE.

“Our numbers one through three selling beers are all lagers,” Degnaro said. “Ryan is drinking our number one, Proximity Pilsner. Our number two is High Speed Low Drag. This time of year it’s easy to keep up with production. Pretty much all we make are lagers and IPA.”

With 10 Seconds to Helles rounding out that top three, Bombs Away is the rare brewery where the customer base has embraced lagers over all else. The house West Coast and hazy IPAs only rank fourth and fifth, while the darker beers and fruited sours are further down.

To keep up with demand, and with the busier spring and summer seasons ahead, Bombs Away is getting some upgrades behind the scenes.

“We’ve added a couple of additional tanks,” Degnaro said. “Today, I’m making a decision on a pair of lagering tanks. This is our new hot liquor tank, that’s a big quality of life back here. We added a new cold liquor tank; we actually picked that up from (the former) Toltec. Bosque reached out to us to see if we wanted any equipment from there.

“We’re still rolling with five fermenters, though I do have plans for a sixth later this year. That will be a nice thing with us.”

Those are just about the biggest things on deck for Bombs Away, a brewery fully concentrated on its base location. Degnaro said that other than a dozen or so events at the nearby Nuclear Museum, all of Bombs Away’s beers are sold directly from their own taps.

“I wouldn’t want to be doing it any other way,” he said. “I said that when we started out six or seven years ago. I just really want to focus on this location. Not only from a quality standpoint, but we control the growth and the rate of the growth.”

As noted, Bombs Away also has a solid and loyal customer base, a mix of retired military, active duty members from Kirtland Air Force Base, and even quite a few employees from Sandia National Labs.

“We probably could put something into space with our clientele,” Degnaro said with a smile. “Not only the design, but the manufacturing of it.”

Having such a loyal and consistent customer base has benefits beyond just the sales numbers.

“Our customers have high standards, but I think that’s driven by our own high standards,” Degnaro said. “We attract the people by the standards we have, the quality of the product we have on tap. And, not just our beer, but our service, our atmosphere, our food, all of it.”

One loyal customer who now works in the back is the aforementioned assistant brewer.

“Actually, next month I will have been here for two years,” Benefield said. “I went through the CNM brewing program, but prior to that, military, and then I did maintenance at a group home for 15 to 16 years. So working in this industry is new to me. I love every second of it. I started off as a server up front, just to learn every aspect of it. When I was coming up with my plan, I wanted to work at Bombs Away, and here I am.”

In addition to Benefield, Bombs Away has been able to rely on a solid group of employees.

“I’d say in the past year we’ve been settling in with a very solid crew,” Degnaro said. “The group out front and in the brewery has been fantastic. We have some people who work out front and then a few days back here. We take care of our people and they take care of us.”

With the crew in place, that helped free up Degnaro and Benefield to really focus on making the beers even better, which in turn keeps the customers even happier.

“I’d say the bigger part of it is we’re constantly developing not just the process of it, but the recipes for our lagers,” Degnaro said. “For example, we just reworked something as subtle as the hoppings on our helles. That’s a very subtly hopped beer to begin with. We made what I think is a huge change to it, though it doesn’t change the beer coming out of the taps, but I think it improves the beer.”

So what to expect in the rest of 2024? It should not come as a huge surprise.

“More lagers,” Degnaro said. “Well, I’m kind of shooting myself in the foot. I have a hard time keeping up with production for three quarters of the year, but we’ll add some more equipment. More lagers is our goal for 2024. I may even put some more that stay there all the time. I’m always reluctant to put another house beer on the board, but that’s what our customer wants, and that’s what we like to drink.”

Sometimes the simplest plans are the ones that truly work for a brewery. If you have not been out to Bombs Away in a while, head on over and check out all of those lagers. I personally enjoyed the Baltic porter that is on tap right now, and will be back to hit up more lagers in the near future.

A big thanks to John and Ryan for the interview.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister