Danny Harmon has long been one of the most positive and upbeat people in the entire local craft brewing industry, so it should be no surprise that Harmon Lane Brewing exudes that same sense of fun and positivity.

“2023 was good for Harmon Lane,” said Harmon, the co-owner and brewer. “We got to do a few more festivals, did a couple of collabs. We grew as a brewery here on site. Overall, 2023 was a good year for us. I’m really looking forward to 2024. We’re off to a good start already, which has been kind of surprising. January, February are usually kind of slow. But for us, we hit an uptick. I’m really excited for the spring and summer.”

One of those collaborations was the Stennes Blonde Stout with Quarter Celtic, a brewery with which Harmon Lane has established a fun relationship.

“Those guys over at Quarter Celtic, we love the fact that we don’t take each other or ourselves that seriously,” Harmon said. “It’s a really good partnership and relationship to have the ‘rivalry.’ It’s been a lot of fun. The collab that we did this (past) year was great time, the blonde stout, and then the Celtic Festival when we were side-by-side, making funny posters, going back and forth. Just the online stuff, we’re really enjoying it. We’ve got to get back with those guys a little bit, get back on it, and hopefully we have some more tricks up our sleeves for 2024.”

As a smaller brewery, Harmon Lane could have found itself unaffected by the recent beer trends toward lighter ABV ales and lagers. Instead, it saw those same trends at the bigger breweries when adding up the sales numbers.

“As far as our beer trends go, it’s about the same,” Harmon said. “Our lager is now our number one selling beer, followed by our amber and blonde, and then our IPA after that. We’ve been right on trend with everyone else. The lighter beers, the easier-drinking beers have really made a comeback. I really enjoy it, those beers are fun to brew. They’re not necessarily easier, but they don’t require as much time when you’re brewing.”

Harmon Lane shares a space with Southwest Grape and Grain at 3401 Candelaria Rd NE, which means that Harmon has a lot of access to the shop’s supply of various hops and yeasts. That, and the fact that there is no distribution calendar or anything of that sort, means that Harmon can play around with his recipes.

“What’s been fun, too, has been experimenting with different yeasts with the lagers,” he said. “Doing the 34-70 as our main lagering yeast, but now we’ve been experimenting with Nova Lager, pressure fermenting with both of those yeasts, and kind of seeing how those things change the beers. People like them, people don’t like them, (but) the feedback has been mostly positive on all of our experiments.”

The equipment in the brewing room also lends itself to some experimentation.

“I’ve been experimenting with splitting beers, because we have a 2-barrel system and a pair of 1-barrel fermenters,” Harmon said. “So what I’ve been doing is brewing one batch, splitting it, and then either using a different yeast or dry-hopping with different hops, seeing how different the beers come out. Even though it’s the same wort, it’s a totally different product. The peach wheat, we use a US 05 (yeast), and for our hefeweizen we use a hefe yeast, and you would never guess it’s the exact same wort.”

Harmon Lane currently has a flight of four differently flavored stouts, all of which were derived from the base Tin Cup Stout.

“We’re just seeing how people react to it and enjoy it, not even realizing it’s the exact same (base) beer,” Harmon said. “It’s fun to see how you can play with beer subtly and it totally changes the entire thing.”

As one of the smaller breweries in town, Harmon Lane still does get a few customers walking in surprised to find a brewery, but those are fewer than in years past. Getting out to festivals and doing popular collaboration beers has certainly helped get the word out.

“We do see that a little bit more,” Harmon said. “I would definitely say that when we had the collab with Quarter Celtic, we had people come in to try our other beers. We’re very appreciative of those guys being willing to do that with us. And then, doing the festivals for sure has been getting our name out. Whenever we do the Science of Beer night at Explora, or the Celtic Festival, or even the United in Beer Festival last year, we definitely get a little bump.”

Harmon added that up until recently, Google had given the brewery a 5-star rating (it’s down to 4.9 now), which also drew in a few new customers.

“We’ve been seeing a lot more people coming in for just a beer, not just home-brew shoppers coming in and having a beer while they shop,” he said. “We’ve been getting a lot more customers to come in and have a pint, which is nice.”

As festival season is just around the corner, Harmon said that they are already gearing up to take the beers out for some trips around the state.

“We’re trying to get a lot more festivals going,” he said. “We’re signed up to do the Rio Grande Celtic Festival again. We’re hoping, fingers crossed, to go down and do the Brew-a-doso, get our beer to another part of the state. The Great New Mexico Beer Festival is supposed to be coming back again. We’re going to partner up with those guys and do our beer tasting classes as well as selling beer at that festival. We’re still going to do be doing the Science of Beer nights. And then, we’ll see, we don’t have anything else planned (yet).

“As far as events here, we’ve got the home brewer happy hour once a month, going over a topic on home brewing, give them a chance to gather, share knowledge, and just have a fun kind of a community event to get together. That’s about it right now.”

That should be more than enough for now. As we have said before, if you still have not made it over to try Harmon Lane, plan a visit and enjoy some tasty brews and great hospitality. Danny is there just about every Friday afternoon if you want to stop by and say hello.

A big thanks to Danny, and his very patient 8-month-old daughter (she was an angel during this interview), for taking the time to chat before the crowd rolled in last Friday.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister