Scott Hallenbeck, 60, died on April 1 after a short battle with cancer, per an obituary on the Daniels Family Funeral website. Nexus owner Ken Carson recently passed along this sad news.

Back in 2009, Hallenbeck and his business partner Jeff Brick started up Hallenbrick Brewery, located on Hawkins Street just west of Jefferson and north of Ellison. It was not far from where the former Rio Grande Brewing was located.

In many ways, Hallenbrick was a brewery ahead of its time. It was a small operation, with a neighborhood pub vibe not dissimilar to what we now have in places like Sidetrack, Gravity Bound, Thirsty Eye, and the like. Other breweries back then were industrial production places like Marble, or brewpubs with full kitchens like Chama River and Turtle Mountain.

Hallenbrick brewed up anywhere from one to two beers at a time, with the rest of the taps filled by other breweries. There were still some standouts, from an altbier to the Adobe Stout, which the Crew enjoyed before we were the Crew, when we stopped at Hallenbrick during Franz Solo’s bachelor party brewery crawl. There were a couple of local musicians performing, and the father of one bought us a second round of the strong stout, which checked in around 8-percent ABV, if fuzzy memory serves me correctly.

The Green Zia IPA took third place in the 2009 IPA Challenge, even before Hallenbrick opened its doors.

This was also the brewery where I first met Leah Black, who was trying to pour beers with her broken wrist in an air cast. It was from a snowboarding accident, I recall, but she powered through it.

Scott, though, was the mainstay in the pub area, chatting with customers, telling stories, and enjoying a pint or two.

As we were not yet beer writers, I was not exactly aware of how things were going behind the scenes, but by the time October 2011 rolled around, ABQ Beer Geek reported that after a fallout between Hallenbeck and his partner, a decision had been made to close the brewery.

The Crew launched this site in January 2012, and one early regret that I expressed to the rest of the guys was that we never did get to write a proper article on Hallenbrick. It was a good little hangout for a couple years, one that helped expand my palate and introduce me to a lot of beers from around town and around the state (Santa Fe and Sierra Blanca both filled guest taps alongside the Albuquerque/Rio Rancho breweries).

Years after Hallenbrick closed, we would still see Scott out enjoying beers at other breweries. He still had his other successful business, Hall Environmental Analysis Laboratory.

To all of Scott’s family and friends, we send along our condolences. We wish we could have gotten to know him a little better and that his awesome little brewery had been around longer.

Raise your glasses to one of the pioneers of our modern brewing scene.

— Stoutmeister