UPDATE: Ownership has informed us that there is still some limited brewing in Clovis, so you may still find a house beer or two on tap out there. Those beers will not be carried in Albuquerque, however.

Many moons ago, before all this gray crept into my beard, I met up with a group of crossfit enthusiasts who were opening a brewery on Candelaria just west of I-25. It was one of many to debut in that 2014 to 2017 stretch, so many that it almost got lost in the shuffle.

Through all the ups and downs, new taprooms, canning lines, staff changes and the like, Red Door Brewing just kept chugging along. Until it stopped, at least as a brewery in Albuquerque, which we learned about thanks to a reader who visited the downtown Albuquerque taproom over the weekend.

The website now calls it Red Door Drinkery, so the business is not dying, but there will no longer be any house beers on tap. The downtown location here will continue to operate as usual, just without the Cream Ale, West Coast IPA, and other regular brews. When Red Door took over the former Blackbird Buvette space, it came with a full liquor license, hence the ability to continue.

The Clovis locations will still operate off a small brewer license based there, with limited brewing and no distribution beyond the town.

Still, we will miss the brewery part of things here. Red Door opened in September 2014, giving it an even 10 years worth of making beer. The first offsite taproom opened in the Simms Building downtown at Gold and 4th in June 2016. There was the video game room in an old bank vault; we will always remember that fun little quirk.

A taproom opened in the Northeast Heights in the same building as Poki Poki in November 2017. It closed less than a year later. 2018 still ended up being a good year, as Matt Meier was hired to handle the brewing, and the Clovis taproom was announced.

Meier got a canning line in March 2019 as the brewery moved into distribution. After the Clovis location opened that same month, May saw the announcement of a Roswell taproom, which would open in November. In between that, the downtown taproom relocated to Central in the old Blackbird Buvette spot.

Then along came the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown. The Roswell taproom closed for good in May 2020.

Next came the even more surprising news, as Red Door shuttered the original location on Candelaria in April 2021. All brewing moved to the shared Mother Trail space off Bellamah and 12th Street.

While a second Clovis location would open in 2023, change was afoot behind the scenes in Albuquerque. Ownership of Mother Trail changed hands and Red Door moved its brewing over to Rio Bravo. The original brewhouse was sold to the forthcoming Nurvis Purvis Brewing in Carlsbad this year.

A piece of the local beer scene has quietly faded away. Still, it gave us plenty of good memories. We did two collaboration beers there, Raining Blood Imperial Red Ale and Czar of Aberdeen, a bonkers imperial stout/wee heavy mash-up that had the unfortunate luck of debuting during the start of the 2020 lockdown.

We will raise a glass or two this weekend to the good people we got to know there. It was at Red Door that we first met Frank Holloway, long before he opened Hollow Spirits. We brewed with Meier and still count Matt as a good friend (heck, he’s in our fantasy English soccer league, the crazy fool), even as he left the brewing industry behind for one of those weird 9-to-5 jobs. We will miss Ali Cattin, who bounced over to Santa Fe Brewing and stayed involved with the NM Brewers Guild until she upped and moved to Minnesota (godspeed with your first winter up there). And, to everyone else from owner Matt Biggs to all the staff members who greeted us over the years, we wish you luck in all your future endeavors.

Cheers!

— Stoutmeister