One brewery wanted to expand its production. Another brewery wanted to scale back on one of its locations.

That is the genesis of a unique new partnership between Gravity Bound Brewing and Boese Brothers Brewery, one which will see the former take over the latter’s downtown taproom space, while both breweries will share use of the production brewing space in the back.

I caught up with Gravity Bound co-owners/brothers Cameron and Chris Frigon to go over their plans for this new venture, what it means for their existing brewery, and more.

“It’s kind of a long story, but we’ve been super thin on (brewing) capacity here for a long time,” said Cameron, who is also Gravity Bound’s brewer. “It’s been a huge stressor for us personally and from a business standpoint. And so, we’ve been seeking out some ways to alleviate that issue. A few things have come and gone.

“One night, just through the small Albuquerque grapevine, we heard that Boese was moving up to Rio Rancho. We thought like, hey, we want to take over an existing production space. We didn’t want to try to build from scratch. The amount of headache increases exponentially when you do that. So we were just looking for an existing production space.”

Considering the current lack of contractors available to turn a regular building into a brewery, the move made total sense, even if there is not the usual miles upon miles between the two locations.

“Obviously, usually the strategy is you have a location and then you go much further away and open up another location,” Cameron said. “You kind of like to spread out. (But) we’re really downtown people. This is our neighborhood. It challenged us to sort of think of a new concept, or something else we’d like to try. Some new avenues we’d just like to explore. The coffee/lager house is what we started dreaming up. We’re pretty excited to branch out a little bit here. Try some new things or just variations on an old thing.”

The Boese space at Sixth Street and Gold Avenue will have a different name from Gravity Bound, and a different concept. It will be both a coffee shop and a lager house, the latter of which is something Albuquerque has been lacking for a long time.

“With the caveat of this is also to supplement the Gravity Bound tap list as well,” Chris said. “Like Cameron said, it’s been a gigantic pain to keep enough beers on this board. We cut packaging (in cans) all together this year. Four-packs have not been available because we’ve been prioritizing our tap list instead of to-go options.”

“Even then, there are days where it’s like there are only two or three beers (on tap) and it’s like, oh crap,” Cameron added.

“So this will help with that, and it’s always something that we’ve seen in beer-centric cities,” Chris said of the lager house concept. “These are going back to that fundamental lager route, where you do just a few styles, and you do them very well.”

The brewing production space will not essentially feed three separate breweries — the lager house out front, Gravity Bound, and the Boese Brothers taprooms on Tramway, in Santa Fe (Desert Dogs), and Los Alamos, plus the long-rumored Rio Rancho location (opening date TBA).

“It’s a shared-use (agreement),” Chris said. “We’re taking over their taproom, we’re taking over the patio. For the production area, it’s a shared-use agreement in place to allow them to utilize the equipment once or twice a week to make sure they’re keeping up with their brewing capacity for their other locations, and then we get to utilize that space as well for us.”

For the lager house component, and to some extent for Gravity Bound, Cameron is ordering some new toys to play with to upgrade the brewing system and add capacity.

“Cameron is going through and ordering a lot more equipment to supplement that,” Chris said. “Just so we can, one, do the speciality lagers, and then also have enough fermentation space for here. I’ll let him talk about that.”

Cameron was all too eager to do just that.

“They (Boese Brothers) have indicated to us that they need the space about once a week to brew,” he said. “The rest of the time it’s ours. They’re leaving all of their equipment, essentially — boiler, glycol chiller, some of the infrastructure, floor drains, water filtration. So that’s going to help us focus our capital on the equipment that’s necessary to brew continental European-style lagers.

“We’re modifying the existing brewhouse into a four-vessel system. So like I said, separate mash tun, mash kettle, lauter tun, and then there’s the kettle/whirlpool combo. Multiple decoction capable is what we’re aiming for. We’ve got horizontal lagering tanks that we’ve ordered, both in the 15-barrel and 30-barrel size.

“And then, we’ll have an open-vat fermentation chamber where we can ferment some of the beers that will probably benefit from that. Right now the lineup is (planned to be) a pilsner, a helles, a dunkel, and a hefeweizen. I bought the open-vat fermentation specifically for the hefeweizen, but I’m really excited for doing other lagers.”

Cameron was smiling from ear to ear throughout describing all of these upgrades/new toys.

“It’s a nice little upgrade,” he joked. “There’s just not enough buttons over there (on the original GB brewhouse).”

Chris said they are still working on the right name for the new space, just to help differentiate it from Gravity Bound and Boese Brothers.

“It’s going to be a completely different brand, different concept,” he said. “We understand the proximity to Boese’s location. Gravity Bound is supposed to be a little bit more on the forefront of styles where we’re offering a wider range. A different kind of setting.

“We’re still going to focus on newer styles (here), fruited sours, hazy IPAs. We’re just trying to expand out our menu and have a little bit more stable menu than what we have been able to offer for the last few years.”

The new place will have “just four or five styles that we’re doing all the time, just classic, European lagers that we’ve really enjoyed, and not rotating the tap list all the time,” Chris added. “We’ll have staples and we’re going to enjoy them.”

Gravity Bound’s brewhouse will not be going anywhere, either.

“We’re still going to be utilizing the system,” Chris said. “Gravity Bound is supposed to be small batch. We’ll keep rotating here. This just gives us the capability to offer more package, have some more stable, core beers that we only bring back once or twice a year right now. Those should be available a little bit longer.”

Now comes the tough question: When will the new space be up and running?

“We’re always optimistic with our timelines, but you never know what’s going to happen,” Chris said. “We’re aiming for spring 2025. We’re doing a lot of (renovations), just remodel the taproom, too. It’s not like a cut-and-paste taproom. It’s something we really care about and we really want to make comfortable. Especially with this shared use of coffee and lager, which both have a lot of similarities. It’s just people hanging around, working or just visiting with each other. We’re going to make it as comfortable as possible. I think we’ll be able to pull it off.”

Chris said it will be a nice complement to the Ex Novo location just a block-plus away.

“Downtown just needs more stuff,” he said. “I think it plays well off each other, too.”

Albuquerque has been in need of a proper lager house for a while now, and this is definitely a move that will help both Gravity Bound and Boese Brothers going forward. We will catch up more with the latter when it’s their turn in the upcoming Look Back/Look Ahead Series, but for now, Cameron and Chris have promised to keep us up to date on the progress of the conversion of the downtown taproom and production brewery.

A big thanks to the brothers for meeting up. Oh, and the long-awaited shade structure at Gravity Bound was being built on the patio as our interview took place. Which means winter is totally around the corner, but hey, at least next summer will be a lot more comfortable out there on the patio during the daytime.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister