There were some good things that came out of the COVID pandemic.

No, really, there were. Well, one thing, at least, as the new head brewer at the new Flix Brewhouse location told us recently.

“It was a COVID hobby, beer drinking, (since) patios were the only things open,” said Holly Garand as we sat inside the lobby of Flix East, located at 12921 Indian School Rd NE, next to the Hinkle Family Fun Center just east of Tramway. “Breweries seemed fun and interesting. I was at Rio Bravo one day and their bartender was taking the brewing program at CNM. He was telling me about it and I was like, whoa, hold on, I can go to school to learn how to make beer? I can do this professionally? I never home brewed, never did anything.”

Bord and raised in Albuquerque, Garand said she started the program in August 2022, got a homebrew kit in October, and before she could even open it she started her first brewing job at Brew Lab 101 in Rio Rancho in November.

After working there into 2024, Garand moved over a year ago to take the assistant brewer position at the Flix Brewhouse on the westside. Garand said she had been working in restaurants since she was 17, enduring plenty of chaos along the way, and the more structured setup at Flix was appealing.

“There’s an SOP for an SOP for an SOP here, and that is my favorite part,” she said with a laugh.

The original idea was for Garand to train at the westside location in order to be ready to run the show at the eastside spot once it opened.

“Kind of, that was the plan during my interview to be the assistant brewer over there when they were talking about (this location) being open,” she said. “I didn’t feel fully confident in myself yet that I could be a head brewer and take over. Working at Flix, it was my second assistant brewer job, (and I was still) trying to figure out what was going on.”

The usual slew of delays in construction and permitting kept Flix East from opening until this past summer. That also gave Garand enough time to feel more comfortable in her role.

“When they asked me this time around, I’d been an assistant over there for a year,” she said. “I felt really confident (brewing) the core beers, recipe development, mostly just the Flix way.”

That also helped Flix scrap one proposed idea where the core four beers would only be brewed on the westside. Instead, both breweries handle all of their own beers on site.

“I think it’s really important to Flix,” Garand said. “One, the brewery is here, the guests can see that we’re making the beers in house. We have a head brewer and an assistant brewer in all 11 locations that we have now, minus this one.”

Garand does not currently have an assistant brewer working with her on the 3.5-barrel brewhouse, but she said that is just fine. So far she has been able to handle everything the job has thrown her way, both what she expected and what she did not.

“It’s not incredibly difficult now to keep up,” Garand said. “It is (hard) because I’m new to being a hard brewer, so I’m trying to figure out what that all means, but it’s still not a huge task.”

Oh, there is one thing.

“So much paperwork,” Garand said. “A lot of paperwork, a lot of calls, I suddenly became important, it’s stressful.”

It can still be fun, too. Garand got to take the lead on a specialty beer for a recent film event, one that she created and in turn shared that recipe to the other Flix locations nationwide.

“I got to create one of the event beers that we had,” she said. “It was for Shrek 2, it’s my favorite movie. They asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to make it. I did it, I create the recipe, the SOP, and then all 10 Flix locations at that time made my beer. It was really cool to see something that I made, people got to drink it across the country. I made Happily Ever After, it was the potion they take in Shrek, it was a blueberry glitter (beer) and we topped it with Lucha Libre, the Mexican lager.”

Garand said she has some ideas for future specialty beers, though none are currently on deck.

“I thought of a couple of my own beers that I’m excited to get brewing,” she said. “Right now it’s a lot of catch-up, making sure the core beers are on tap. There’s a national seasonal coming out next month. A lot of my time has been spent figuring out what I do now as a head brewer.”

It was quiet the day of the interview at Flix, but it was still early. Garand said people are still finding the location, tucked away next to Hinkle, but the crowds are growing.

“It hasn’t been as busy as they expected,” she said. “I think people are still discovering there’s a movie theater here again. Our marketing team is doing a really good job of spreading the word, creating Facebook pages, creating events on Facebook so people can learn more about it.”

We have a good feeling that in time, this Flix will be just as busy as its predecessor across town, and that Garand will be just as busy brewing as her counterpart across the river.

A bit thanks to Holly for the interview, and we are quite happy to see that there are now four local breweries with a woman running the show on the brew deck, joining Cami O’Brien at High and Dry, Jen LeVasseur at Ponderosa, and Lindsey Baker at Rio Bravo.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister