Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time.

Certainly that applies to many things in life, but it is often the way a lot of these Look Back/Look Ahead Series interviews happen. Take last week, when Brew Lab 101 owner Scott Salvas held a press conference with Mayor Tim Keller to officially unveil the plans for Putts N Pints in the old Putt Putt space on San Mateo and McLeod.

I took the opportunity to not only talk to Salvas about the new project, but also to discuss all things Brew Lab 101. As with all of these stories, we started off by talking about the biggest challenge the brewery faced last year.

“Last year, I think it was just having a consistent flow,” Salvas said. “You know, I think coming out of the pandemic every year has just been a little different, and it’s really hard to judge like, OK, how’s this spring gonna be versus last spring? Versus summer?

“We saw the year start really good, and then kind of slowed down a little bit in the summer, and then kind of come back in the fall. And so, I think that’s where we’re kind of just trying to figure out like, what is that normal gonna eventually look like? Is there such thing as new normal?”

At least there no “structural challenges or anything like that,” Salvas added.

“You know, Austin (Giorgetta) has been doing great in the brewery,” he continued. “The brewery’s humming along and continuing to make more and more beer. So, we keep beating our record every year for the most produced product.

“Service has been good. I mean, there’s always new staff coming in and out, but that’s kind of normal for the service industry, but we always find great people. So other than that, yeah, it’s just trying to find what normal is, and just try to predict and hire right and make it the right amount of beer.”

As for the next question, what was the biggest accomplishment of 2025, it ended up directly leading into the final question about what will be the big project for 2026.

“Well, biggest accomplishment, which is kind of playing into this year, is negotiating a few more taprooms that are coming,” Salvas said. “And so, this probably leads into your next question. But yeah, so we have a couple new taprooms that are coming besides Putts N Pints, which is a different company, a sister company to Brew Lab.”

One taproom will be located in Rio Rancho at 801 Loma Colorado Blvd., which is not far from the original Brew Lab 101, but the setup will be pretty distinctive in comparison.

“We’re going to be opening up a taproom at the McDermott Athletic Center,” Salvas said. “They have an outdoor build, which is great. They have sand volleyball and soccer. So we’re going to be doing an outdoor sort of taproom there. It’ll have some indoor seating, but mostly outdoor space.”

The other future offsite taproom will be located a bit farther away.

“And then, the really big exciting one that will be coming online this summer is down at Elephant Butte and Marina Del Sur,” Salvas said. “We’re going to be opening up a taproom actually on the docks there. So, and you know, that’s getting all its final approvals. But, we’ve been told that everyone’s going to approve it. And so, that’s us going to open this summer, so we’re really excited about that.”

Salvas said that putting a taproom so far from home base will present its own set of challenges, not the least of which will be finding the right group of managers and servers to run the place on a daily basis.

“Moving a couple hours away, those will be definitely some logistical challenges to make all that happen,” he added. “McDermott Athletic Facility, that’s only about 8 minutes away from Brew Lab Rio Rancho, that (should) be a little bit simpler to operate.”

And then the other challenge, of course, is getting Putts N Pints up and ready for summer.

“That is going to be the evolution of what we’ve been doing, taking entertainment to a whole new level,” Salvas said.

It certainly portends for a busy remainder of 2026 for Brew Lab 101, and a positive sign of growth in an industry that has seen little of that in recent years.

A big thanks to Scott for taking time at the end of that press conference for us. We wish him and his team luck going forward.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister