Dark Side Brew Crew

The silo alone is hard to miss at Steel Bender.

This past Friday featured one of the better perks that comes with writing about beer, namely getting to experience a brewery before it opens to the general public. Steel Bender Brewyard welcomed four members of the Crew and representatives from multiple local breweries in for a special soft opening, giving all of us an advance look, and taste, at the first brewery in the Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque.

We will say, right off the bat before anyone asks, that there is no firm grand opening date yet. Steel Bender will announce it, hopefully this week, and the Crew will make sure to share that information. Right now they are waiting on the completion of the main driveway off Second Street. The brewery is located along the west side of the road, which as many know is paralleled by a small drainage ditch. A much larger bridge/driveway had to be built for the brewery to accommodate multiple vehicles passing over the ditch, and construction is not yet complete.

For all of us on Friday, we had to come in via Fourth Street and a narrow alleyway, but upon arrival we were greeted by one of the largest parking lots of any brewery in town (go ahead and rejoice just at this fact). The brewery itself is located on the east end of the development, all of which is owned by the Chant family. Steel Bender will serve as the anchor tenant for what they hope will become a focal point for the entire Los Ranchos community.

The simple exterior of the building’s north-facing side.

Facing east and with a great view of the Sandias in the distance will be the brewery patio. The outdoor bar, which will have its own set of taps, was not yet finished, and the patio furniture was not yet in place as well. Two nice cornhole boards had arrived (they light up at night), so there will be some games to play outside where people can gather.

Inside the building was an impressive combination of stylistic designs, mixing metal, brick, and wood. The ceilings were high, but the sound was never overwhelming. The bar sits at the center, with plenty of seating wrapping all the way around it. There are separate tables and booths on all sides as well. There is even an expansion area on the south end, with pseudo-garage-like doors that can be pulled down to make it into a private dining area. Overall, the taproom had a warm, inviting feel to it. The staff, many of whom you will probably recognize from other breweries, were top-notch and able to handle the sudden onrush of thirsty brewers and beer writers.

The bright and inviting interior of the taproom.

There is a solid menu of pub food, with burgers, chicken, salads, appetizers, and more. Brew Crew Bullpen member Tom and I both got the pulled pork sandwich, whose sauce was made with the Blue Bullet Stout. The flavor was different than, say, the Piggly Wiggly at Canteen, but it was equally good and stands on its own. The fries were also on point as a side.

As for the beer, five of the six house beers were on tap, plus the two collaboration beers that Steel Bender has already brewed — Steel Maverick, a Belgian-style red made at Marble (natch), and Steel Can Porter, an American porter made over at Canteen. The other five included the aforementioned Blue Bullet Stout, an Irish dry stout available on CO2 and nitro, as well as the Lloyd’s 3 O’clock Kolsch, The Village Wit, Sparkfitter Amber, and Skull Bucket IPA. Only Red Iron Red was not quite ready for its debut, but it should be available by the time of the grand opening.

The Kolsch was quite tasty, and should be a winner with the warm summer months coming up. The Wit was popular as well with the crowd, while the other house beers drew mixed reviews. I enjoyed the IPA more than others, while the stout came up a little short for me. Of course, these are all the first batches, and with a brewer of the quality of Bob Haggerty, we expect they will improve quickly as he dials everything in on the system and hones in his recipes.

Well, hello there, inaugural flight!

Speaking of Bob, once we were finished stuffing our faces and talking to the many, many people we knew as they milled about, he took us on a tour of the brewery, starting in his barrel room. The small space is located on the west side, with a 60-60 feature, namely that it will always be kept at 60 degrees and 60-percent humidity, Bob said with a wide smile. He already had some barrels that he purchased from his old friends at La Cumbre, namely the brandy barrels that just recently held this current batch of Gracias Por Fumar.

“These will probably end up with a brett stout in them, I’d guess,” Bob said. “I’m a fan mostly of wine barrels. I like to brew with wine barrels. I’m not much of a spirit guy with beers. I think most of the time spirits overpower what I’m trying to do with the beer. When it’s done well, it’s really good. … But, I just don’t care for that. These will probably be for the stout and I’m going to put them against the wall in the expansion space. I’m going to line those walls with barrels, so that’s going to be sort of my brett room. Anything that’s just brett is going to sit there for about three months.”

There be barrels here, just waiting to be filled.

As for the barrel room, expect some even funkier creations to be in the works.

“This is going to be for more of the multi-culture sour beers,” Bob said. “My ambition, and I hope to be able to do this, is to do a gueze-style beer. I want to do a one year, mix it with a six month, mix it with fresh, put it in a bottle, let it ferment for six months in the bottle and that’s it.”

Needless to say, the only person more excited than Bob at this point may have been our friend Karim.

We moved into the main brewery room, which is still all bright and shiny.

Where the magic happens.

“Here it is, a 15-barrel Premier system,” Bob said of his brewhouse. “I’ve got three 15-barrel (fermenters) and a 30. The silo is right outside that door. I just decided on my base malt, so we’re just about to fill it up.”

Bob also just had his keg washer arrive, which should help with all the kegs he purchased from La Cumbre. Those will eventually have the Steel Bender logo on them.

For those who need a reminder of Bob’s background, he was originally a chef living in Maine when he decided he needed a change. He started working at Oxbow Brewing, and after the owner/brewer was injured in an accident, Bob said he had to take over. When Mrs. Haggerty took a job at the University of New Mexico some time later, Bob found employment at La Cumbre.

“I was at La Cumbre for about two-and-a-half years,” he said. “Then I had a chance to start (a new brewery), so I left, but that failed to launch. I started talking to the Chants, but it was too far out. So, I hooked up with Ponderosa and was there for a few months, and then I found out when this was really going to happen, I jumped at the chance. I took a couple months off to spend with my family (first), and then it’s been nose to the grindstone here since October.”

Our tour guide for the evening, Mr. Bob Haggerty.

Bob was extremely impressed by how Ethan and Shelby Chant have put everything together.

“One of the coolest things about this place is that everything was kept in house,” Bob said. “The Chants built this. They brought everyone, we’ve got plumbers, electricians, and metal workers, they’re all here, not contractors. This is the anchor for the development. When they were building the place, this was what they wanted. This is the building they’re going to use to shop it out. Hey, we can do anything. We just set up a brewery. You look at all the work here in here, it’s so clean. The workmanship is so awesome. All the overhead stuff is done well.”

That includes leaving room for additional tanks.

“We’ve got room for three more, we’ve got three more stubs there,” Bob said of adding fermenters. “So I think what we’ll do, as business picks up, is pull one of those 15s, put a 30 in its place, put two more 30s, and a 30 bright. That will enable us to package.”

Ah, yes, packaging, the biggest question breweries find themselves having to ask earlier and earlier these days.

“It’s just one of those things, the market is what the market is,” Bob said. “There’s lots of people getting into distribution. If this taproom is booming and we’re making good money, why the hell would we get into distributing?”

For now, the beer will be just available off this rather awesome tap system.

Initially, at least, it will not be about six-packs of cans or bottles, or mass producing the house beers for packaging and distribution to all four corners of New Mexico.

“My first thought was having the 750-(milliliter bottles) and 500s,” Bob said. “I’m a Belgian guy, I love Belgian styles. This is my first round. Everything that’s happening right now is the first round to get people (in the door). This is the first draft, but my passion is really for esoteric styles, Belgian stuff. I don’t brew to style.”

The more general house beers will always be available, but ultimately, the goal is to give the beer at Steel Bender a different identity than what is found elsewhere in town.

“There’s so much going on here in Albuquerque, that if you don’t come in with a niche, if you don’t come in with an angle, then you’re going to compete (directly) with Boxing Bear and La Cumbre and Marble,” he said. “You’ve got to come in with your own thing and I’m kind of looking at that as my thing. We’ll see where it goes.”

If the brewery does end up being a huge hit, Steel Bender has a fair amount of flexibility when it comes to future expansion.

“This is the anchor of the development,” Bob said. “There are, I think, four more pads. There are three more pads that need to be built first, then the fourth is being reserved to see what happens here. The fourth one is about 14,000 square feet right behind us. If this goes well, we’ll see what happens next.”

A forward-thinking, well-planned brewery is just the kind of newcomer we want to see joining our local scene.

It’s called Steel Bender, so yeah, it’s pretty metal.

All of us in the Crew who attended the soft opening — myself, Luke, Julie, and Tom — would like to thank the Chants and Bob for the invitation and the hospitality. The food and beer were top-notch for a brand-new place, and the overall atmosphere is warm, welcoming, and above all, fun!

As soon as Steel Bender has its grand opening, the Crew will be back for more. After all, combined with Bosque to the east and Boxing Bear to the west, it forms what Luke has already dubbed “The Beermuda Triangle.” We can see ourselves getting lost here quite often.

Cheers!

— Stoutmeister

Say hello to the next major brewery in the metro area!

Scan a Google map of Albuquerque and search for breweries. Take note of the areas of the metro area that are empty. One of those beer-less places is the Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque in the North Valley. Come early 2017, that will change.

The Chant brothers (Greg, Bryce, Chris, and Ethan) and brewer Bob Haggerty, formerly of Ponderosa and La Cumbre, are teaming up to create Steel Bender Brewyard. I got the chance to sit down with Ethan Chant, his wife Shelby, and Bob at Boxing Bear last week to learn about their plans, which are three years in the making.

Steel Bender will be located near 2nd Street and Paseo del Norte.

“I talked with someone at work today and they said wow, there’s nothing there (brewery-wise),” Shelby said. “We’re right next to the Rail Runner station. We’re right on the Bosque Trail and Paseo. We want those cyclists to come in on the weekend, the runners, anyone in that area who wants a place to go meet up.”

The entire plan developed from a purchase of property three years ago.

“We bought this chunk of land off Paseo and 2nd, it’s in Los Ranchos,” Ethan said. “The Village of Los Ranchos had been asking us, ‘What would be something you guys would think would be a good idea to bring the village together, sort of a communal gathering place?’ My brother (Chris) said, ‘It would be awesome with a brewery.’ That was three years ago and they were all over it.”

Ethan said the communal nature of breweries was too hard to pass up for his family, that’s been developing properties in Albuquerque for several decades, and for the Village.

“So we were all over it, the Village was all over it,” he said. “It happened to be (one of) the fastest developments in the Village because one, we know what we’re doing. We know how to file all the forms correctly and that kind of stuff. (And two) it’s something they really wanted.”

The exterior of Steel Bender is coming together. This will be the side of the building that will feature the patio. (All photos courtesy of Shelby Chant)

At one point, through friend and familial connections, the Chants began talking to the owners of Stone in Escondido about possibly having a satellite brewery of the California giant. Ultimately, though, that idea did not come close to happening. Meanwhile, the local brew scene was exploding all around town.

“Way back when, we (had already) loved Chama when Jeff (Erway) was there,” Ethan said. “Then Jeff left and we were sad. Then Justin (Hamilton) took over and we were happy. Then Marble started bottling, and we started to think that we had really good products here. We were really comparable to the Southern California IPAs. I think we can do something here.

“We decided instead of doing out(side the state), we can have the opportunity to open a new brewery that’s going to be good for the Village and good for a brewer who’s an assistant brewer, which was our original thought. It just made sense that we could do it and hire a really good brewer. Once again, it’s three years ago.”

Steel Bender will have plenty of space from floor to ceiling.

The Chants began to do their research by talking to as many different local breweries as possible. From Bosque to Marble to La Cumbre to Chama River to Canteen to Boxing Bear and so on, they compiled all the information they would need to open a brewery that could live up to the standards of those places. The final step was to find the right brewer.

“It’s been a fun process,” Shelby said. “It really, really has. Coming in here and getting the final stamp of ‘you must get Bob’ from Erway. We were in here late on a Saturday night. We were the last ones in here and Jeff and Laura walked in. Oddly enough, we went to high school with Laura Erway, graduated with her brother. We sat there and we had already talked to so many people about Bob who could not say enough about (him). Jeff said, absolutely, that’s who you need.”

Bob is a certified Cicerone who started out at Oxbow Brewing in his home state of Maine before moving west. He worked at La Cumbre and then became head brewer for a short time at Ponderosa.

“Daniel (Jaramillo) was the one who introduced me to Bob,” Ethan said. “You know Bob’s resume in terms of being a Cicerone. Even beyond that, his character is great, but what everyone was saying was his palate was unbelievable.”

Instead of having a brewmaster in Portland, Oregon, overseeing his every move, Bob will have considerable freedom and some brand-new equipment to play with at Steel Bender.

“The construction is moving at a great pace,” Ethan said. “The brewery equipment is scheduled to come in November. It’s a Premier System. It’s basically what they have here (at Boxing Bear), for all practical purposes.”

Looking inside the construction area.

Ethan said they project to open the second week of January, after the holiday madness has passed. Then Bob will take the reins and unleash his own creations.

“As much as people will drink,” Bob said of how much beer he plans to make in the first year. “It’s a 15-barrel system that’s coming in. We’re going to start off with three 15-barrel fermenters and a 30-barrel. I think we’re going to open big. There’s already some talk about the location (being) great. So I think it’s going to open big and from there it’s going to go strong.”

Right from the start, Steel Bender will also have a cool feature that should lead to some unique and potentially awesome beers.

“When I was drawing up plans at Chama, it was next to our old office, Zach (Guilmette) was still working there, and he said, ‘You know what would be cool? If you put in a barrel room.’ We’re building a climate-controlled barrel room,” Ethan said.

“You know how most places have windows where you look into the brewery? For us, you’ll have windows looking into the brewery as you approach the building. … Our showpiece will be the barrel room, which will make it look more elegant or rustic.”

Odds are they will have a smaller forklift inside for the barrel room and all.

Steel Bender will also have a full kitchen in place, though they do not intend to go the route that others have chosen in the past.

“It’s a brewery that serves food, it’s not a restaurant,” Ethan said. “Sometimes with a restaurant menu you start to go a little crazy and then suddenly you’ve got a phone book for a menu. I’ve been really, really trying to make sure what we serve, it’s going be small. We’ll have salads and burgers and brats and appetizers.

“We don’t want to settle for the food. We don’t want to settle for the beer. Albuquerque’s bar is high.”

One of the items they hope to offer will be a cheese plate that will be designed to specifically pair up with the house beers. Ethan said they want to make it more than just a typical brewery/eatery experience, but rather a place where people can learn more about the beer they are drinking.

“We want to make it a playground for the palate,” Bob said.

There will also be a sizeable outdoor patio with some features that were unique until recently.

“What I’m really excited about, the patio is going to be huge,” Ethan said. “We’re actually going to have a bar on the patio.”

“Well, at the time it was novel, but thanks, Marble,” Bob added with a laugh. “I actually went to their (Northeast Heights) taproom, they did a heck of a job.”

There will be a feature, inside and out, that was inspired by places Ethan’s friend has visited in Austin, Texas.

“In terms of emulating Austin, we’re going to have their backyard games,” Ethan said. “We’re going to have cornhole and other stuff on the outdoor patio. Then the tables inside, we’re going to have inset board games. Once again, that’s part of that communal aspect, with people, hanging out.”

The actual Steel Bender for which the brewery is named.

Steel Bender already projects to be one of the bigger breweries in the metro area, but do not expect them to shoot for the moon in their first year.

“We’re prepared to be as big as makes sense, if that makes sense,” Ethan said. “I want Bob to be happy, first of all. Also, one of the great pieces of advice that Erway gave me was don’t feel like you have to expand. You can get caught up in that. There’s a lot of fun stuff that we can do but it’s just gotta grow organically. We don’t want this to be a burden. This has been a delight so far. It’s going to be difficult, it’s going to have all the aspects of work. (But) we get to create, we get to share this with people.”

And, for anyone who thinks Albuquerque is over-saturated with breweries, the Steel Bender team does not think that is anywhere close to being true.

“We hear this all the time and I know you hear this, is there are a brewery bubble?” Ethan said. “The reality is, if there’s a market for good products, then there’s not a bubble. The rule is it has to be a good product.”

The Crew will keep tabs on the progress of Steel Bender. Then we look forward to stopping in between visits to Bosque and Boxing Bear.

Just keep the barrel room locked. We have been known to try to steal barrels of imperial stout. Allegedly.

Cheers!

— Stoutmeister