We ran into you guys at the National Homebrewers Conference back in June. What were your highlights?


Chad Yakobson gave a talk called “Brewing with Brett” and that was really interesting – we learned a lot about brewing those types of beers that we didn’t know before. The keynote address by Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River was cool, too. It wasn’t so informative in terms of showing us how to brew, but it was really motivating because he started the way we’re starting now. That drives us because we’d obviously love to be at Vinnie’s level some day.


Are there any San Diegans who have inspired you to the degree Vinnie from Russian River has?


We knew we wanted to take some ideas from San Diego because we’ve been thinking about how we want to expand our operation down in Tijuana. After finding out Hess Brewing was using a similar setup when they first started, we went and checked it out. Turns out they share some of the same concepts and ideas on what it is to be a nanobrewery. Their sales manager Mike Skubic showed us their whole process and that was very helpful. Also we’d like to give a shoutout to Jeff Hammett of San Diego Beer Blog and Randy Clemens & Denise Ratfield from Stone, too. They visited us on a bus tour of Tijuana’s breweries and bars and gave us lots of inspirational feedback.


San Diego’s beer scene is known for its collaboration efforts. Do you see this happening in Mexico?


Definitely. We’ve talked about collaborating with other brewers and even local artists. There’s so much freedom of expression down in TJ right now, and we’re able to use San Diego as a reference point.


So, where can your beer be found?


We have four accounts in Tijuana right now – Tasca de la Sexta, Tasca Boutique, Via Gourmet and Cazaclub Taberna. You can find links to all their pages through our website. We hope that in the next year or two we can start bringing our beer to the San Diego market, because we know it could do especially well in places with a high Mexican population, like the South Bay. And since we’re already registered down here as an exporter, we’d just have to jump through the hoops of finding an importer.


Ever thought of moving operations to San Diego entirely?


Yes. We’d like to some day open a brewery here. But first we have to get our beer here.


So, how about one word to sum up the vibe of Mexico’s craft beer scene?


Informal. A few sentences?


The beer revolution in Mexico is being driven by the nanobreweries. It’s hard to distinguish who’s a homebrewer and who’s not because most of us are. We all have our own image and logo, but we’re all homebrewers in the end.


Now for the hard question. Your “Beers of the Moment”?


Red Barn and Framboise de Amorosa from The Lost Abbey. So I guess if there were a “Brewery of the Moment” question, it’d be The Lost Abbey.


What about the “Brewery You’d Love To Collaborate With Most” question?


It’d have to be The Lost Abbey again. They make amazing Brett beers, which is something we’re going to focus on down the line. That, and sour beers, too. Stay tuned.


Page 8 top and bottom photos by Kristina Yamamoto and Tim Stahl (thanks for having us, Tim!). Page 8 middle photos courtesy of Cerveceria Insurgente. Page 9 photos are from the 2010 and 2011 TJ Beer Fests. Read about those events, plus WC staffer Jeff Hammett’s day on the Turista Libre beer bus tour of TJ, by visiting westcoastersd. com and searching “TJ”


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