Santa Fe Brewing Co.

A visit to Santa Fe Brewing Co. is a step back in time: From the Old West façade to the bridlery that decorates the tasting room walls, the microbrewery captures the pioneer spirit. And that's entirely proper, since Santa Fe was a pioneer in its own right, opening a decade ago this June.

Some of the micro's equipment can rightly be described as historic, as well. The brewhouse and several fermenters are about 20 years old. They originally belonged to Boulder Brewing Co., back when that major player operated out of a goat shed in Longmont, Colo. The brewing kettle had to be built square to fit through the shed doors.

Then there's the bottle capper, a hand-operated, one-at-a-time "Super Colonna" tabletop capper, the kind homebrewers use. Brewer Ty Levis estimates that the staff has sealed well over 1 million bottles with the capper. "I'll cap against any of you guys," Levis told a group of homebrewers during a brewery tour earlier this year. "The brewery record is 47 cases in one hour."

Levis and partners Brian Lock, Carlos Muller and David Forester bought the brewery from Ty's father, Mike, in 1996 and moved it from a horse barn in Galisteo, N.M., to the former motorcycle restoration shop it now occupies on the outskirts of Santa Fe. This past spring they were busy converting used dairy equipment to expand the brewhouse. Like many breweries considering expansion recently, Santa Fe discovered that used dairy equipment is becoming increasingly hard to find. "We called about 400 places," Levis said, before finding the tanks in Texas. The rebuilt equipment will increase the brewery from a 7-barrel to a 25-barrel system.

Expansion and modernization are relative terms at Santa Fe Brewing. "We hope to be able to push into new markets, but we know a lot of distributors aren't accepting new beers," Levis said. "We feel the Santa Fe name will kind of help carry us." Operating in Galisteo, the brewery reported 550 barrels produced in 1992, but that slipped to 450 by 1996. Levis said he expected sales to reach 650-700 barrels this year.

The larger brewing kettle and a used heat exchanger (also from a dairy; it took four days to clean out the dried milk) make life a little easier for Levis, who does all the brewing himself. He was 17 when his father started the brewery, and he spent his summers helping out and learning the business from tutors such as Brad Kraus and Laure Pomianowski, who went on to brew elsewhere. Levis took over as head brewer in October 1994, "whether I was ready or not."

He begins the brewing process by hauling a large plate mill from a shelf high above and taking it outside, to reduce the amount of dust in the brewery. It takes about 45 minutes to grind 350 pounds, and the mill tends to tear up the grain. The result is messy trub, but a high extraction rate. "We deal with the protein as it comes," Levis said.

"It's OK to have beer that's a little rough around the edges. I think having that charm is really important."

The hot liquor tank holds enough water for the boil and about half the sparge, then Levis finishes the sparge with water from the hot water heater. Before the "new-old" heat exchanger went on line, it took an hour and forty-five minutes plus 800 gallons of water to knock out a 7-barrel batch. Since the brewing area can be 40 degrees F in winter and 90 in the summer, "it's like you are brewing outdoors," Levis said - which, because the brewery uses unjacketed fermenters, caused consistency problems.

So, the partners built a fermenting room that is constantly at 65-68 degrees F. When it's time to bottle or keg, Levis snakes a hose through a drain and into the fermenting room. Since the beer is only lightly filtered, it begins showing chill haze when served at any temperature below 65. "For some reason, we do well with telling people that's natural," Levis said. "It's OK to have beer that's a little rough around the edges. I think having that charm is really important."

The beers are bottle conditioned with dextrose and yeast harvested from the fermenters, but the brewery doesn't own enough kegs to keg-condition the keg product, nor does it have a vessel suitable to use for force carbonation. Instead, employing a method homebrewers will understand, each keg gets a shot of carbon dioxide, followed by a ride on a 55-gallon drum shaker that came from a Los Alamos scrapyard. "You find a way to get it done with what you have," Levis said. "We used to bang them against the wall in Galisteo."

Santa Fe no longer makes a "training wheels" beer. "That's what the old wheat was," Levis said. I n the spring, the brewery abandoned its American-style wheat for a traditional Bavarian weizen made with 60 percent malted wheat and a Bavarian yeast strain.

Santa Fe Pale Ale is the brewery's flagship beer. It's an American-style pale ale made with pale, crystal and carapils malt and measuring 36 IBUs. Other year-round beers are a nutty English-style brown ale and a smooth, chocolaty English-style porter. Although the brewery has only made labels for the pale ale and wheat beer, the porter and brown ale are also regularly sold off-premise in bottles.

Seasonals include a dry stout, malty Scottish ale, India pale ale and Chicken Killer Barley Wine. This year's barley wine, named for a fowl-killing dachshund whose portrait is among the black-and-white photos that decorate the taproom, started at 25º Plato. The stout, named Maxwell's Silver Stout for another dog who was jealous, has five specialty grains and is balanced with a hefty 73 IBUs. The stout recipe came from one of two homebrew batches Levis made while in college. He entered it in the 1995 New Mexico State Fair competition, and it beat out 55 beers.

"The recipes have changed quite a bit over the years," Levis said. "We've taken steps to improve the beer and still be true to what we think the style should be."

Draft sales have climbed to about 35 percent of production, but even when bottle sales were higher the brewery did best selling directly to restaurants and bars. "We're better paired with food, maybe. That's the way it plays out for us," Levis said.

Food isn't regularly available in the tasting room, but the brewery has hosted some catered events, which boost cash flow while alerting patrons to the fact that the tasting room is open daily. While all the seasonal beers are bottled, they often are available only at the brewery. "We entice them a bit with the exclusivity," Levis said. "They have to come here to get it."

Back when his father ran the brewery, Levis noticed that serving the local market was the key. Even if Santa Fe Brewing begins selling beer in Arizona and Texas, the customers who stop by to pick up a six-pack of the 18º Plato Scottish ale will determine the brewery's success in the next 10 years.

"They are you foundation, those are your roots," Levis said.

His father almost stumbled into the business. He was trying to sell wine bottles to New Mexico wineries (the state has about two dozen), when he began to wonder why breweries hadn't popped up like wineries. "He thought, 'Why isn't there a small brewery? Why isn't there a little guy making beer?' " Levis said.

Mike Levis saw an ad advertising the Boulder Brewing Co. equipment. "He knew nothing about brewing, nothing about homebrewing," Ty said. There were just over 100 microbreweries and brewpubs in the United States in 1988. "I was 17 at the time, and (starting the brewery) was pretty impressive," he said.

And keeping one going for 10 years is quite impressive, too.

This story orginally appeared in Brew Your Own magazine in July 1998.