Boese Brothers Brewery is taking its beers to the Northeast Heights.
The brewery, which has been open in Downtown Albuquerque for about 3½ years, now has a taproom facing the Sandia Mountains at Tramway and Paseo del Norte.
“For us, we liked the location when we started distributing to bars and restaurants throughout Albuquerque, and that’s kind of when we got our first exposure to that area,” said George Boese, co-owner of Boese Brothers Brewery. “And something that we noticed, especially with our location Downtown, is that we get a lot of regulars in our Downtown location and it’s a lot of people from that neighborhood, from the neighborhoods around Downtown, and the neighborhoods around Nob Hill. For a lot of people in the Heights … a lot of them have maybe tried our beer but they’re not going to make that 30-minute drive to Downtown to have a beer and come back. They’re not going to do that often, so we thought it would be really nice to set up shop up there and be closer to some of those customers.”
Patrons will get to enjoy Boese Brothers’ signature favorites and seasonals.
“We’ve got 12 different beers and ciders on tap, so it will be all of the beers that Boese Brothers makes on tap there, and we will also have three guest ciders and a guest beer from our sister company, Desert Dogs, based out of Santa Fe,” George Boese said. “I’d say our biggest sellers are our Tru Blu Pilsner, and then we make an IPA called Dr. Strangehop, and then a steam beer called Duke City Lager. Aside from some seasonals, those are always our three most popular beers, and we’ll definitely have those on tap all the time.”
A kitchen will offer a menu of hand-held foods and more.
“My brother Sam lived in of Pittsburgh for a long time, and it’s a big thing out there but we wanted to do like a really good, really high-quality sandwich shop in there,” George Boese said. “You have some classics he likes and now he’s more of a vegetarian so he’s got some really cool veggie sandwiches he makes in there so some classics people are familiar with, stuff that’s got some green chile in it, and some prosciutto sandwich that people maybe haven’t had exposure to or maybe haven’t had that often.”
The brewpub, which is about 1,500 square feet, is comparable to the Downtown location in size and decor.
“Sam and I like making stuff out of wood,” George Boese said of his brother and co-owner, Sam Boese. “We designed the majority of the furniture in there. There is a lot of decor that uses metal in it, which we’ve got at our Downtown location too, but to kind of put a bit of a twist on it, we took some extra time and kind of rusted and patinaed all the metal. It coats the bar, and it’s on the sign and throughout the bar so color-wise, it’s basically these clean white walls, but it’s got these kind of rusted-out metal images and beautiful stained wood and, of course, this huge mural that our friend Jaque Fragua painted in there for us.”
Fragua works in geometric shapes.
“He’s using a parallelogram and triangles basically but layering with stencils to make some of these larger shapes,” George Boese said of the mural. “It almost has kind of a kaleidoscope appearance to it, with some really, really bright colors that he put in there, which just looks great against other stuff that’s a little bit flat and understated.”
