Brewery buzz: The Tatted Bee enters the local brewing scene with a seasoned brewer at the helm

Scott Jeter has his hands in several honey pots.

He runs a successful bee removal business and has now ventured into opening a brewery called The Tatted Bee Brewhouse. In his past life, he ran a pawn shop on Central Avenue before the Albuquerque Rapid Transit project began. The project led to a decline in business, Jeter had to lay off employees, and then the pandemic hit. His business did not meet the requirements to receive relief funds. He soon began looking for another job and connected with a high school friend and took over his bee removal business, NM Bee Removal.

Brewery buzz: The Tatted Bee enters the local brewing scene with a seasoned brewer at the helm

“He pulled two bees out of a bee box and he stung me on my shoulder to make sure that I wasn’t allergic and I didn’t go into anaphylactic shock,” Jeter said. “And since I wasn’t allergic to bees, he’s like, ‘Cool, you can work it.’ I just started working it, learning as I go.”

Jeter said he has been busier than usual this summer carefully removing unwanted bee hives and colonies from homes.

“I pull everything out,” he said. “I take the comb with the bees on that. If there aren’t enough bees on the comb, I’ll actually scoop a bunch of them out with my hand and try and put them on the comb before I put it into a ventilated hive box that we engineered so bees regulate their own temperature.”

His work with bees led to a serendipitous meeting between him and brewer Bob Haggerty, who has years of brewing experience under his belt. Haggerty most recently was head brewer at Steel Bender Brewyard and also worked as a brewer at La Cumbre Brewing Company and Marble Brewery.

“He came by (Steel Bender) one day and dropped off a big batch of honey that had been part of a hive that he’d cut out of a wall in the North Valley,” Haggerty said of Jeter. “He dropped it off and said, ‘If the cook can use this or the brewer can use this, go ahead.’ And it was that, that actually got me into beekeeping. I got the honey. And then another customer at Steel Bender said, ‘Oh, I’ve got an old beehive if you want it.’ And then another person I overheard at the gym say, ‘I’ve got too many bees.’ And I kind of said, ‘Excuse me, did you say you have too many bees. I would take some bees.’ And you know, that was, I think that was about five years ago now.

“And since then, I have really been taken with the idea of both honeybees and the plight of the native pollinators. So really working hard to plant not just for the honeybees and for the health of them, but also for the health and preservation of the native pollinators, and trying to get as many native plants out there, just try to do my part to keep the whole thing going.”

When Jeter decided to open a brewery, he reached out to his brother who is the general manager at Ex Novo Brewing Co., but he did not have any leads. A friend of Jeter’s suggested he reach out to Haggerty who owns a apiary and orchard in Chimayo.

“He kept turning me down,” Jeter said of Haggerty. “I was saying, ‘Man, I’ll give you this much money for four recipes, this much money for five recipes.’ And he kept saying no. And I was like, ‘Well, why not?’ He said, ‘Well, look man, I’m a beekeeper, and I’ve got 17 bee colonies. I need to make them 100 colonies within two years.’ So he said, ‘I’m going to dedicate two years of my life to trying to make 100 bee colonies and then I can do my orchard.’ And I told him, ‘Buddy, this is what I do for a living. I can get you 100 colonies in less than 90 days.’ And I said, ‘They won’t be commercialized bees from a bee farm, either. They can be feral, local, conducive to this climate honeybees.’ And he said, ‘Deal.’ And then later on, we found out that he actually fell in love with beekeeping, because all the honey I dropped off. We had never met each other prior to that.”

The Tatted Bee is also a hive for sports lovers. TVs surround the brewery and constantly have sport events playing. There is no bad seat in the house.

“It’s a sports bar theme,” Haggerty said. “(Jeter’s) a big boxing and UFC fan, so he’s going to be carrying all the big fights.”

Haggerty has been busy brewing on the brewery’s electric two-barrel system.

“We’re brewing into two and four barrel fermenters, so it’s enough to get a good start,” Haggerty said. “And then when it succeeds, then it will be time to look at scaling up. But it is quite fun to be brewing on the small system and to there’s a lot of flexibility on that size system to be creative and to think outside the box. I’ve been having some fun with that.”

The brewery currently offers a pale ale and a saison of its own and 12 guest taps from local breweries. They will eventually phase out the guest taps and offer more of their own craft beer.

“We’re definitely going to be including honey in some of the recipes,” Haggerty said. “The main beer lineup is going to be sort of really accessible, really drinkable beers.”

Haggerty will be pass the brewing duties to another brewer once the business gets off the ground to focus on his own line of beers

“I’m also going to be doing my own line of beers through the pub that’s going to be called Quixotic,” Haggerty said. “Quixotic is going to be my label. And so those will be some more of the esoteric stuff. And I’m guessing that honey will be included across a wide range of beers. I’m definitely going to be including some saisons and, some of the wild child beers that I like to brew.”