Brewing up a good time: Steel Bender hitting its stride offering quality beer and food creations

I first heard of Steel Bender Brewyard years ago when a friend offered a rave review of its Skull Bucket IPA.

I tried it and, sure enough, it was terrific, shot through with citrus and pine, and spicy as mulled cider. Since then, I’ve sampled several of their beers, like the crisp Italian Pilsner called Esmerelda and a Blue Bullet Stout rich with cocoa flavor.

After a few years of sampling its brewery output, I decided it was time to visit the home base and see how the food matched up. And so, I met my friend there recently for a weekday lunch break.

Now in its sixth year of operation, Steel Bender Brewyard happened almost on a whim.

Brothers Greg, Chris and Ethan Chant originally purchased the lot in the North Valley near Paseo del Norte for commercial development, but then the idea of building a gathering space for the community took hold. Since the area was lacking in brewpubs, the brothers hired veteran brewer Robert Haggerty, brought in Ethan’s wife Shelby to head up marketing, and in 2017, Steel Bender opened.

Success and expansion followed. A brewing warehouse went up behind the original taproom as the brightly colored cans became a staple in area supermarkets.

Challenges came along too, most notably in the form of COVID. With the pandemic abating, Steel Bender is back at full-strength, albeit with some changes. Haggerty’s former assistant Tom Sadja has taken over the brewing operation, and the lot is now filled with other buildings available for rent.

Steel Bender sits on Second Street behind an arroyo, its presence announced by a big storage tank painted with the brewery’s logo. The location near Paseo del Norte’s Second Street exit makes it easily accessible from most parts of town. A Rail Runner station and the Paseo del Bosque Trail are very close.

The dining room wears the familiar trappings of the brewpub genre: high, exposed ceilings over a rectangular bar, a patio, hard chairs that make your backside bark after about an hour in them.

A giant chalkboard adjacent to the entrance lists the beers on tap. Among the 14 varieties available the day I went were several good choices for summer drinking, including a few fruit beers and a light, effervescent hefeweizen, an unfiltered wheat ale cleverly dubbed Hefe Lifting.

The menu, accessed through a QR code on the table, begins with several soups and salads and almost a dozen starters ranging in price from $5.50 to $17. Fittingly for a brew pub, the fries, wings and pretzels on offer seemed designed to provoke maximum thirst.

Most renowned among these are the Fried Green Chile Strips ($10), a pile of pennant-shaped pieces of chile beer-battered and fried and served with red chile ranch dipping sauce. Sounds good on paper, but the execution in this case was off. The coating coverage was a little patchy and almost all the texture was cooked out of the chile. The sauce, however, was great, the sour ranch flavor tempered with the smoky red chile.

A more successful execution was found in an order of Smothered Chile Fries ($9) served on a large tray covered in brown paper. The fries, coated with a lattice of melted shredded cheddar cheese, maintained their crispness even while absorbing the red and green chile sauces. The sauces weren’t spicy enough, though, to justify the accompanying cup of sour cream. Ketchup was fine.

My favorite starter was the Vegetarian Seitan Wings ($12), six blocks of the wheat-based meat substitute coated in cornmeal and fried. Seitan is often compared to white-meat chicken in both taste and consistency, but Steel Bender’s version was not nearly as firm. The cornmeal coating created a crisp shell over a savory center that had the consistency of a dense stuffing. The blocks were tossed in a Buffalo sauce that sizzled on the tongue, with a cup of ranch dressing onboard to balance the heat. Carrot and celery sticks and a cup of ranch dressing accompanied the dish.

A selection of burgers and sandwiches comprise most of the heavy hitters of the menu. There is also a BYO Gourmet Hot Dog ($9) and Fish & Chips ($18) made with haddock.

The Pulled Pork Sandwich ($13) was served with a cup of sweet, smoky barbecue sauce on the side. The pork was a tasty, if underheated, mix of strings and bark topped with coleslaw and served on a bun from Albuquerque-based Pastian’s Bakery that was finished on the grill. I had mine with a cup of Green Chile Stew ($2 extra). The stew wore a layer of melted cheese on top like a coat of armor. Underneath it, the chunks of potatoes and stewed pork were tender, the broth a little dull.

My friend’s version of the Build-your-own (BYO) Burger ($14), served on a Pastian’s Bakery bun, consisted of a 7-ounce patty cooked to the requested medium and covered with a thick slab of melted Swiss cheese and grilled mushrooms ($1 extra). He gave it the ultimate seal of approval: a clean plate. The Garden Salad, a mound of lettuce, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes and shredded carrots, was $2 extra. All of the ingredients were fresh.

Desserts like cheesecake and a brownie sundae are on the heavy side. Prices range from $5 to $9. There is kids’ menu too.

Our server, who was in training and being shadowed by a more experienced server, was very friendly and checked in on us frequently.

Gluten-free options are limited. I was told there are gluten-free buns for the burgers.

In just six years, the Chants have succeeded in created both a robust brewing operation and a gathering place for the Los Ranchos de Albuquerque neighborhood. Steel Bender has beers for every season, and some appetizing food to match with them.