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Bring your appetite: Santa Fe Beer & Food Festival celebrates local brews and bites
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New Mexico’s brewing and culinary scene will be celebrated during the Santa Fe Beer & Food Festival.
The event takes place from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 10, and Sunday, Aug. 11, at El Rancho de Las Golondrinas, 334 Los Pinos Road in Santa Fe. The festival is presented in partnership with the New Mexico Brewers Guild.
Bring your appetite: Santa Fe Beer & Food Festival celebrates local brews and bites
Participating breweries include Black Mesa Cidery, Beer Creek Brewing Company, Downshift Brewing Co., Little Toad Creek Brewery, New Mexico Hard Cider, Nuckolls Brewing Co., Quarter Celtic Brewpub, Santa Fe Brewing Co., Steel Bender Brewyard, Tractor Brewing Co. and Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery.
Eventgoers age 21 and older will receive five sample tickets to try the beers and ciders of their choosing from the participating breweries and cideries. Guests can also purchase pints of beer or cider.
“What’s really exciting about this festival is, we grow our own hops,” said Daniel Goodman, museum director at El Rancho de Las Golondrinas. “This will be the third (hops harvest). Everyone will get a chance to help us out with our hops harvest. We will have our hopster out where everyone can see the hops run through the hopster. It separates the hop cones from the (stems and leaves). It’s a hands-on hops activity. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere before. It’s a really unique hands-on experience that everybody can have.”
Three varieties of hops are grown at El Rancho de Las Golondrinas — Chinook, Zeus and Sterling.
“What’s interesting about that is, we partner with Beer Creek Brewing and we do a collaboration beer with them,” said Goodman. “This will now be our fourth year or fifth year in doing the collaboration brew. It’s called Golondrinas Gold and it’s a lager. We give them the hops that they use for that beer and it’s 100% New Mexico grown ingredients. And so it’s 100% New Mexico beer and they give a portion of the proceeds from pint sales of that beer back to the museum.”
Plenty of food options will be available from What The Truck Café, Jenn’s Taste of New Mexico, CCR Corn Roasters, Power 5 BBQ, Fusion Tacos, Hot Stuff Café, and Strawberries and More.
“They do a number of different fruit dishes, but they’re also really well known for their red chile crackers, which are really good,” Goodman said of Strawberries and More.
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Live music and dance will be part of the festival both days. On Saturday, Die Polka Schlingel will take the stage at 1:30 p.m.; followed by Compañia Mina Fajardo & Chuscales Flamenco at 2:45 p.m.; and The Fabulous Martini-Tones at 3:45 p.m. On Sunday, performances include Half Pint & The Growlers at 1:30 p.m.; Compañia Mina Fajardo & Chuscales Flamenco at 2:45 p.m.; and Una Mas y La ChaCha at 3:45 p.m.
More than 50 vendors will be selling their wares at the event including Anka Jewelry Designs, Aroma Wear Jewelry, Art is Mexico, Blossom and Barrel, Clay by Ej, Desert Dog Designs, Enchanting Soap Collections, Juniper Moon Creations, Magarte Pottery, Mounds of Mud, Retablos de Cháv, Santa Fe Olive Oil, Santa Fe Sconery, Semilla Ancestral, Warped Knot Textiles and Wethington Holistic Arts. A full list of vendors is available at golondrinas.org.
One of New Mexico’s oldest home brew suppliers, Victor’s Home Brew, will hold a special home brewing demonstration both days.
The festival is open to all ages and there are activities throughout El Rancho de Las Golondrinas to take part in.
“It’s a festival for everyone,” Goodman said. “There will be volunteer costumed interpreters in our historic buildings. There’s going to be activities. You’ll have a chance to do painted gourds both days. There’s bread baking, the mill is running, there’s a stringing demo and activity, and you’ll have a chance to sample Yerba Buena tea. There’s also a craft corner activity where you can paint your own terra cotta pot.”
Visitors will have to make their way through the grounds to discover one of the activities.
“One of our volunteers is (making) bread along the Dusty Trails,” Goodman said. “If you go out and explore the site, you’ll run into our volunteer who will be baking biscuits or cornbread in a Dutch oven somewhere, but you’ve got to go find them. There’s a lot of fun activities for families and children as well.”
