Nuckolls Brewing Company opens Angel Fire location

It was an opportunity Bill Banowsky couldn’t resist.

When the former Enchanted Circle Brewing location in Angel Fire became available, Banowsky, who owns Nuckolls Brewing Company in Santa Fe, purchased the space with designs on expanding his production capabilities.

“The reason we acquired that facility was because of its brewing capacity. It’s a 20-barrel system. We have a three-barrel system in Santa Fe,” Banowsky said. “We weren’t able to keep up with the demand for our own beer products. So that was what was driving us.”

As an added bonus, Angel Fire residents and visitors will see the resort town’s lone brewery revived with a new look.

“We spent the last six to nine months getting the building ready to open as a taproom as well. And we’re very excited about it,” Banowsky said. “The community in the Angel Fire area seems to be really ready for this to happen. I think that people are going to enjoy what we have to offer.”

Nuckolls Brewing opened in Santa Fe’s Railyard in July 2023, so it’s a relatively new operation itself. Banowsky also has a smaller taproom in Lamy with weekend-only hours. At the home base in Santa Fe, Nuckolls boasts 40 taps of various New Mexican beers. Only a handful of those are produced in-house, but with the new facility, Banowsky hopes to eventually fill half with Nuckolls creations by the end of the summer.

Banowsky estimates that Nuckolls already has about a dozen original beers, but not all of those are currently available. At the moment, the most popular core drinks include the Locomotive, a California-style IPA, and the Rail Ale, which is a pale ale.

“Those are our two primary beers that sell the most, but we have a whole host of other beers,” Banowsky said. “Amber ale, pilsners, sours — all sorts of different styles of beer. We’ll have just more and more every month that goes by.”

In addition to more production, Angel Fire also has a canning line, which will allow Nuckolls to can its beer for distribution. The debut offering is a blue corn lager.

“The blue corn was milled at the Santa Ana Pueblo between Albuquerque and Santa Fe,” Banowsky said. “That makes it also that much more unique and local.”

Beyond that, Nuckolls will begin looking for more accounts in northern New Mexico to increase distribution over time, but the process will be “organic,” Banowsky says.

“We don’t have any business plan that we have to adhere to that says we’ve got to sell this much beer in this period of time,” he added. “We’re doing it as we go along.”

The Angel Fire brewery had its grand opening on July 4. Launching during the summer season figures to be a boon with cooler temperatures, a large contingent of mountain biking enthusiasts and other tourists from out of state. In addition to beer, the newest Nuckolls Brewing will offer the same food menu as Santa Fe, though the selection will be limited initially.

“It’s a beautiful place where we are sitting in Angel Fire,” Banowsky said. “It’s up on a little bit of a promenade with beautiful views of all the mountains around. That Moreno Valley is a special place. We will have live music often, and it will be just a place to come out and sit outside and enjoy a beer with your friends, listening to music and looking at these beautiful views.”

Nuckolls Brewing Company opens Angel Fire location