When Albuquerque was recently named the fourth best American city for beer lovers, one of the reasons given was the growling number of brewpubs in the Duke City. Indeed, in the eight months after NEW MEXICO BEER (The History Press) went to the printers, eight new breweries or brewpubs opened here. Today, we profile Lizard Tail Brewing, 9800 Montgomery Boulevard.

It begins as a familiar story, two home brewing buddies, in this case Dan Berry and Ken Rhoades, start receiving more and more complements about the beer they are making. One of them, Dan, feels the need to seek a more creative and challenging career. And so after nearly two decades of amateur brewing, he makes the decision to go pro and invites Ken to join him.

But why, Dan and Ken were asked, start another brewery in a city that already had close to a dozen already. “We felt there was a niche. There was only one brewery [Sandia Chili Grill] in the northeast part of town. And, with most people concentrating on big hoppy beers, we wanted to provide beers that were more malt forward. And, we also liked Belgian beers. Some of the other breweries had one or two; we wanted to offer a range.”

“The whole process took close to five years,” Dan remembers. One of the earliest steps was to enroll in an eight month course with the American Brewers Guild in Vermont. “It’s something every home brewer who thinks he wants to make a living making beer must do,” he comments. “There’s just so much to learn.”

Finding a name for their new venture proved a challenge. “We made a list of nearly forty names,” Ken Rhoades said. “Then when we went through the list, we found some of our names were the same or to close to those of other breweries. We’d thought about the name Obsidian.” But that was what Deschutes called one of their brews. When the list was winnowed down, Lizard Tail seemed most appropriate for New Mexico.

“One of the names we didn’t use was Three Green Goats,” Ken laughed. Colorful, different — but it might not create the right image for the beer.

Finding a home for the brewery was somewhat easier. In 2012, Bad Ass Brewery had ended its brief and frequently troubled existence and departed from its strip mall headquarters. “The landlord had kept the brewing equipment in payment for rent owed,” Dan explained. “And so the Bad Ass location and the brewing equipment came with the lease Berry and Rhoades negotiated. Berry assumed head brewer duties and Rhoades oversaw the business side of operations.

Dan decided to make the brewery’s first offering a brown ale. “We wanted a session style ale, something malty, but something that didn’t use a lot of grain. We need our recipe to produce an economical version of a malt forward beer.”

The chalk board above the bar at Lizard Tail lists a wide array of beers: twelve of them regular offerings and four special offerings of Belgian styles. “We wanted to have something for everyone,” Dan remarked. “Whitetail Weiss” and “Blue Tail Blonde” are for drinkers fairly new to the craft beer scene. The former is 4.2 per cent alcohol by volume and the latter 5.0. There is a honey pale ale, an IPA and an ESB, an amber, and a brown ale, all of them under six per cent.  Desert Dweller Dubbel and Desert Night India Black Ale, are the strongest regulars at 6.8 per cent ABV each. Nor, by Albuquerque standards are the beers very hoppy. Eleven are rated at under 60 International Bitterness Units. Reptilian IPA, Desert Night Black IPA and Black Bearded Rye Stout are all at 70 IBUs.

The day I visited in early February, Belgian Abbey (7.1 per cent ABV), Belgian Strong dark (10.5 ABV), Biscochito Brown (8.0 ABV), and Oatmeal Stout (5.8 ABV) were the listed seasonal beers.

In describing the house style of Lizard Tail, Berry commented: “We wanted something for everyone. We started classic versions of the well-known styles and then tweaked the recipes to provide our own interpretations. We wanted balance and complexity. We wanted people to notice the subtle mix of flavors in each of our brews.”

Desert Tail does not offer food. However, patrons are welcome to bring their own eats or to pick up something from the restaurants that are nearby in the complex. There are two special nights each week. Monday is Open Mike night and Tuesday is Geeks Who Drink, a trivia challenge night.

 

Advertisement