Brewery with a view
Plan to spend New Year’s Eve sipping on a pint of Kaktus
Nob Hill will now get to experience what Bernalillo has been boasting about for a few years now.
Kaktus Brewing Company is opening a location in Nob Hill with a grand opening celebration on New Year’s Eve. The Nob Hill location will be twice as large as Kaktus’ Bernalillo spot. It also will feature a rooftop patio that offers a birds-eye view of the Sandia mountains as well as Rio Rancho in the distance, according to Kaktus owner Dana Koller.
Kaktus has partnered with Nob Hill Main Street, which is celebrating Nob Hill’s 100th anniversary.
“It’s our first celebration and their 100th year so we are doing a huge chile drop and we’ll have music and belly dancers who will perform throughout the evening,” Koller said.
Koller said he also has teamed up with Nam Tran who owns the trademark for the “New Year’s Eve Chile Drop.”
“What we are going to do, we built a 15-foot lit red chile that is going to be hoisted 100 feet in the air,” Koller explained. “At midnight, the chile will drop and it will be a symbolic ending of 2015 and the entering of 2016.”
Free finger foods and hors d’oeuvres will be available to patrons who attend the grand opening event. There also will be a toast at midnight featuring wines from St. Clair Winery.
The New Year’s Eve party might come to an end, but it is only the beginning for Kaktus’ Nob Hill location. It will offer eight Kaktus brews on tap and food offerings including gourmet pizzas and game meats such as elk and wild boar.
Kaktus’ best-sellers will be on tap, including Helles Lager, which is a classic German-style beer; the Schwartz Bier, which is a Germanstyle beer similar to a dark lager that is brewed with coffee beans roasted by Villa Myriam Coffee Roasters and 1492 IPA, which attributes its name to the Columbus hops used to make it, Koller said.
The decision to open Kaktus in Nob Hill was an easy one.
“It fits our style as far as our relaxed environment,” Koller said. “It fits the university atmosphere. One of the biggest things that led up to it is it’s a location with a rooftop patio. We couldn’t say no to that. We’ve got that to offer and the location is ideal. And, our beer style is classic European and German-style that is not offered in Nob Hill. We are offering something Nob Hill doesn’t have.”