Kombucha goes hard
Brewery and taproom celebrates marriage of kombucha and beer
Just beyond the intricately painted mural adorning a slim storefront in the Solana Shopping Center is a taproom like no other in New Mexico. There’s the strikingly designed space, which manages to be both rustic and chic, masculine and feminine, with its pendant lighting, antique midcentury modern furniture and stunner of a centerpiece bar. There’s the carefully curated lineup of New Mexican beers, wine and nonalcoholic beverages.
But for HoneyMoon Brewery, which opened Friday, the heart of the operation is its hard kombucha, a product years in the making.
And like a honeymoon, the brewery and taproom is a celebration of union: not just of the space and the product, but of the marriage of kombucha and beer.
“Our product is so unique because technically we’re considered a beer by the federal government,” said CEO Ayla Bystrom-Williams, who operates HoneyMoon Brewery with partners James Hill and Amberley Pyles. “It’s a fermented tea, but tea is very much like wine, and the grapes and the tea leaves come from single-source plants, and they’re very much tied to the terroir of where they’re made. … Then the fermentation process really adds layers of complexity on top of that.”
By now, most people are at least passingly familiar with kombucha, in which a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast (or scoby) is introduced into a sweetened tea to produce a fizzy, fermented probiotic beverage touted for its health benefits.
While regular kombucha naturally contains a small amount of alcohol (enough to get it briefly pulled from Whole Foods shelves in 2010), the art and science of hard kombucha, or kombucha beer as it can be called, involves amping up the alcohol content to produce a stronger product.
The two hard kombuchas currently on tap at HoneyMoon ($3 for a 5-ounce pour) are the Camellia Blanco, with a base layer of jasmine and lightly flavored with ginger and lemon, and the Camellia Flor, which adds a floral note of hibiscus. They are tart and effervescent, akin to a light sour beer, with a 3.5 percent to 4 percent alcohol by volume and not a whiff of the funkiness often associated with their lower-alcohol cousin.
Eventually, HoneyMoon plans to ramp up production with four varieties of its kombucha on tap, ranging from 3 percent to 6 percent ABV (a typical beer clocks in at 4.5 percent).
The taproom offers more than its signature kombucha, though: There’s a rotating selection of craft beer, wines from Albuquerque’s Sheehan Winery and New Mexico Hard Cider on tap (which can be mixed with the kombucha). Nonalcoholic offerings include Patrick’s Fine Soda, a locally produced probiotic drink made from kefir water, and selections from the Art of Tea, the same teas used to create HoneyMoon’s kombucha.
You can also add 25 milligrams of cannabidiol to any drink for $4.
While HoneyMoon doesn’t serve food, guests are encoraged to bring in takeout food from the plethora of dining options in the Solana Center, including Betterday Dine-In, La Montañita Co-op, Pho Kim, Valentina’s and Masa Sushi.
The path to the physical home for HoneyMoon Brewery has been a marriage of sorts as well: a lot of hard work and a little bit of kismet. Bystrom-Williams — a longtime home brewer who began making kombucha as a cost-friendly alternative to buying it from the store — and Hill, HoneyMoon’s brewmaster and vice president of operations, are life partners who both attended Santa Fe Prep but didn’t get to know each other until later.
In 2015, HoneyMoon received $20,000 in technical support from New Mexico Small Business Assistance, which allowed it to receive assistance from Los Alamos National Laboratory through bioengineer and homebrewing enthusiast David Fox.
“He was just the perfect fit for us because kombucha doesn’t have the legacy of brewing science behind it yet,” Bystrom-Williams said. “Beer brewing and winemaking have extensive scientific analysis that you can access, whereas people are still putting this together. So he was a great resource for us in that way.”
After a write-up in the British newspaper the Guardian and an enthusiastic response from Whole Foods, HoneyMoon received $20,000 in seed investment from the Santa Fe arm of startup accelerator ABQid.
Then things got bigger. HoneyMoon won the Miller Lite Tap the Future Competition out of an initial field of 15,000 applicants, to the tune of $200,000.
But to move from successful product to full-fledged brewery and taproom, there was one piece of the puzzle missing: Pyles.
As director of marketing at Albuquerque’s Marble Brewery, Pyles handled marketing and events, food trucks, “all the fun stuff, all the things you think of as Marble aside from the beer,” she said. When she left in 2016, she was conceptualizing a music venue where she could also brew kombucha. She didn’t know about hard kombucha until hearing about HoneyMoon’s work and the burgeoning hard kombucha movement in San Diego.
The trio met in summer 2017, and “I was really excited because it was what I wanted to do, but I didn’t even know that it was possible,” Pyles said.
Bystrom-Williams and Hill had chosen the space for HoneyMoon’s home — the former location of Annapurna’s World Vegetarian Cafe and the Real Butcher Shop — in part for its proximity to the co-op and its kombucha-friendly crowd. When Pyles saw the place, it sealed the deal.
“It was really the space and the local community and how many people were just kind of hanging out — and not touristy,” she said.
The 1,700-square-foot space has been transformed into an open, inviting taproom with the brewing area visible through large glass windows.
Pyles sourced authentic midcentury modern furniture pieces that surround a table made by her father. Dramatic pendant lighting dangles above tall, sleek communal tables designed by a friend. Another friend of Bystrom-Williams and Hill designed the contemporary wooden barstools and bar top, which is accented by striking cement Zia Tiles adorned with eight-pointed stars. Other features, including the mural and sign, were created by local artists.
Pyles describes the aesthetic as having a community, minimalist, boho-chic feel. In leading the design efforts, she drew on her extensive knowledge of breweries, those in New Mexico in particular.
“I really wanted to create something that was a little different and that reflected the fact that we’re majority owned by women and that we have a different product that’s geared more towards both genders,” she said. “There are some breweries that I walked into and I just don’t feel like they were designed for me.”
The open space and mixed seating, they said, is designed to encourage mingling and a sense of community. The space is family-friendly, too: Bystrom-Williams and Hill have two sons, 21 months and 1 month old, and Pyles has a 11-year-old daughter.
“What we really tried to accomplish in the space was to do what we love, of what we’ve seen other places in our travel that we love,” Pyles said, “and also bring something new to Santa Fe, design elements that we hadn’t seen other places that feel different.”
“What we really tried to accomplish in the space was to do what we love, what we’ve seen other places in our travel that we love,” Pyles said, “and also bring something new to Santa Fe, design elements that we hadn’t seen other places that feel different.”