The team at Baja Brewing Co.
Editor’s Note: Jordan Gardenhire started Baja Brewing in San Jose del Cabo in Baja California Sur in 2007. His company brews 10 craft beers, four of which are imported to the United States. In this interview with el Restaurante Publisher Ed Avis, he discusses the challenges of brewing craft beer in a country dominated by large lager breweries.
Ed Avis: What challenges do you face brewing craft beer in Mexico?
Jordan Gardenhire: There are a lot of difficulties. Just to start with, the production itself is a bit more expensive in Mexico than it would be in the United States.
Why's that?
It's surprising to people, but a lot of things are just more expensive, such as the utilities. And we have to import all of our ingredients, so all of the malt comes from the U.S. and is imported with tax or from Canada or from Europe. The hops as well.
They don't grow hops in Mexico?
No hops growing in Mexico, no. The climate is not right for hops. Hops need a certain number of freeze days, and so they're better at a certain altitude with a bit cooler weather. Now, there potentially could be some zones in Mexico that would work, but the other issue with hops is I think there's something about the latitude where you need a certain amount of days with a certain amount of sunlight, so northern and very southern latitudes work best for hops.
Barley, on the other hand, is grown extensively in Mexico, but pretty much all of the fields in Mexico are owned by a company which is in turn owned by the two major breweries here. They consume it all and don't share.
Wow. You're buying all your ingredients other than water, I assume, from outside Mexico?
Yep, that's right. And our equipment comes from outside of Mexico, either the U.S., Canada, Asia, or Europe.
That's interesting. Now, since you have to import those ingredients and equipment, what's the advantage that you have found being in Mexico?
Well, when we started, we were really brewing for the Mexican market, for Cabo specifically, and just being a local craft brewery was the appeal. And as we grew throughout Mexico, we kind of grew alongside the whole craft brew movement, if you will. And there was much more acceptance of craft beer, much more education, and just people understanding what it was throughout Mexico, specifically in the cities, and then some of the resort towns as well.
And now in the United States, Mexican beer is the number one growing beer, has been historically for the last couple decades maybe. As you know, Modelo Light's the number one beer in the U.S. right now. There's a lot of demand for it. And even the craft breweries in the U.S., a lot of them are making Mexican style lager. But I think the authenticity of being brewed in Mexico I think is definitely a unique selling point for us.
How does Mexico style lager differ from regular lager?
They use more rice in their production and corn as well. An American lager is certainly different and distinctive from a Mexican lager in flavor. The Mexican lager is going to have a little more of a sweet, kind of corny flavor to it, very low hops, and an American lager might be just a tiny bit more crispy and a tiny bit more bitter.
Baja Brewing Co.'s lineup
How hard is it to export your beer to the United States?
It has proven to be pretty difficult. Getting our beer into the U.S. is one thing, but then finding that distribution, getting on the shelves and just doing business outside of our home market is always a little bit more expensive. And so that's taken us some time. We are mostly distributed in California, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado.
In the U.S. now we have our four most popular beers, our flagships. It's our Cabotella, which is our blonde ale; La Surfa, which is our Baja lager, and we have a black ale called Escorpion Negro, the Black Scorpion. And then the fourth one is our Mexican IPA, Por Favor.
Okay, got it. And how hard is it to increase your sales in the U.S. given the competition from U.S. craft brewing, which seems to be ubiquitous these days?
Well, we just have a unique selling point and we're not really a big Mexican import, and we're not a U.S. craft, but we are kind of both things. We position ourselves in its own category in a way. We like to be on the Mexican shelf in a store, but we're a couple bucks more and it's kind of a level up for somebody who's looking for that Mexican beer but wants to try something a little bit new, a little more flavorful.
Some craft brewers have expanded beyond beer. Any new products for you?
We have a couple of interesting non-beer beverages. One is a cider, a pear cider, and the other one is a mead, a honey mead. We launched the mead and we put it in the big beer festival in Mexico City called Cerveza Mexico, and it won gold, and so we were really happy about that. And it's 10% alcohol, so it's quite a strong beverage. And the thing that we do that's a bit different with our mead is it's not sweet very much at all. We add hops even to balance and bitter it a little.
Is mead something that Mexico drinkers are familiar with or is that new to them?
Well, there are some meaderies, but it's not a classically Mexican thing. It's a European drink, but it goes well in Mexico because of the sweetness, and there's a bit of a sweet tooth in Mexico, and so people really like it. And so we use local honey as well. And it's interesting because the bees where we get the honey from feed on tamarind plants. That adds an interesting, unique kind of flavor to the honey itself.
Do you export the mead and cider to the United States?
No, we’re just focusing on our beers for now.
All right. Well, good talking to you. Thank you for your time and good luck on continued success.
I appreciate it. Thanks for taking an interest.
Would you like to read more about Mexican craft beer and wine? Click here to read the Fall 2023 Digital Supplement on Wine and Craft Beer