While traveling around Mexico, we found most of the beer to be exactly what you’d expect – typical export lagers.  Thin watery, mass produced versions of classic lagers, dumbed down till they taste of almost nothing, and cry out for a slice of lime to add some, any flavor.

One bright spot in this sea of yellow is Baja Brewing, in the little seaside town of San Jose del Cabo. Nestled amongst tourist art and jewelry stores is a small brew pub, producing craft beers in the new American tradition.

We bellied up the bar and started with a sampler flight.

My favorites from the day’s offerings – an IPA (hops!?!) and the black scorpion –  a schwarzbier-style black lager.

We were also given a tour of the brewery by brewmaster Jordan Gardenhire.  An American expat, he loves what he gets to do.  Brewing in Mexico presents different challenges than brewing in America.  He explained that brewing ingredients are more scarce  - everything has to be imported – and equipment must be trucked down from California, fighting of coyotes along the way.  They’ve also had to work hard on the education side of serving craft beer, explaining their flavorful product to the locals – who have taken quite a liking too it.

But being in Baja also presents new opportunities.  An adventurous home brewer at heart, he’s free to experiment with new, indigenous fermentables.  Such as in his cactus heffe (sadly, not on tap when we visited)

Overall, Baja Brewing was a breath of fresh (hop scented) air.  Plus – they have pretty decent wood oven pizza, featuring a thin crust, studded with two row malt around the edges.

Tags: baja, baja brewing, brewpub, Mexico

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 10:48 am and is filed under Reviews, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.