Years ago, Turtle Mountain Brewing owner Nico Ortiz told me a story about when he first opened his brewpub in Rio Rancho back in 1999 in a building that used to be a laundromat. Sometimes, people would walk in the door with a basket of laundry under their arm and stare in wonder at what the building had become.

The wise ones would set the laundry down and order a pint, and as time went along, they became the regulars that helped Turtle Mountain succeed in an era when other breweries were shutting down left and right in the metro area.

Twenty-five years later, Turtle Mountain is an institution in Rio Rancho, a city of constant change, and an icon among New Mexico breweries. I caught up with Ortiz and head brewer David Pacheco for our annual Look Back/Look Ahead Series, just in time before TMBC celebrates a quarter century in business with an anniversary dinner for the ages.

“Twenty-five years in this business … I was trying to scour the internet to see the percentage of restaurants that make it to 25 years,” Ortiz said. “Google let me down, I was not able to find statistics. The basic statistic is that 80 percent of restaurants fail within the first five years. So that leaves 20 out of 100 that survive past five. How many of those 20 survive to 25? It has to be single digits. The number of restaurants that I can name in New Mexico that are more than 25 years old are in single digits. It’s definitely a milestone.

“Breweries, the failure rate is less than restaurants, but still, if you can look at the more than 9,000 in the country that are over 25, it’s a small number. I’m taking a little bit of pride of managing and celebrating 25 years. It has been, like my little blurb (in the Albuquerque Journal) says, we had Y2K the first year, the whole world was going to go to shit. Then, we had the dot com bubble burst, we had the 2008 real estate crisis, we had COVID, it was one thing after another. We have survived.”

Ortiz said COVID was by far the most challenging.

“That one came out of way left field,” he said. “We managed to survive and it’s testament to the fantastic people that Turtle has. All of my co-workers who do the day-to-day, nuts-and-bolts jobs around here, they keep this place open. We are definitely rolling out the big red carpet for 25, it is a milestone anniversary in this business.”

Turtle Mountain is one of eight breweries that have been around for 25 years (or more) in New Mexico, along with Santa Fe Brewing (1988), Canteen/Il Vicino (1994), High Desert (1996), Second Street (1996), Sierra Blanca (1996), Three Rivers (1997), and Tractor (1999).

“For a rural state like New Mexico to have eight breweries that are 25 years old, that’s amazing,” Ortiz added.

To get to 25, Turtle Mountain had to first navigate its way as a business through 2023.

“It was year two of Turtle North, so we were mainly getting the operations for that settled, employees, menu,” Ortiz said. “New restaurants take a little bit of time, i.e. several years, to find their footing. Turtle North was the main focus of the whole organization in 2023. Turtle South (knocks on wood) blessedly hums along like a well-oiled machine. That allowed me to spend more time up at Turtle North.”

Ortiz said it was a good year overall, but there was one major project that they were unable to finish on schedule, pushing it forward into 2024.

“And then, we spent, jeez, we signed the lease on the additional brewery space (next to North) in the middle of 2023,” he said. “We were hoping to be much further along on the process of moving the brewery than we are. We’re finally making strides. We were just kind of in stasis for six months. Construction these days is horrible. Turtle North was built in 2021, right in the middle of COVID, I thought that was bad. Now I know that’s nothing. Construction in 2023-24 is worse as far as cost, as far as just access to sub (contractors), doing anything inexpensively.”

Moving the brewery and expanding it is key to the future of Turtle Mountain. Ortiz noted that they are a restaurant first and a brewery second, but there is a stark difference between the two parts of the operation. The restaurant side produces 60 percent of the revenue, but requires 112 of their 115 employees between the two locations. The brewery produces 40 percent of the revenue with a team of three.

While they wait for the new brewery space to be completed, Pacheco and his team still had to confront a new challenge at the south location — the water itself, which required a new water softener.

“We’ve had it about a year now,” he said. “I tend to glaze over that for sure. It was like 2021 and early 2022, those few quarters were particularly hard because we had different water well switches. We feel that as more people move to Rio Rancho and put more demand on the municipality, we ran into situations where we had really, really cloudy water. Before this, we didn’t really have any filtration other than a 20-inch, 5-micron carbon filter. It just wasn’t doing the job for the volume and flow rate that we needed. I noticed that a lot of our equipment was becoming degraded due to just having hard water being really hot in there. Our hot liquor tank has really suffered that, and I’m sure our boiler.”

The “man-sized carbon filter” that was installed now takes care of the water throughout the building, which helps the kitchen, too.

“Particularly it’s helped with consistency of beer,” Pacheco said. “Before that, we would look into our hot liquor tank and say we can’t brew with that. It makes sense, from a brewing standpoint your product is 95-percent water, so why wouldn’t you secure that integrity of your main ingredient? If you don’t have good water, you can have all the best ingredients curated by the best people in the country and you still wouldn’t have good beer.”

Ortiz said that Turtle Mountain moved into the south building at 905 36th Pl SE in 2006, and for 15 years they never had a problem with the water.

“In 2021, they switched the well and it was rough,” he said. “It led to a serious halt in brewing operations. We had the pinhole leaks in the hot liquor tank. It’s shoehorned into the back of the brew platform, there’s no way to easily replace it. It just kind of all blew up. That all precipitated the brewery move. 2023 was quite challenging. You could come in and there would be four beers on the menu.”

Now the brewery is back to churning out multiple beer styles besides the year-round brews. Soon, Turtle Mountain will be able to create and sell even more.

New brewing space will be a game changer

“2024 is going to be one of those years for Turtle Mountain where obviously we’re celebrating our 25th anniversary, which is going to be huge, but we’re also moving in and giving David and his crew a brewery that’s expansive,” Ortiz said. “It’s leagues above what we currently have from a brewing standpoint.”

The new brewing space will occupy the room on the east side of the building that North currently occupies at 7835 Enchanted Hills Blvd. The new space is 4,300 square feet, compared to 1,200 feet at the south building. TMBC has added 90 barrels worth of brite tanks in addition to their existing 90 barrels worth of fermenters. If maxed out, that could increase production from 1,600 barrels per year to 3,200.

“I think brites in between your server vessels is a godsend,” Pacheco said. “You can still turn over fermenters and keep yeast alive, but also not feel terribly pressed where you put it in a server and you feel it needs to sit for a couple more weeks. It gives us the opportunity to have more empty slots, to have more options.

“While we’re not going to try to be too eager, we don’t need to fill all 32 of our (taps) at North with different beers, I’m wary of over committing, biting off too much. You don’t want to inundate people. If the attention span is just so wide that it’s going to be a little bit too dazzling, we see people gravitate towards what’s tried and true.”

There will also be a new boiler, a new glycol chiller, a new cold room, and of course a new water softener. Ortiz said it all added up to more money than he planned to spend, but it will be worth it down the line.

“Beer is the highest margin product we sell,” he said. “I had tell myself that the brewery is what generates the money to enable us to have the food side of things. The kitchen demands stuff and I have to comply. The brewery earns stuff and I have to comply, simply due to the margin on the product the labor cost back there is so minimal.”

Once everything is up and running, Ortiz said he is looking forward to firing up a friendly rivalry with their neighbors to the northeast.

“I’m looking forward to going toe to toe with Bosque, which is a mile away at their showpiece facility,” he said. “David has his subtle marching orders, where we’re not constrained by our system and our water and anything else, we have everything necessary to make the best beers in the world. We’re going to have some fun, poke a little bit at Bosque around the corner.”

“They’re great people,” David added. “Some of their crew, their watering hole is North. They give me great feedback on some of our beers, and I really appreciate that.”

Ortiz praised Bosque’s brewing team leaders John Bullard and Tim Woodward, the latter of whom used to have Pacheco’s job at TMBC many years ago.

“The healthy competition is good,” Ortiz said. “We’re looking forward to getting in there. We’re definitely going all in in north Rio Rancho. The whole center is going to be full of corporate businesses and food. That whole area is going to be popping. We’re right in the middle of it.”

Right now, though, it is time to celebrate with the biggest event at North since it first opened.

Brewing up an anniversary feast

The 25th anniversary beer dinner will take place this Friday. It is a ticketed event, so head to the official website for full details.

To sum things up here, first there will be a lunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. That costs $50, with tax and tip included. There will not be the full menu, but if you are looking for more of a bargain, and you want somewhere with great beer and food to watch the Lobos in the NCAA Tournament, this might be your best option.

Otherwise, the main celebration will be with the dinners. There will be staggered seating times at 5, 6, and 7 p.m. The dinner costs $100, including two tokens for any beer, wine, or cocktail. The menu, which is themed around Brazilian-style food dishes, is rather extensive and included in that link above.

“We’re capped at 75 tickets per seating,” Ortiz said. “That way the kitchen knows how much food to put out. Typically, in years past, we would have a brewers dinner here (at south), and it would be capped at 40 to 50 people. We couldn’t accommodate any more. For this event, if you want to come in, you gotta buy a ticket and make a reservation.”

For those with less to spend, you can still celebrate at the brewery location.

“Turtle South is going to be open, so for the people who don’t care about our Rio Rancho to Rio de Janeiro carne fest, we’re keeping this open,” Ortiz said. “We’re doing a New York strip here with a 20-percent reduction on it. We brought in a bunch of Montmorency cherries, which we used in the (anniversary) beer itself, and we’re going to make a cobbler. You can come to Turtle South, get the 12-ounce beer, get the New York strip with the reduction from the beer on it, and you can finish it with cherry cobbler. You can have that cherry all the way through your meal.”

Among the beers on tap at both locations will be the ongoing Throwback Series, where Pacheco resurrected some classic recipes. TMBC IPL, Yard Sale Pale Ale, Grandma’s Brown, Red Rye Re-Redux, and Old Oku Barleywine are among the highlights.

Oh, and then there is the aforementioned 25th Anniversary Belgian Red.

“I’ll let David talk about it,” Ortiz said. “Our first anniversary beer was an Arrogant Bastard clone, which became Amnesia, one of our favorite beers that we ever made. Anniversary beers tend to be IPAs, but our 20th anniversary was that Steinbock. I was trying to think what we want to do for 25. I harkened back to New Glarus Belgian Red. If I was ever stranded on a desert island and had one beer to drink for the rest of my days, I keep coming back to that classic, not the current version. The one in the wax-capped 750s. Liquid cherry pie in a bottle. The new versions are still good, but not as good. We’re going to try something like that, because that’s arguably my favorite beer in the whole world.”

It was not as simple as brew wheat beer, throw in cherries, ferment, and serve. This beer was far more complex, especially when the decision was made to barrel age it. Pacheco and Ortiz sought out advice from the likes of Jeff Erway at La Cumbre to brewing icon Stan Hieronymous.

“Once we got input back from Stan Hieronymous, we realized this was a difficult task,” Pacheco said, noting that the yeasts would be the ultimate key, especially in how they reacted to the cherries. “But, it’s mainly wheat, which I think is important to note to people with wheat allergies and what not. The rest is a red 2-Row offered by Proximity, the tiniest amount of roast in there. We did about seven barrels in the boil kettle.

“What we did was we introduced it to two types of cultures. We introduced it to a Belgian (yeast) from Omega, and we also then did a lacto(bacillus) strain in there. We fermented that down and then threw it in our newly acquired American oak barrels, which had (previously had) whiskey in there. I believe we have to give thanks to Hollow Spirits for that acquisition.”

Pacheco added a little more sugar into the barrels to feed the lacto, similar to what brewers often do with cask beers. Then he let the barrels sit for four months.

“Now, the original recipe mandates age it for a year,” he said. “Unfortunately, we do not have the real estate in this place. To have four whiskey barrels full of beer is very difficult for us. I mean, sure, you could have it outside sitting somewhere, but I don’t trust that stuff. You never know what could go on out there. We had to acquisition some of our grain room.”

Ultimately, even with the barrels being moved in and out on grain delivery days, and even with some temperature changes, the beer happily evolved into what is now on tap.

“It’s about 7.35-percent (ABV) from what I remember,” Pacheco said. “Which is significantly higher than the original. I was more comfortable in a 7.35 beer in barrels than a 4-percent. It tends to take oxygen better and it can dissuade further contamination of god knows what. It gets a little riskier. I felt that since it’s 25 years, it was permissible to have something stronger. It drinks really well, it doesn’t really take a 7.35, 7.4.”

Ortiz noted that it was an expensive beer to make, they did not have time to do a test batch, and there was plenty that could have gone wrong.

“All of our eggs were in one basket,” he said. “I’m very uncomfortable with putting all of my eggs in one basket for anything, especially for the 25th anniversary beer. We didn’t have a choice. I was just crossing my fingers that the brewing gods would shine upon us for this one.

“It came out great. I was like 7.3-percent, ooo. It came out great, I think (New Glarus’) Dan Carey would approve of our tribute to his classic beer.”

Pacheco poured us some of the beer to try, and guess what? Ortiz is correct, it did turn out great. Not too sour, not too sweet, just a well-balanced, flavorful fruit-forward wheat ale, with hints of the whiskey and oak on the edges. It is a wonderful tribute to everyone at Turtle Mountain for all to enjoy.

A huge thanks to Nico and David for the interview. I do not get out across town to Turtle Mountain nearly often enough. Here is to 25 years, and to the next 25 years to come.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister