Brujos Brewing opening black metal, gothic, and occult styled brewpub in NW Portland
BRUJO is sorcerer, witch doctor; especially : one that works black magic.
Black metal and occult themed Brujos Brewing is opening their first location in the former Hammer & Stitch Brewing in NW Portland
Unlike other breweries who take inspiration in branding from black metal music, Brujos Brewing lives it from the art, music, and lifestyle to their dark and rich barrel-aged and pastry stouts that seduce beer nerds across the country. Though Brujos has only ever released a handful of beers to the public, their cult-like following and traveling collaborations have made it a seductive sensation whispered about on trading forums like beer advocate and making their beers among the most sought after and highest rated on apps like untappd.
Brewer Sam Zermeño is the sorcerer behind Brujos Brewing, he has been working his own magic in the mystical dark arts as an underground occultist with a loyal covenant of drinkers who can only partake by joining a special club. Zermeño has now found enough support from fellow followers of santeria to summon a full production brewpub into this world where he can find a permanent home for his liquid spells.
Zermeño grew up around Tijuana (TJ), Mexico and Southern California, in a family that moved a lot he was always searching for a place to fit in and find his people. Since he can remember, he was a fan of music from the metal and punk scene that thrived on the gritty street art and imagery of grim, death, magic and fantasy. That world was essential to finding community for a quiet kid that didn’t have a lot of friends. But from early on, the metal community was a gateway to the underground TJ homebrewers club, “I really fell in love with the culture, and the sharing of ideas. I was a loner growing up, so this felt like home.”
In the early days of his budding craft beer fandom, Zermeño was first attracted to the beer art and labels from brands like Stone Brewing that screamed “you’re not worthy” and carried with them extreme flavors and in your face art of the time. But he just couldn’t get into IPA’s and was always at arms length from craft beer until he discovered the joys of darkness in stouts like Stone’s Mexican hot chocolate inspired Xocoveza. It wasn’t until he tried a homebrewed Black IPA until he had any interest in brewing his own.
“Before I started making beer I wanted to be in a band to be a rockstar and shit. That just didn’t really work out,” says Zermeño. “I got married and had a kid and it was like ‘now it’s not just me, I need to provide for them now.’ I put the music thing aside and I found brewing after I had my son and got into a foolish accident.”
In 2014 Zermeño got into a serious rock climbing accident that shattered bones in both feet and nearly tore his achilles heel.
“I was being a fuckin fool and rock climbing without gear, I just thought I could do this,” he admits.
Luckily his wife was there to go get help, but for the next hour he had nothing to do but sit at the base of the rocks aching in pain and thinking about what was next. “I had just purchased a house and I was thinking ‘oh I’m fucked, what do I do now because I cant even work’ because I was a truck driver at the time.”
After the accident he was wheelchair bound for half a year, the mistake ended up shifting the trajectory of his life. At the time, he had friends who were homebrewers but he hadn’t brewed himself.
“I started brewing in the wheelchair just out of curiosity and a way to keep my mind in a good spot,” says Zermeño. “I was a very physically active guy before that happened. When I broke my feet I was kind of depressed and losing my mind, brewing kind of saved me from my thoughts and my inner darkness, it was like this keeps me in a good place so I am just going to keep doing it. I think that’s why I fell so much in love with it because it was the thing that got me out of that black hole that I was falling into. I was like ‘I think I can do this and I think I can do it well, and I think I can apply the occult, dark wizard stuff into the brand. And now here we are with Brujos all these years later.”
The imagery and the feel of his beers inside and out was a big part of it from the beginning. While most homebrewers are content with just hand bottling or filling corny kegs with their beers, Zermeño almost immediately started creating artwork and professional level labels for the beers and sharing them with friends.
“I’m Mexican so I really wanted the name to be in Spanish. I had all these stupid names written down. One day I was brewing in my driveway with my brother and my dad was there and he was like, ‘You guys look like brujitos making potions.’ He said brujitos and I was like, ‘fuck, brujos could be a really cool name.’ I’ve always been into black metal, doom and weird subgenres of metal. It all made sense when the name came and I just went for it and I’ve been brewing non-stop since,” Zermeño told the New School in our 2022 profile of the cult-like sensation.
To turn Brujos Brewing into a reality, Zermeño had to find two partners crazy enough about his vision to risk a fortune on an unproven brand.
Scott Lemaster is an insurance broker from Pullman, Washington where his parents were homesteaders on a wheat ranch. His father got into the grain elevator business and the family hopped around the state before he settled in Vancouver in 1986. Lemaster got into the insurance business right after college, his mentors counseled him to buy up stock and after 23 years they managed to get enough to buy out the old guard of the employee owned agency and sell it to a larger company. Today he is the Vice President of Biggs Insurance, a division of Alliant Insurance Services, and has cashed out enough on big bets that he can help bankroll a startup like Brujos.
Lemaster’s beer story started when his cousin, who lives on the coast, turned him on to Buoy Beer Co. and Fort George 6 or 7 years ago. Before that he was always an original Coors guy, but the first craft beer he fell in love with was Fort George Vortex IPA. “For me, that opened pandora’s box,” he says. Pretty soon he was trying everything he could find and would cross the street from his office to Mav’s Taphouse for a beer after work. But after awhile he noticed the tabs adding up, and thought why not get his own home kegerator to save a little money on his blossoming craft beer habit. Taking notes on his favorite beers from the taproom, he would ask the bar manager if he could purchase kegs for home.
“I am a huge hazy fan, a big IPA guy,” says Lemaster. “I met Jesse [Brujos other new partner] because I bought a boat from him, during that process we became friends. After I got my boat he came over and we were testing the straps and discovered my kegerator and that I was also into beer.”
Brujos other new partner Jesse McFarland interjcects: “Scott [Lemaster] is being really humble. Scott ordered the largest non-commercial boat that company has ever built. It was a long, intimate process of getting to know each other over 2 years. He was one of my favorite clients I have ever worked with. We normally would talk about fishing, women, life, boats, but never beer until I discovered he had a hazy on tap and was like ‘wait a minute’.”
When the time came for Brujos Brewing to become more than a collaborative-garage-side project, local beer nerd and boat broker Jesse McFarland felt the time was right to help make beer history by giving back to the community he had fell in love with. With over 25 years in the boating industry, McFarland worked his way up the ranks from scrubbing hulls to walking clients through a long process of custom ordering and designing their dream vessels. Putting his well developed skills in logistics and personal and professional relationships to use, McFarland scraped together enough cash to back a brewer that he believes in on a brewery he couldn’t be more excited for.
McFarland comes from Tampa Bay, Florida, and ended up in Portland 7 years ago when he and his wife came out to help his father-in-law fight cancer. They fell in love with the northwest and decided to stay, perhaps in part for the beer. As a young man growing up on the east coast, he was a big National Bohemian Beer drinker (colloquially referred to as Natty Boh) before he moved on to what seemed like a connoisseurs beer at the time - Yuengling lager. McFarland credits his best friend in Florida, his “suds sensei” with getting him into craft beer. Cigar City Brewing’s Jai Alai IPA was the beer that converted him into a full fledged beer geek, and that was even before he discovered the New England-style IPA trend and fell head over heels in love. “When Treehouse and Trillium, and those guys were kicking off with the hazy stuff, that was like the phoenix rising with IPA’s, it was just mind blowing,” he says.
Shortly after Great Notion Brewing opened on NE Alberta in 2016 and brought the NE-style hazy IPA to the west coast, someone tipped McFarland off and he quickly became a devoted follower. McFarland was at the pub every Saturday, and when they expanded to a NW Portland location he was in line for every can drop. It wasn’t long before he started recognizing brewers and even noticing their signature flavors, one that stood out early were the beers of Sam Zermeño who had recently moved to Oregon and joined Great Notion after a brief stint at Newport Brewing Company. McFarland already knew about Brujos, and was enjoying beers at the bar at Great Notion Alberta one day when they finally met.
“I recognized him [Zermeño] from some of the instagram posts, and there he was sitting at the bar having a beer just like I was,” says McFarland recalling their first meeting. “I was struck by how humble he was, just to shoot the shit, super kind, talking about what he was brewing and what he wanted to brew next. It made me feel like this is super special, not to only drink this great beer but to have the guy that made it sitting next to you and pick his brain. You know you don’t get to meet Picasso while you look at his painting.”
McFarland was really into the underground beer trading scene, he was shipping beers back to the east coast to his friends and attempting to get all the hypiest stuff being discussed on forums and in bottle share groups. He started sending some Brujos beers across the country in trades, but eventually gave it up when he realized the beers he was shipping out were better than the beers he was getting in return.
In 2022 Zermeño was able to strike up a deal with Great Notion to release the first canned and legit non-collaboration beer release under the name of Brujos Brewing. That year they were featured at the New School’s New Oregon Breweries Showcase with the first two official beers out of the gate. Based on his first few beers that were brewed, packaged and releases through Great Notion, Zermeño wanted to take things to the next level. He took a job as a brewer at the new Living Haus Beer with the primary benefit of being able to use their contract brewing operation to hands on brew his own Brujos brand and host releases at the taproom that would generate funds he could use to eventually open his own place.
Needless to say the few events hosted at Living Haus were huge hits, and he decided to fast track his plans by looking for investors and a potential location of his own.
When Jesse McFarland heard there was an opportunity to help Zermeño create his own brewery he quickly lept into action looking for locations and another major backer. It ended up being an easy sell as all three partners were aligned on IPAs, but Lemaster wasn’t so sure about the dark arts and dark beers until he tried Zermeño’s.
“I was never really a stout guy,” admits Lemaster. “But when we barbecued steaks over here at my house and shared several different stouts of Sam’s I was really blown away. They really turned me on to stouts. I am a rookie beer guy compared to these guys if you didn’t notice, but Sam said he was going to under his wing!”
“The funny thing is Scott and I are not heavy metal, or gothic guys,” adds McFarland, “We are just beer fans and getting to know Sam has been a real joy. Scott and I have the unique privilege to join Sam at the height of his journey so far. We didn’t scrape and put all the hard work in over years and years like he did, we get to glean from Sam’s hard work here. In a lot of ways we are cherry-picking, it feels a little bit selfish. Like how did we get so lucky, we didn’t have to do anything.”
The search for a Brujos location was on, and the pieces began quickly falling into place when a tip led them to Hammer & Stitch Brewing in NW Portland’s Slabtown neighborhood. The brewpub was a victim of the pandemic, having opened in 2020 and never gaining traction in this industrial part of town with little to no foot traffic or evening crowds. Zermeño however, already knows the area as Great Notion NW is just down the road and both Brujos and GN are masters of drawing beer fans out to line up for their premiere releases.
Hammer & Stitch Brewing before it becomes Brujos Brewing
Hammer & Stitch Brewing was for sale as a turnkey brewhouse with taproom, raised patio deck, and even a kitchen. The beautifully laid out brewery was perfect for production, both packaged and draft, and the space is large enough to hold the latest occultist releases that will draw a crowd. The only problem was they had to line up financing and pull the trigger as quickly as possible as other breweries were circling the assets and there was pressure to close the sale in as short of window as possible so as not to incur more debt. In just 45 days of hustling Lemaster, McFarland, and Zermeno were able to secure the space and get the keys.
“I have been levitating, we were looking at other spaces that weren’t even close to this,” says Lemaster. “This place fell out of the sky, and it’s really set up already for us to be successful. Everything that has happened up to this point has fallen into place, we couldn’t have scripted it any better. Other than the liquor license, we can’t brew beer yet. We are all just stoked, our energy is so high.”
Now the hard work begins, because although the brewery is pristine and all the tools for success are on hand, the aesthetics are all off for the morbidly fun gothic vibes that are essential to Brujos brand. Already the partners have begun trying out different black swatches for a repaint that will drench the taproom in darkness with only the flicker of ambient lighting to put drinkers in the appropriate mood. They have also already purchased and set up pews and a pulpit sourced from a southern Oregon church remodel, and are finishing live edge beer hall style tables to go with them. But the entire buildout is still likely to be a long arduous process, as the short window from finding the space to closing left little time to plan out the space ahead of time and they are planning to do a lot of custom work that is still cooking in the cauldron. The peircingly bright white and open layout of Hammer & Stitch will have to go, as they transform it into what can only be described as the inverse of a Christian chapel; an unholy place of worship to the dark lords of paganism.
“My dad is a pastor, to be building this dark church of beer is really conflicting for me,” says McFarland, half laughing but also dead serious. “But when I think about it… we are tapping into something pure, we are tapping into why they started churches in the first place to tap something elemental from the human experience. Beer just facilitates that, it brings your inhibitions down. It’s community and communing, that stuff was ingrained in me growing up to serve other people and those things are literally going to be happening here so it is not a departure to me whatsoever.”
Moving their new church pews and pulpit into the new Brujos Brewing location
As soon as Brujos gets their brewing license (which they hope to receive in the next 90 days), they are already planning a packed lineup of Hazy IPA’s big and small. “Some people say they are all the same,” says Zermeño of the hazy IPA category that he is making his signature. “But I have tried beers and brewed beers all over the country and they are not the same. I have seen the processes and they are completely different from one another. And, the way I do mine I think are just as unique as the ones I have had from other people, and I want to grow and get even better and for people to recognize my flavor profile.”
When you talk to a lot of brewers, many of them will say they are NOT personally into the juicy, tropical, New England-style Hazy IPA’s which came to dominate craft beer over the last 5+ years. Talking to Zermeño, Lemaster and McFarland it is mostly the opposite, each of them with a passion for the hazy and making world-class examples that stand out. Neither Lemaster or McFarland is much into the current moment for craft lagers. Zermeño says he does want to make a true Mexican-style corn lager, but isn’t sure if he will make any others, if so they would be hoppy, tropical, new contemporary dry-hopped versions. West Coast IPAs and other hop-forward styles will make regular appearances as well. On the more unusual side, Zermeño would like to make a Gratzer or Grodziskie (which he won a 2022 GABF gold medal for at Great Notion) and his own unique take on a non-alcoholic super Hop Water.
The stouts that Brujos first gained recognition for will now come in the form of long-term barrel-aged projects and collaborations. The underground beer club that has been nurtured for so many years, will morph into a reserve society type of barrel-aged beer membership program.
Brujos Brewing partners left to right: Jesse McFarland, Sam Zermeño, and Scott Lemaster
And while the trifecta of new partners take on the reimaging of a future brewpub, they are looking for a food partner to lease the kitchen, ideally someone with a creative vision and interest in collaborating. Brujos anticipates hosting canned beer drops on the patio with food trucks as early as October, but not likely opening the full brewpub to the public until spring of 2024.
“Why shoot too early and not hit the nail in the head,” says McFarland. Though the three partners have never worked together, and not even been friends for long, they are coalescing behind a single goal of creating community, letting Sam Zermeño. do what he does best, and fostering the next generation of brewers and beer nerds into the craft beer scene.
“The thing about Sam is he inspires passion and fosters that in people, and I don’t think he realizes it because he does it so organically,” says McFarland. “And that really speaks to someone and their heart and their passion, to rally other people for their time and their money. That’s the zenith of what craft beer is all about, it can get people really excited and unlock your imagination. And you find an artist like Sam, and I don’t think he’s really even tapped into his potential. We are stoked to be part of the opportunity to really watch Sam flourish,” says McFarland using the kind of words every brewer would dream of hearing from a business partner.
“I couldn’t be more thankful to Great Notion and Living Haus and everyone else for the insane support,” adds Zermeño at the end of our long and winding conversation as his work is just beginning. “I couldn’t have done it without them and opening up all those avenues for us. The craft beer community here in Portland is unlike any other part of the world I have been in, it’s very competitive and not as friendly in other states. But here everyone wants to see each other thrive, and I am stoked we are apart of that and we want to continue that for others that come after us.”
Brujos Brewing coming to NW Portland’s Slabtown Neighborhood Soon