Micro Brewery In San MIguel de Allende Wins Gold Again

San Miguel's best kept secret, an award winning craft brewery.

Unless you're into the craft beer scene in Mexico you probably haven't heard of Cerveceria Dos Aves.
Located in Colonia La Lejona this discrete micro-brewery has been making waves in the burgeoning Mexican craft beer scene by producing small batches of award winning ales here in San Miguel de Allende since 2012, distinguishing themselves as San Miguel's first commercial micro-brewery.

What initially made it possible for Cerveceria Dos Aves and other craft breweries to grow in Mexico was ironically, a lawsuit filed by U.S. beer giant Miller who wanted to import their brand into the Mexican market. This suit convinced the Mexican congress to re-write the laws regarding the two Mexican beer monopolies of Modelo (read corona/victoria) and Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma (with the indio brand), limiting their dominance on the grocery store shelves to 25% thus allowing Miller and other breweries like Cerveceria Dos Aves to fill that void. This new law also prohibited Modelo from restricting restaurants who sold the Modelo brand from providing the consumers with more options while they dined.

Using traditional methods to produce classic styles of beer, Cerveceria Dos Aves has been recognized as brewing some of the best beers in Mexico. Their humble beginnings started in a single car garage on Refujio street in Colonia San Antonio. There they began brewing four types of ales and convinced some of the better local restaurants to take a chance selling artisanal beer. They soon found themselves part of the growing craft beer movement in Mexico and have been expanding rapidly. They currently have the capacity to produce over 1,000 cases of beer per month out of their La Lejona facility and have tentative plans to expand to include a tasting room with occasional brewery tours .

During it's first year in business, Dos Aves won awards at the COPA Mexico, the largest and most important national brewers competition. The biggest brewers organization in Mexico, Acermex, sponsors this national competition which receives submissions from all professional breweries nation wide. From this pool of craft and independent brewers Cerveceria Dos Aves garnered a first place gold medal for their American pale ale, gold medal for their Barley wine and gold for their Russian imperial stout. In year two they receive a third place bronze medal for their Belgian style tripel ale. And this year, up against over 50 other submissions for the category, they receive another first place gold medal for American pale ale and a second place silver medal for their Imperial India pale ale. According to owners of Cerveceria Dos Aves Mark Taylor and Francisco Kameko "these awards are the validation that motivate us to continue to produce beers of excellent quality. We know we're on the right track and appreciate the recognition from our peers."

You can find beers brewed by Cerveceria Dos Aves in many of San Miguel's better restaurants and to take away in retail outlets like Via Organica and Luna de Queso.

Rye beer vote

We've advanced to the second round of voting for our Rye beer and I'm hoping all that see this will go here and place your vote. If you have different email addresses you can use those to vote again which is nice. Thanks you all for your help.

Rye IPA

We're selling our rye IPA now and we have a cool label to go with it.
This is a really enjoyable beer with about 15% rye malt, some crystal and a little chocolate malt. Tons of Columbus hops in the form of FWH and Whirlpool hop additions.
I'll go more into detail on this beer soon but in the mean time we are asking anyone reading this to participate in the voting for your favorite label which we hop is ours. Must be ours, thank you very much!
Go to the link below and get busy. Remember, vote early and vote often.


Rye IPA label contest

Nano Brewery Equipment

It's been a busy year of brewery growth and I wanted to post some pictures of the progress we're making on our very limited budget. As the sales of Dos Aves continue and with a small influx of additional capital we have been able to move up to a 3bbl brew system. We were brewing eight back-to-back 10 gallon batches in a 12 hour day which was literally killing me. Now, with a single batch in 5 hours we have the same amount of wort going in the fermentor. Sweet.
But the intense labor continues with our glamorized homebrew systems and still we are able to produce enough beer to be selling 80 cases per month and the sales are growing month by month. Below is some of the equipment we are using to get the job done.

Water pump station where we move R.O. water to the brew system and tap water to the wort chiller along with pumping reclaimed chilling water and water for cleaning.

The 3bbl brew system. Each kettle is heated with 42 nozzle jet burners and the transfers are made with a couple of undersized March pumps. The wort transfer to fermentor pump will be replaced soon with a legitimate s.s. comercial pump

The chilling module includes a Duda-diesel plate chiller in tandem with an immersion coil. The wort is chilled with tap water through the plate chiller and then the wort continues on through a copper coil that is submerged in an ice bath getting wort temperature down to 65f. as it enters the fermentor.

I like to refer to these as the poor man's version of the brite tank. We rack the fermented beer into 5gal. corny kegs, carbonate and then place into modified freezers where the temperature is dropped to 38f. for a week of clearing before being bottled.

Here are some filled kegs waiting their turn in the coolers.

The bottling line. We are able to bottle 4 per minute with this system and note that the bottle sanitizer has been upgraded since this picture with a 24 bottle spray sanitizer. (pictures coming soon)

Please visit us at Cerveceria Dos Aves we welcome your comments and hope to see you in San Miguel to share a Dos Aves beer soon! Cheers and thanks again to all those that have supported this effort!