Jeff Erway was teaching music on the Navajo Nation in western New Mexico when he picked up a book entitled How to Brew and fell in love with brewing beer.

“I ordered my first home brew equipment and ingredients that week in 2003,” says Erway, who now owns La Cumbre Brewing Company in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “After about eight months of hits and misses, five recent college graduates moved in to the teacher apartments, and happy hours were at my place. My four- or five-hour hobby every other week was converted into a part-time job. A four-tap kegerator was built, and, when I was not teaching music, I was brewing beer for thirsty teachers.”

New Mexico's La Cumbre Brewing Company says its goal is "to produce beers that represent the ... [+] absolute apex of the art of brewing."

Erway began reading “any brewing text I could get my hands on,” and he and his wife, Laura, traveled to breweries when he wasn’t teaching. They visited hundreds of breweries, and Laura deserves a lot of credit, he says, for spending many miles behind the wheel as a designated driver.

“We immersed ourselves in the culture of craft beer,” Erway says. “Beer festivals, including the Great American Beer Festival, filled our weekends. When visiting breweries, I would make sure to pick the brewers’ brains, and they gave me endless access to their wealth of knowledge. They were my heroes and since have become my close friends. I owe them the world. They convinced me I needed to change careers.”

Erway says he loved teaching, but he realized he had another calling.

“I could not deny what was painfully obvious: Not only did I love brewing beer, I had a gift for it,” he says. “I was often afflicted with insomnia and would lie in bed late into the morning planning my path into the industry and pondering what would become La Cumbre Brewing Co.”

In 2007, Erway joined the American Brewers Guild and completed its apprenticeship program. Then he quit teaching and moved to Albuquerque to take a position at the now defunct Chama River Brewing Co.

“Working under the head brewer there proved to be exactly what I needed to take me from an accomplished home brewer to a consistent commercial brewer,” he recalls. “The head brewer was opening another brewery in Albuquerque, so, soon after beginning my employment, I got the opportunity to run the busy brewpub mostly on my own. I was formerly named head brewer in early 2008.”

Erway says he told his employer he planned to open his own brewery and worked hard to build his brewing reputation. His beers won awards at the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup.

The accolades helped secure several investors, including accountant Scot Nelson, a Chama River customer. Nelson became Erway’s business partner and the CFO of their new venture, La Cumbre Brewing.

Erway vividly remembers the startup.

“After a one-week trip to Belgium with my wife Laura in November 2009, I did what any sensible 30-year-old would do: quit my job and got my wife pregnant!” he says. “All kidding aside, I don't recommend doing that. It was stress on top of more stress. I worked consistently throughout 2010 and, after the birth of my son in October, was able to open La Cumbre on Dec. 10, 2010.”

In La Cumbre’s first full year of operation, three awards were won at the Great American Beer Festival. The brewery’s Elevated IPA beat 176 entrants to win a gold medal in the American-style IPA category; its pilsener called BEER bested 31 entries to capture a gold medal in the American-style or international-style pilsener category, and its Malpais Stout won a silver medal in the foreign-style stout category.

“On my 31st birthday in 2011, I brought my wife and newborn son to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival,” Erway recalls. “It was the first day away from the brewery since opening 10 months prior. I was absolutely exhausted, but, when La Cumbre was called on stage not once but three times, my level of excitement was at an all-time high. Not only had we won three medals, but we had taken the coveted gold in the most competitive category of American India Pale Ale. That was a pretty good day.”

The judges at the festival commended Elevated IPA for its bright tropical and piney hop nose and its assertive bitterness. In 2018, the festival’s judges again awarded Malpais Stout a silver medal after evaluating 52 entries.

“Malpais is a beer I have been working on since 2004 or so,” Erway says. “I always have loved the style of foreign-style stout. At their best, such stouts have all the intense dark fruit, licorice, coffee and black chocolate notes of an imperial stout without as much alcohol. Malpais really hits those characteristics without going into the realm of smoky or burnt.”

Despite the plaudits given to the beers of La Cumbre and other New Mexico breweries, the state rarely gets mentioned as a top craft-brewing state. According to 2020 data of the Brewers Association trade group, New Mexico has 100 craft breweries. That ranks 27th among all states in total number of breweries but 10th in breweries per capita (per 100,000 residents aged 21 and older).

“New Mexico is never going to get mentioned for much of anything by the majority of people in this country,” Erway says. “I remember at a party once hearing my then girlfriend, now wife, Laura, tell someone she was from New Mexico and being told ‘but you speak such good English.’ While there is plenty that New Mexico has to work on, the quality of our craft beer is not one of them. Brewers the world over have come to my brewery and other New Mexican breweries, and they leave thoroughly impressed. The beer in Burque (Albuquerque) is world-class. I would put it up against the beer of any city in the country.”