Getting wooly at Mamut

Author

By Chad Deal

Publish Date

Aug. 7, 2013

Mom-and-pop brewery Mamut offers all its beers at 15 pesos ($1.18)

Place

Pasaje Rodríguez

Carrillo Puerto 8158, Tijuana, BC

Pasaje Rodríguez totally changed my preconceptions of Tijuana about a year and a half ago, when I accidentally discovered the bustling arts-and-culture alleyway while searching for tacos one Friday night with Reader foodie Ian Pike. Built in the ’50s as a commercial arcade vending souvenirs to tourists, Pasaje Rodríguez was relaunched three years ago following nearly a decade of abandonment.

Now, every first Friday, you can browse 18 storefronts-gone-modern art gallery, bookstore, café, bike shop, or wine bar during the monthly art walk. During off days, you can head down the inconspicuous passage (located next to Caliente casino between Third and Fourth streets on the west side of Revolución), look for the crowd hanging out in front of Mamut Brewery Co., and strike up conversation with the alleyway’s resident artists, teachers, musicians, and regulars over a craft beer brewed in a space not much bigger than a one-car garage.

Taking their name from the Spanish word for wooly mammoth (and a corresponding label designed by local artists Michael Escalante and Teak), Mamut operates under the premise that craft beer should be available to everybody — an especially meaningful gesture in a country that is dominated by a duopoly of less-than-whelming foreign beer conglomerates. As such, the mom-and-pop brewery offers all of their beers at 15 pesos (roughly $1.18 USD) a bottle, or nearly half of what you’ll pay for a Tecate at most Revolución party bars. Though the operation relies on White Labs yeast and U.S. hops and barley, the soul and focus of Mamut is 100 percent local, which makes all the more sense when Sandra Flores — who runs the place with husband Juan Quezada Cerpa — explains, “The mammoth was the first resident of Baja.”