Lúdica Cervecería: Baja beer

“You can get from my house to San Diego in 40 minutes,” says Gustavo. “Sometimes there's a wait at the border, but we're really close and our cultures are really mixed. Like, there's a lot of people in Tijuana that go to school in San Diego in the morning and come back in the afternoon, that’s how close we are. When Iván and I started brewing, those classic San Diego breweries like Stone, Pizza Port, Ale Smith, and Green Flash were booming, and we’d take road trips to go visit them and bring back some of their beers. We were definitely influenced a lot by those breweries.”

Gustavo says that the proximity of Tijuana and Mexicali to San Diego has a lot to do with beers from Baja California earning a great reputation across wider Mexico. “The availability of fresh ingredients, especially hops, that we could just get from across the border allowed the brewers in this region to make the best IPAs,” he says. “We refer to beer from this state, Baja California, as Baja beer, and it’s really popular all across the country.”

Leaning into the region’s unique access to Mexican culture and American hops, Lúdica brews a beer that it calls a Baja lager; “that’s our take on a Mexican lager,” says Gustavo. “It’s malt forward but really easy drinking because it has corn in there just to make it a bit more drinkable. We add a little bit of hops; probably more than a regular lager, but sticking to noble varieties like Willamette so you get that little touch of flavour at the end. Overall, it’s super easy drinking and you can really taste the malt.”

As close as Tijuana is to New Mexico and Arizona, states in which Neo Mexicanus hop varieties have been discovered, Gustavo says that as far as he’s aware, Baja California is just a little too far south for hops to grow. “I mean, hops will grow here, but for them to thrive the plant needs a cycle of cold winters followed by hot summers,” he says. “In winter the plants nearly die, and in spring they shoot up out of the ground. Here I think the plants get confused by the swings in temperature because here it could be cold in the morning and hot in the afternoon. We don't have that really sharp season change here.”

What Mexico lacks in hops it makes up for with an abundance of unbelievable fruit, coffee, vanilla, and of course, corn. “Right now we just use flaked corn for brewing, but I’d be really interested in trying to use some endemic varieties,” says Gustavo. “If you go down south to Oaxaca, they can grow 12 different corn varieties. When you go to the restaurants, you will get tortillas in all kinds of different colours, so I’d like to try to source a couple of kilos of an endemic variety just to see how it works out. We haven't gotten to do that yet but hopefully in the near future.”

For now, life in Tijuana is keeping Lúdica busy. “We're still a super, super small brewery,” says Gustavo. “I mean, we're currently producing around 45 to 50,000 litres a year and are selling about 30% of that in our own taphouse. The rest goes into a few of the bars and restaurants in Tijuana and then we have a distribution partner that ships beer to main cities like Guadalajara, Monterey, Mexico City, and a few others. 

“If it were up to me, we’d sell all our beer in Tijuana, but it’s a small city with a couple of other breweries, so we have to send beers further afield. Anyway, our plan for the future is to double our production, which shouldn’t be too difficult once we source some extra tanks. Then, we want to renew the lease on our taphouse so we can create a more comfortable place for people to enjoy our beers. After that we’d like to open another spot in a different part of town but that would be further in the future.”

Lúdica might not be the biggest brewery in Tijuana, and it’s certainly not the only one, but it rides hard for its city. “Tijuana is a very unique place in the world, so I always tell people they should visit,” Gustavo says. “We have this huge mix of cultures because we’re a very young city. A lot of people here weren’t born in Tijuana, and if they were, their parents were not born in Tijuana. So you can find food from all over Mexico in this city. I mean, it’s an ongoing debate but I would say we have the best tacos in the country here. We’re famous for our carnitas tacos, so much so that you can go to other cities and you will find Tijuana-style tacos. 

“We also believe we have the best beer in the country, so if you go on a trip to Baja, you’ll have a very different experience from what you’d have further south in the country. There’s amazing food, amazing beer, we’re right on the outskirts of wine country, so it’s a really great place to visit.” 

Those are some big claims, though they don’t sound unsubstantiated. I guess we’ll just have to make the journey, and see for ourselves.