For decades, Colby Chandler was deeply entrenched in the San Diego craft beer industry. Not only did he work for Ballast Point Brewing for 25 years, serving as a specialty brewer and GM at its original Home Brew Mart location for 11 years before building out the Little Italy location and ascending to a VP role at the company’s massive Miramar HQ, but he is also credited with transforming the San Diego Brewers Guild from an abstract entity into an organized non-profit during his five years as its president from 2004 to 2009. He was key in bringing local breweries together to establish San Diego Beer Week and helped organize the first-ever Guild Fest event, and has lent his energies to numerous industry events and initiatives, even after quietly departing Ballast Point in 2021 and doing what he terms “practicing retirement”. As it turns out, as much as he loves disc-golfing, one-wheeling and other leisurely pursuits, life on the sidelines isn’t for him. As such, he’s helped a number of beverage-space entrepreneurs out with recipe formulation as a brewing consultant while participating in collaborations with his many industry friends. He also signed on as an investor in Mission Valley’s revamped San Diego Brewing Co. and is a member of Miramar yeast producer White Labs’ Customer Advisory Board. So even though he departed the industry five years ago, he never really left. And in 2024, he got off the fence and descended back into the trenches once more to become a founding partner of a new business introducing a varied line of agave-infused beverages, including an in-development family of ales and lagers. That operation goes by the name All Things Agave and is the brainchild of a quintet of locals led by distilling veteran Felipe Soto Mares (pictured below, far left), who goes back a long way with Chandler and knew his extensive experience, coupled with his passion for beer, tequila and mezcal, made him the perfect person to help bring his vision to life. Following All Things Agave’s rollout of its inaugural beer, Zapo (which took gold at this month’s San Diego County Fair Craft Brew Competition), we caught up with Chandler to find out what to expect from his new project.
How would you describe this multifaceted business?All Things Agave is a hybrid alcohol sales company. We’re a self-distributing producer – not to be confused with a manufacturer – as well as an importer managing and creating brands with the goal of having an agave beverage portfolio that includes agave spirits, ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktails made with mezcal and agave beers.
How did you become involved in this project?
I have been enjoying well-made tequila for a long time, but in the past eight years I have been diving into the unctuous, smoky and diverse tastes of mezcal. During that time, my go-to human encyclopedias on mezcal have been my friends Dee Carey and longtime Oceanside resident, Felipe Soto Mares. Dee has worked at the Old Town Cosmopolitan Hotel and Restaurant for decades and Felipe is a Maestro Catador (master sommelier), Maestro Tequilero and Maestro Mezcalero who teaches the art of making tequila and mezcal, and is the only honorary American member of Mexico’s Asociacion de Maguey y Mezcal Artesanal. They have answered so many of my questions and have the same passion for agave beverages that I do for beer. I am fascinated that there are around 270 varieties of agave and about 83 – the majority of which can only be grown in the wild – are used for the making of mezcal. So when Felipe came to me and wanted to work on an agave-beer recipe, I was immediately interested. Once I learned he was starting a company that was going to produce a made-in-San-Diego agave beer, my interest grew. And when he mentioned he was also doing mezcal being made at my favorite palenque in Oaxaca as well as RTD mezcal cocktails in cans, I became very interested. Especially since he was going to focus on wild agave varieties, along with the few that can be cultivated. That interest turned into meeting with his business partners, which turned into an invite to the team and me becoming one of the five founding partners of All Things Agave LLC.
Beyond being a partner, what is your role within the company?
I am the Chief Product Officer overseeing product development, production processes and quality assurance. I’m also helping out with marketing, deliveries, sales, arts-and-crafts, line-cleaning and whatever else needs to be done. Basically, relearning how to balance a lot of hats on my head again. Since coming to the team I have been focused on beer-recipe development, contracting partners and navigating the challenges of getting our products to market.
What is the makeup of All Things Agave’s inaugural beer?
The idea of an agave beer came about in 2006 when Felipe was harvesting agave on a blisteringly hot day in Mexico. He daydreamed what a cold, crisp agave beer would taste like. With a name inspired by the ancient Zapotec culture of Oaxaca – among the first to craft fermented drinks from wild agave – Zapo Agave Beer celebrates a long tradition of craft and community. Agave, long considered a sacred “plant of life”, is a hardy, slow-growing North American succulent that, when baked, produces an elegant sweet nectar. We add this raw (tequilana Weber) agave nectar early in the brewing process, resulting in light aromas of fresh-baked bread, Hawaiian sweet rolls and shortbread. A balanced 5.5% (alcohol-by-volume) beer that is golden-blonde in color and light-bodied, this classic cream ale finishes crisp with a hint of caramel. We’re proud to be pushing the boundaries of this historic beer style with one of our favorite ingredients, agave, right here in San Diego. A list of accounts carrying the beer is available online.
What other beers have you brewed under the All Things Agave flag?
Once the small Cream Ale pilot batches were dialed in, we scaled up the recipe for our first collab with Fall Brewing and called it Cinco Flacos agave cream ale. That beer is now sold by us as Cream Ale under the overarching brand-family name Zapo Agave Beer. After that was a rebrew of a collaboration I personally did three years ago with Ignacio “Nacho” Cervantes at Pizza Port Carlsbad, a smoked brown ale with agave called Flammabowl. Next up was Whole Hand Point agave milk stout brewed in collaboration with Jim Millea at OB Brewery, then it was on to Home Brew Mart for a toned down, Barmy-inspired apricot agave strong ale we called Girl’s Cuss. It was fun brewing again in the building where I spent 11 years making beer. It would seem obvious that a business called All Things Agave would make an agave-infused beverage in the Tequila Valley, so that’s what we did! With the invite from the ever hospitable Joaquin Lopez Orendain to brew at his brewery Cerveceria Fortuna. Along with Tijuana’s Farland Aleworks and Cerveceria Doble C, we brewed Tormenta a double IPA con agave that was available only in Mexico. And my most recent collaboration beer is currently on tap at San Diego Brewing Co. Talking with brewers over a beer, I noticed a handful of us missed Benchmark Brewing’s Table Beer, so myself, Duck Foot Brewing‘s Matt Akin (Benchmark’s founder), Teddy Gowan from Societe Brewing, Millea and our hosts Chris Hotz and Matt Navarre, brewed Benchmarked, an agave table beer. I want to drink these beers again, so I hope to make them again sometime under the Zapo brand.
What lessons learned from your brewing career have been useful in this endeavor?
One of the great things about being with Ballast Point for so long is that I got to see it go from five gallons per-batch in a homebrew store to 12,400,000 gallons of annual production at its peak. At one point, there were over 800 employees getting beers to 49 states and 18 countries. I learned many things through two company sales and appreciated being kept around through my entire tenure. I got to witness so many achievements and so many more mistakes. I’m hoping I can help minimize some mistakes going forward with such a dynamic new business. Even more important than what I know is who I know. I have already leaned on experts in the field who I have grown up with in this industry, who have provided me with help and answered all my questions. Having all that expertise a phone call away is priceless. Another lesson that continues for me is recognizing people who have passion and making the effort to be around them. All the partners at All Things Agave fit this bill. From the lifelong passion for agave drinks that Felipe brings to the energy, experience, drive and knowledge of RTDs of Gabby Rooney (Damn Right Cocktails, pictured above, second from right), the thoughtfulness and organizational skills of retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Jay Malik (second from left), and the business savvy and style of Jeff Symon (center). Life circles are definitely connecting within the group and coincidental events feel like currents pushing us to an international point on the horizon.
When will the full breadth of All Things Agave’s products debut?
We are currently only producing and selling the Cream Ale on draft under the Zapo Agave Beer umbrella. We are working on adding two more brands to our portfolio. A Zapo Mezcal made in Oaxaca and a Spicy Mezcallita in a can, under the name Damn Right Cocktails.