Jim Millea put OB Brewery on the map in 2018 when his medal-winning beer earned the Ocean Beach interest the title of Small Brewpub of the Year at the Great American Beer Festival. Add those bragging rights to the fact he can walk to work and do what he loves—brew beer—a block from the Pacific Ocean, and it’s a dream scenario. But Millea isn’t done dreaming. Since last year, he has been working with his partners, Hannah and Anthony Sylvester, to bring a cross-border passion project to life in Baja’s Valle de Guadalupe. That collaborative effort goes by the name Cerveceria el Destino and will showcase Millea’s beers in a different country and an entirely different light.
Millea met Hannah, a veteran of Ballast Point Brewing’s hospitality team, while going through an internship at the company’s Little Italy brewpub in 2014, but it wasn’t until 2017, when he reconnected with she and her future husband on a Thanksgiving excursion to Mexico, that they struck up a friendship based on mutual interests—brewing and travel. Baja is a region all three particularly enjoy exploring. Enough so for the Sylvesters that they started a small tourism company doing wine tours in Valle de Guadalupe.
“Almost every one of our tour groups had someone that didn’t love wine,” says Hannah. “Also, the temperatures in the valley can be quite stifling on summer days, making heavy red wines difficult to drink. Because of this, we were always looking for places that, in addition to wine, offered the option of cold beer. We quickly found that this was a big void that needed filling.”
The idea of attempting to fill that void first-hand may never have come about were it not for a chance visit to Viñedos Malagon in the Valle’s Francisco Zarco community, where the Sylvesters met vineyard owner Joe Malagon. The couple were equally as impressed with his wines as the spacious, green environs making up the property. They struck up a relationship and enjoyed many happy returns where Malagaon would share his wine and the Sylvesters would share their homebrews. Over the course of those visits, the trio kicked around the idea of opening a brewery on the property and eventually started working toward that goal. When it came time to bring on a brewer, the Sylvesters knew just who to call.
“The thought of being part of a brewery in this amazing wine valley had me hooked. I love going to Baja. The people and places down there have such a chill and friendly vibe. I’ve spent some time in the Valle and have been impressed by the range of small mom-and-pop wine-tasting spots up to larger full-on production facilities and restaurants,” says Millea. “The area is growing and has much to offer. The beer industry has a solid presence in Ensenada and Tijuana, but, at the moment, it has a pretty small footprint in wine country. Starting something there now feels like what it may have been like starting a brewery in San Diego 10 or 15 years ago when there were others making great beer but plenty of room to grow.”
Millea and his partners will do their best to accelerate beer in wine country via a space that previously housed a brewery at Malagon’s winery years ago. When the brewer that manned the system in the winery’s production warehouse departed, he took everything except the chiller on the roof, leaving behind a pre-plumbed area with proper drainage that will be put to use once more. Millea will utilize some of Malagon’s stainless steel wine tanks while adding some seven-barrel fermenter and brite tanks. On the hot side, Cerveceria el Destino’s brewhouse hails from Miramar’s 2kids Brewing, which closed last year after six years in business.
Millea will split his time between his day job at OB Brewery, leaning his Assistant Brewer Alissa Stone. Back in the Valle, Anthony will play a key brewing role. Meanwhile, Hannah will manage the tasting room and handle social media, with Malagon heading sales and marketing. The near-term plan is to sell most of Cerveceria el Destino’s beers on-site and through limited distribution within and near the Guadalupe Valley. The team is still developing its core lineup but hope to offer a range of beers that are light, dark, hoppy and less hop-focused. An easy-to-drink golden ale or lager, porters, stouts, hoppy pales and IPAs are all sure bets.
There will also be collaboration beers with other Baja breweries. Millea’s favorite south-of-the-border operations are Cerveceria Doble C and Agua Mala, and the Sylvesters are enamored with Tijuana’s Norte Brewing, Ensenada’s Heisenberg Brewery and Cerveceria Wendlandt, Cerveza Fauna out of Mexicali, and Cava el Laurel, a Valle winery with barrel-aged beer options.
“One of the things I love about going to Baja is the people. They are so friendly, welcoming and helpful,” says Millea. “I’ve met some good people at wineries in the valley and continue to meet others through Hannah and Anthony. While we have yet to make brewery connections in the valley, itself, we’ve made good friends with some other breweries in Ensenada ad TJ, and hope to make many more.”
For now, the focus is on procuring the remainder of the brewery’s equipment, obtaining work visas, and going through the permitting and licensing processes. As with many things in the age of COVID-19, the above is more slow-going than usual, so the timetable for delivery of the project is uncertain, but they hope to open to the public sooner than later. For now, Millea is just happy to be living yet another dream.
“Valle de Guadalupe is such an awesome destination. The idea of having a business in a place where I enjoy traveling to anyway makes it feel right,” says Millea. “I would like this project to turn into a fun place to have people come hang out and enjoy great beer alongside the great wines Joe is already producing, and I would like to see us develop a good relationship with others in the valley and meet new friends and colleagues.”
Cerveceria el Destino will be located at Calle Sexta 75 in the Francisco Zarco region of Ensenada. NOTE: If you type this into Google Maps, it will not provide the correct location, so type in “Viñedos Malagon” instead.