PHOTOS BY MICHAEL GONZALEZ
It’s 2015 and three friends are gathering together at a house on Calle Pluton in Brownsville to enjoy their newfound hobby of brewing beer together. Going on nine years later, this same trio shares a full-fledged commercial brewery, Pluton Brewing Co., in a 5,200-square-foot building in downtown Brownsville. The former storage area full of furniture and appliances for a local business is now home to Pluton’s state-of-the-art brewing system, beer tap counter and seating for patrons.
Daniel Arizpe is the founder and co-owner of Pluton, along with Joey Martinez and Daniel Brashear. What started as a fun shared activity for the three at Arizpe’s father’s house on Calle Pluton — where the brewery gets its name from — turned into a growing enterprise that boasts the title of Brownsville’s sole local brewery.
What first sparked the friends’ interest in bringing a brewery to Brownsville? “One of the big pioneers that really gave us our love for the craft and the art of creating craft beer was Jester King Brewery in Austin,” Arizpe says. “We fell in love with the atmosphere that breweries created for people to go and hang out at, and we realized that none of that existed in Brownsville.”
“Just like artists spend a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears making their art, it’s the same thing for us. We spend a lot of our time and effort making sure that we make delicious beer.”
As with any business, Pluton has had its share of obstacles to overcome. In 2020, Arizpe and his partners competed in the StartUp Texas pitch summit program, hosted by the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC) aimed at providing Brownsville business owners with capital to scale their businesses. The partners lost the competition initially but competed again in 2021 and that time, won a $20,000 grant.
That paired with an additional $80,000 grant from BCIC’s BIG program gave Pluton a much needed cash infusion to continue operating. “I had to do this,” Arizpe says, while gesturing to the brewery around him. “I had zero excuses this time.” Arizpe says that high quality water is the foundation of good beer, accounting for 70 percent of the product, and is something that Pluton takes seriously by using a sophisticated water filtration system. The water is heated, combined with milled grains and mashed to produce a liquid called wort.
The wort is boiled, hops are added for flavor and aroma, and the beer continues to be processed. Yeast is added to produce the alcohol. The beer undergoes two weeks of fermentation. Following a few more steps in the brewing process, all of Pluton’s beers are conditioned inside kegs for a few days before being ready to serve.
Hops are added to each batch of Pluton’s beers — an ingredient used to brew craft beers to give them a unique taste and aroma and complement their individual flavor profiles. Arizpe describes the Gamma Ray Blonde Ale as an entry-level craft beer that is light, crisp and easy to drink. The Terra Nova Brown Ale is Pluton’s version of an American brown ale that is brewed with roasted malts to give coffee notes to the beer. The Mosaic IPA is a West Coast-style beer brewed with Mosaic Hops and resulting in citrus flavors like grapefruit.
Arizpe compares beers to burgers while talking about the difference between brews found at any gas station and Pluton’s varieties. You can have a fast food burger that tastes fine or a burger made at home using select ingredients that tastes far better. The same is true for Pluton’s beers, the crafters of which choose everything that goes into the brewing process, such as their malts from Germany and hops from Washington. What results are outstanding beers made with love, care and effort.
“Just like artists spend a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears making their art, it’s the same thing for us,” Arizpe says. “We spend a lot of our time and effort making sure that we make delicious beer.”
Pluton hopes to change the way beer is consumed in Brownsville, to one craft pint at a time. As the brewery continues settling into its space in downtown Brownsville, the owners are keeping their eyes on the future, with hopes of soon canning their beers.
“Our motto is, ‘We have something for everyone here,’” Arizpe says. “There’s people that say they don’t like beer, but I think that they just haven’t had the right beer yet.”
