Brew-N-Krew Opens This Week on Main Street in Salinas

March 15, 2022 – The road to opening Brew-N-Krew Ale House has not been short.

Or smooth. 

In a recent social media post, owner-operator Marlene Garcia counts more than three years filled with “obstacles, a pandemic, crying sessions, and SO much more.” 

But fortunately that road has an end in sight. At 5pm Thursday, March 17, Brew-N-Krew throws open its doors for the grand opening.

Awaiting beer lovers—on a stretch of Main Street in Salinas suddenly studded with standout craft beer spots, with more on the way—will be a dramatic interior. 

A pink feathered wall backs the beer taps. A lip-shaped loveseat and inverted mannequin legs set off plush orange seating and colorful surfaces. Well over a dozen disco balls spin and sparkle overhead. 

“To be real, we wanted to make this a place that no one had ever seen or experienced,” Garcia says. “We want to be different, warm and welcoming, to make people happy.”

Brew-N-Krew hopes to pour similarly atypical beer. While Garcia runs the front of the house, her partner in the project and in life, brewer and fellow Salinas native Steven Corona—who she first met in middle school—will handle the fermentation.

“Our biggest thing is to be different, and bring those different things to the people,” Corona said on a pre-opening afternoon, moving between tanks filled with experimental beers. “All of our beers have unique stories behind them. We strive to make things people want to drink, that they’re curious about, that bring them to their roots.”

Eight different house drafts will include offerings heavy on word play en Español like La Chika Freza, Lokura, El Padrino, Ponte Las Piñas, Arcoíris and Bate Que Bate De Vainilla Latte.

When I’ve stopped by, none were available to taste yet; when asked what styles those beers tend toward, Garcia deflected, replying, “We are refraining from labeling their styles. Flavor over styles!”

The opening was delayed for seemingly every complication conceivable, including permitting issues and brewing equipment breakdowns. 

“We never gave up, through the good, the bad, the ugly, the loneliness,” Garcia says. 

Garcia, a former school teacher who left the classroom to launch Brew-N-Krew, draws ample inspiration for that resilience from her mom, Graciela, who has been central to this project, spiritually and financially.   

Garcia recounts admiringly how her mom immigrated to work the fields, then saved up enough money to start selling cassettes at a flea market, which led to her own stall selling Mexican candies and snacks at a swap meet, which in turn led to her opening her own taqueria and liquor store in Gilroy. When Garcia couldn’t qualify for business loans, family loans anchored by her mom’s contributions made Brew-N-Krew possible.

“She worked her ass off,” Garcia says. “This brewery is dedicated to my mom.”

Garcia also credits her wider family for instinctively knowing when she and Steven needed support, and includes the Salinas community and the local craft brewing community in that gratitude.

“We appreciate every single one of YOU for the support and love we have received the past years,” she wrote in a social media post updating followers on their latest heating and cooling system snafus. “We have the best supporters ever and we mean it when we say that [Brew-N-Krew] is a community brewery.”

Introductory hours are 5-10pm Thursday-Friday, 3-8pm Saturday, noon-5pm Sunday (closed Monday-Wednesday for now). More via Brew-N-Krew’s Instagram feed.