Coronavirus delays new business

CLOVIS - The coronavirus, with all its dangers and restrictions, has even prevented people from being able to go out and enjoy a frosty cold one.

Worse yet, in the case of Bandolero Brewery at 421 N. Main St. in Clovis, people have been denied the pleasure of watching their beer ferment right in front of them before it's poured into their glass and they knock it back.

The micro-brewery, Clovis' first, was due to open in March. Then along came COVID-19.

Andrew Logan, Bandolero's owner, hopes beer lovers won't be denied too much longer. Though the virus has delayed work on Logan's establishment-to-be, he is hoping the wait to open will be over in about two months.

"It's been too hard to get contractors in here and get things done," Logan said Friday. "But we're still optimistic we'll be open sometime in August."

Main Street should soon be home to three such vendors in the calendar year. Red Door Brewery established a tap room at the former Levine's Building and had hosted various outdoor events before COVID-19 wiped out mass gatherings. And Roosevelt Brewing is working on a Main Street location at the former Sutton Bakery. Attempts to contact Roosevelt Brewing officials were unsuccessful.

Logan, a Clovis resident, has worked in industrial manufacturing for over 30 years, including a stretch at an ethanol plant, and he's been a home brewer for the past seven years. For him, opening a micro-brewery seemed like a natural destination, temporarily off limits thanks to COVID-19.

So far roofing contractors have been too busy to finish the awning Logan plans to have out front. The air conditioning and duct work are getting closer to being complete. The fire sprinkler system was just installed in the second week of June.

It helps that one of Logan's best friends, Robert Webb of Portales, is an electrician with an emotional stake in the place.

"I've known him, shoot, since we worked at the ethanol plant together," Webb said Friday at the Bandolero site on North Main. "We started telling him his home brewing was getting so good he should open a brewery. And here he is.

"We bounce ideas off each other all the time. This is the result of ideas being bounced back and forth."

A result-in-waiting for now, but Webb said that for his part, the electrical work is about 85 percent complete.

When everything is ready, patrons will be able to lean on the wood-finish bar and watch the fermenting machines make their beer, then see it flow from one of 12 taps.

What they won't see unless granted a tour is the back room, which Logan says will be able to fit 250 kegs, or further back where the 60-pound bags of grain set the whole deal in motion.

"Yup, it all starts with the grain," Logan said. "The grain and the water."

Combining those two begins the steeping process. The mixture next goes into a boil kettle where hops are added. The beer is then cooled and transferred to one of the fermenting machines, where the yeast goes in.

And soon, patrons have a bouncing baby beer.

Though plans are for those thirsty customers to be allowed inside the brewery, there's no telling now what the restrictions will be in August. Whatever they are, Bandolero's dimensions seem to be a hand-in-glove fit with safety practices.

"We're prepared," Logan said. "We have a spacious enough facility here that if we still have to maintain the social distancing we'll be able to do that. But we're hoping to open at full capacity in August."