Like a lot of friends, Jon Cuthbert, Juan Carrillo, Garrett Carroll and Jerome De Leon loved to hang out at each others homes drinking a few beers.
Unlike most friends, however, they weren’t just buying a couple of six-packs at the store. Instead they were making their own brews, and they became really, really good at it, too.
And when word got out about how good their homemade beer was, the buddies got a little more determined and went from pouring a few cold ones at their homes in Anaheim to finally getting ready to sell their very first beer ever in Long Beach at Ambitious Ales.
“We’re very excited, not as nervous anymore now that we have our first brew under our belts,” Cuthbert, the lead brewer at Ambitious Ales, said as he sat inside the cavernous space on Atlantic Avenue in Bixby Knolls on a recent afternoon.
Cuthbert, along with his friends, the brewery’s co-owners, were not only busy putting the finishing physical touches on the brewery, after about six years of brewing at home they had just completed their first professional batch at the soon-to-open spot.
“I think we’ll be able to tackle this system pretty well,” Cuthbert said, looking over at the massive barrels inside the brewery, which are a far cry from the kitchen brewing system they started on years ago.
Housed in a 3,600-square-foot building that was home to the well-known camera shop called Tuttle Camera, Long Beach’s latest brewery is expected to open in early January .
Once open, Ambitious Ales will jump into an increasingly busy Long Beach brewery scene and join other local spots such as Liberation Brewing Company, Ten Mile Brewing, Steady Brew Beer Co and others.
“We hit a lot of different styles, from Belgian to English to American…we want to do some barrel aged saisons and some other fun things in barrels,” Cuthbert said.
Ambitious Ales will open with what Cuthbert describes as their five core beers, which includes that very first beer they brewed here, a blond ale made with coffee and vanilla beans called Central Perk.
Also on the beer list is an imperial stout called Baktuns, which is brewed with cocoa, chilies, coffee and vanilla, and a Belgian beer made with strawberries called Fleurs.
“That’s an easy drinker,” Cuthbert noted.
There will also be options like their low-alcohol IPA called Hopped on Phonics, which comes in at a about 4.5 percent ABV and the Gose, a German tart beer.
People will be drinking these beers in a modern industrial style 10-barrel brewery that includes a butcher block bar, subway tile walls a high wood ceiling, concrete floors and patio facing Atlantic Avenue with space for about 80 people inside and out.
They don’t have a kitchen but plan on partnering with nearby restaurants such as PowWow Pizza to bring food into the place.
Wedding brewers
And while their brewery joins the big leagues now, for these friends it all started with a few late night brewing sessions and a few weddings.
“We liked craft beer, but we were never this deep into. It was an excuse to hang out, drink some beer…we just enjoyed it,” Carrillo said, adding that often the brewing hangout sessions would start late at night and go on until 2 a.m. or so.
As their beers got better they invited other friends over and soon word started getting out about their great brews.
“A friend then asked us if we could do their wedding and we said sure. Then another friend asked us to do his wedding, too, and then we started slowly getting people we didn’t know who had attended those weddings asking if we could do theirs as well,” Carrillo said.
But as home brewers they didn’t have a license to sell beer so instead they had their friends just pay for the ingredients and brewed the beer for free.
After a few more weddings and private events and beer festivals where they gave away their beer for free, they decided they really loved what they were doing and had the idea to open a brewery where they could finally sell their beer.
“Once we started hearing from people we didn’t know about how good our beer was we thought we really had something going on,” Carrillo said.
And now that they’re pros with an ABC license they have something else going on, too, a cash register, because they can finally charge.
“It’s pretty wild…to go from being home brewers and getting to this point where people will be able to walk through that door and actually buy our beers is fantastic,” Cuthbert said.
Ambitious Ales
Where: 4019 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach.
Information: ambitiousales.com