Correio dos Açores – How did opening this business on São Miguel Island come about?
Edmundo Estrela (co-owner of Azores Brewing Company) – Azores Brewing Company was born from a simple idea. When we arrived here in 2016, we couldn’t find any craft beer that we liked, and we couldn’t find any beer that we liked in general. So Tara, a big fan of beer, decided to use her degree in Chemistry and her love of beer to start brewing her own beer the year after we arrived.
We started brewing at home, with small batches and a lot of difficulty, because we couldn’t get brewing products and equipment, whether industrial or home-brewed, so we would bring some things from Canada and send them by post. At that time, sending products via sales platforms wasn’t as easy as today.
Tara would start brewing, and I’d help as much as possible. It was a bit of an adventure, as we didn’t have all the equipment we needed, so we’d go to all the stores to find what we could.
When people tasted our beer, they liked it, and we realized we had potential. So we said we wanted to eventually open a craft brewery with a tasting room and a beer garden where people could taste the beer.
The idea stuck at the time. The first business we opened here was managing local accommodation, which took up much of our time. When the pandemic hit in 2020, tourism and local accommodation were very low, so we dedicated our time to the brewery. Tara spent all her time brewing and improving her recipes.
In 2020, we did everything we could to get into the Portugal 2020 program and receive support to buy what we needed and complete the projects. We started building our factory from scratch in March 2023 and completed it in March of this year.
We wouldn’t proceed with the project without being sure we would make products that would appeal to the market.

Why did you open the space in the Ribeira Grande Industrial Park?
We had to be in an industrial space because of the licensing requirements. We would have loved to be in the center of one of our cities. The center of Ribeira Grande would have been beautiful, but we can’t do industrial licensing in the city center. We went to see the various industrial zones that were available and that had space, so we were up here on the north coast in Ribeira Grande. This area is close to our home and has so much potential for development and the creation of new businesses. This space also overlooks the mountains, is located near the center of Ribeira Grande, is close to Lagoa do Fogo, and has a lot of tourist transport. That’s why we chose this space, which met the conditions to achieve our goals and launch our project.

What differentiates the Azores Brewing Company craft beer from other beers?
There are two camps of other beers: commercial and craft beers. Craft beer differs from commercial beer because we always use the highest-quality products. As with any craft brewery, we aim not to make as much beer as possible with as little money as possible because that’s the main aim of commercial breweries. In craft breweries, a brewmaster constantly refining our recipes and is always free to create new lines, products, and beers. This is already a big difference from commercial beers.
As for what sets us apart from other craft beers, we have the first female brewmaster in Portugal with a degree in Chemistry. None of the other craft breweries in the Azores is headed by a person with scientific studies, which makes a big difference in the industrial process due to the rigor and understanding of the process itself. On our technical front, we have a person with higher technical qualifications than other craft beers. In addition, we also have our industrial license and our industrial production, which allows us to have a significant scale of production.
One of our primary missions is to create craft beers that are easy to consume by our public, both tourists and locals. We didn’t want to create craft beers that were niche and very extreme in their flavors and aromas because that would alienate our local public, who are still starting to embrace, learn, taste, understand, and enjoy craft beer. So we wanted to make beers that were easy to drink, unique, and traditionally pure, i.e., not raspberry or strawberry. All this without taking anything away from other craft beers. We believe it’s good and positive to have craft beer producers and people consuming craft beer here. Our market is significant, and there is always room for people to produce beer. We like other people to produce craft beer because that’s the magic of craft beer. The brewery, in this case, the Azores Brewing Company, reflects our brewmaster’s production of beer recipes, just like other craft breweries. This is very similar to restaurants; for example, each restaurant has a different recipe for a specific dish.
In general, our beer has an industrial production character that allows us to be in supermarkets, restaurants, and hotels and also allows people to be here, to get closer to the product, to get closer to production, to take a guided tour, to understand how our beer is made and to taste our beer in the middle of nature. Although this space is part of an industrial estate, fortunately, on our plot, we only have one neighbor behind us, which allows us to be surrounded by nature.

There are currently four craft beers at Azores Brewing Company: ‘North Coast Amber Ale’; ‘Island IPA’; ‘Cliff Dive Blonde’ and ‘Lighthouse Azorean Wheat’. What are the differences between these four beers?
I’ll start with ‘Cliff Dive Blonde.’ This is the entry-level beer in our product range, as I say. ‘Cliff Dive Blonde’ is a very easy-to-drink craft beer that is very smooth and has relatively neutral flavors and aromas. It’s the beer that people start with at a tasting. It’s an ideal beer for those who are used to drinking a more conventional beer and aren’t used to a craft beer. If you start the other way around, i.e., drinking the softer beer at the end of the tasting, you won’t be able to perceive the nuances of the aromas and flavors. Our ‘Cliff Dive’ is our all-European core beer, and it’s our most ‘European’ beer – in the beer world, there’s a big difference between craft beers made on different continents.
Next, we have ‘North Coast Amber Ale’. This beer screams North Coast, as reflected in the graphics and packaging. Although it’s not a black beer, it is our darkest beer and the one with the darkest malts, which gives it aromas of toast, caramel, a bit of cocoa, and a slightly bitter finish. This way, the beer doesn’t taste a bit ‘full’ to the drinker, and it’s important to note that the beer is also smooth.
Next up is the Island IPA. This is generally the queen beer in the craft world. In this case, the ‘Island IPA’ beer has very tropical aromas; it has a hint of passion fruit, and these aromas come from the hops. It’s a beer that tastes slightly citrusy and has a much more bitter finish. In general, it’s not a very bitter IPA, and we do this on purpose because the American customer is a customer who drinks a very bitter IPA – it’s common to drink IPAs in the United States – but the Portuguese customer still doesn’t want to drink a very, very bitter beer. We’ve tried to find a balance where it’s still an IPA, but our IPA doesn’t scare anyone in the craft world.
Finally, we have ‘Lighthouse Azorean Wheat.’ This beer is from our north coast, and Ponta do Cintrão Lighthouse. Lighthouse Azorean Wheat is a craft wheat beer with very different flavors and aromas, including field herbs. In this case, as with ‘Island PIA’, we’ve found a middle ground. Traditionally, European and German wheat beer differs from North American. We also try to find a beer that balances the two, so we call it ‘Azores Wheat,’ as it is our version of wheat beer.
In the future, we will have a seasonal beer, possibly made with one of our local products, which will only be available at certain times of the year.

The Azores Brewing Company opened at the beginning of May. How has the turnout been since the opening?
We opened in May, and we’ve been distributing and selling to bars, restaurants, supermarkets, and mini-markets. So we have two sides to our brewery: the local side, where people consume here, and the distribution and retail side, which is our strength and our ‘pure and hard.’ In May, we started and made the first contacts to distribute to the on-trade market (hotels, restaurants, and cafés). Now, we’ve taken advantage of these weeks of growth and movement on our island to start having our space open to the public for people to try our craft beers.
The turnout has been very positive. We’ve had a fantastic reception in the context of bars, restaurants, hotels, and supermarkets. All the sales meetings we’ve had have been positive and have resulted in almost all of them sales. The orders have started to reflect this, but also partly because the establishments we are choosing are establishments that we think fit in with our product. We now have a list of several establishments we want to access, but we don’t yet have a sales team big enough to reach all the places simultaneously. However, it has been great to see that our retailers recognize our product, know how to distinguish our product from other craft beers in tastings, and see that we have a stable beer – a beer with a long shelf life, a beer that can be opened at any time and its carbonation is stable due to our production processes.
Our sales people, in a way, are starting to discover craft beer, they’re realizing the difference with commercial beer and they’re understanding the type of customer who consumes craft beer. In this sense, we’ve had a very positive approach, including from other islands: we’re starting to enter other islands, and we’ve already had establishments from other islands asking to place orders. We aim to have a broad, big vision, but our first objective is here on our island: we still want to be in various establishments. I’m holding some meetings this week, I’m the only one who does all our sales and distribution, so we’re a bit limited because a day is only 24 hours long.


How did you come up with the idea for the Azores Brewing Company logo?
The magical thing about our logo is that different people see different things. Our logo came about after a two-year design process. It was our first definition of our brand, and our logo is a registered trademark. We first developed our Branding and Marketing plan to determine how we wanted to frame our beer in the market and our entity as a company.
To unveil its mystique, our logo is a volcano by the sea, with a whale’s tail in the center and the explosion of a volcano, which is the crown you see at the top. The mountain and the volcano are part of our identity because we are volcanic islands.
At the top of the logo, we put the phrase ‘craft beer’ in an arch because the arch is an integral part of our architecture. We have countless stone arches on our island, and it is also a symbol of strength and the ability to bear weight.
Finally, we have ‘Azores Brewing C.º,’ which is something we’re trying to make clear: Brewing, an English word, means the process of producing and formatting beer, and a brewing company is a company that produces beers. So we really focus on that. That’s why we’re a brewing company in the Azores. We’re passionate about our product and our archipelago.
Our logo has all the content that reveals our identity. Everyone who takes a piece of our merchandising with them takes a piece of the Azores.
The magic of this logo is that everyone sees different things. For example, the crown you see at the top—many people think it’s the crown of a pineapple. All the labels on our beers refer to our sea, our mountains, and our geography.

What are your plans for the future? Do you plan to open any more premises?
For now, we’re very focused on our brewery. Our plan is to finalize the vision for this space, as it is a developing space, and our ‘beer garden’ is still in its ‘infancy.’ So, we want to create a little oasis in nature, a green and flowery space for people to stay and consume our beer. Our aim is to solidify our space.
Regarding the long-term and other aspects, we also want a strong presence on the other islands, which is part of our plan. In addition, we want to sell in mainland Portugal and perhaps abroad because, for example, people have already asked me if we sell to Spain. People have already bought the pack in May, and people come in to buy and take our beer as a gift for friends or family.
We have no plans to open another location, especially in this context, because we’re a young company. We’ve just built this space and want to have space to its maximum extent. That’s not to say that we don’t have plans or partnerships with other retailers to have space where our brand and our identity are also in the spotlight, and we do. I can’t give you too many details yet; we have partnerships that we’re still developing with other companies and entrepreneurs that we’re trying to bring closer together and to have synergies with other spaces. Our space is available for private events, which we have to safeguard.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to say that, in principle, in two weeks’ time at most, we’ll be in the Continente supermarket in São Miguel, and we’ll also be in the one on the island of Terceira, as well as already being in the SPAR in Furnas, the SPAR in Nordeste, in bars and restaurants.
I’d like to take this opportunity to invite all establishments that serve alcoholic drinks or drinks in general and are interested in having our beer there, so please contact us. We’re always happy to talk.
Although our brewery is already open, our inauguration is on June 29 at 2 p.m., and there will be musical entertainment, food, and craft beer.

Filipe Torres is a journalist for Correio dos Açores-Natalino Viveiros, director.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.