Behind the Brews: Ayla Kapahi on Leading Borderlands Brewing’s Innovation

Discover the art of brewing and the spirit of collaboration in our latest episode on the Life Along The Streetcar podcast! 🎧

Join the charismatic local Tucson radio personality Tom Heath as he sits down with the talented brewer and operations director, Ayla Kapahi, of Borderlands Brewing. 🌵🍺

Borderlands Brewing has become a cornerstone of Tucson’s craft beer scene, known for its innovative and community-oriented approach to brewing. Ayla shares the story behind her journey from psychology and human development studies to becoming a key figure in the craft beer world. 🌟

In this engaging conversation, Ayla delves into the exciting expansion plans of Borderlands Brewing, the magic behind their unique beer names, and the collaborative spirit that sets Tucson’s craft beer community apart. Cheers to embracing tradition while pushing the boundaries of flavor! 🍻✨

🎧 Tune in to this episode to savor the insights and passion that drive Borderlands Brewing’s success. Don’t miss out on this refreshing exploration of creativity and camaraderie in the world of craft beer. 🍻

Tap into Tucson’s craft beer scene and enjoy the spirited conversation with Ayla Kapahi on Life Along The Streetcar! 🎙️

Transcript (Unedited)

Tom Heath

Good morning. It’s a beautiful Sunday in the old pueblo and you’re listening to KTDT Tucson. Thank you for spending a part of your brunch hour with us on your downtown Tucson community sponsored, all volunteer powered rock and roll radio station.

Tom Heath

This week we’re going to speak with Ayla Kapahi, the woman who has been stirring the borderlands brew kettle for the past several years. Adding not just ingredients, but a distinct dash of ingenuity. Borderlands Brewing is known for its innovative and community oriented approach to beer, merging local influences with sustainable practices. We’re going to hear all about that and Ayla’s journey in just a moment. Today is July 23, 2023. My name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to life along the streetcar.

Tom Heath

Each and every Sunday, our focus is on social, cultural and economic impacts in Tucson’s urban core. We shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about, from a mountain to the University of Arizona and all stops in between. You get the inside track right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on downtownradio.org. We’re also available on your iPhone or Android using our very own Downtown Radio Tucson app. If you want to interact with us on the show, you can find us at Instagram and Facebook. And if you want information about the show, our book, our past episodes, or simply to contact us, head over to lifelongthreetcar.org. And of course you can listen to our podcast on all kinds of platforms like Spotify and itunes. And speaking of the book, I don’t know if you saw the Arizona Daily Star, but there’s a special book section, really nice feature about the show, the book, and kind of what we’ve been doing here for the last seven years. So huge. Thank you to the Arizona Daily Star Bill over there for putting that together. And of course

Tom Heath

there’s a link to it all over our social media and I hope you have a chance to go read it, check it out, because I thought the article was great and a little biased. But I think our project here, Life Along the Streetcar, is also pretty darn good. Our guest today is pretty well known in the beer world, ayla Kapahi. She is the head brewer over at Borderlands Brewing. And as we mentioned in the intro, they’re not just brewing beer, they’re doing it in a way that’s community oriented and they like to focus on as much as they can the local ingredients and sustainable practices. They also just opened up a tap room. They got huge plans coming. Really quite an explosion for borderlands in our community. So we sat down with Ayla at the Tucson Gallery studios just a couple of days ago and got the story.

Tom Heath

We are joined today by one of our favorite people in the world because she makes beer. Haven’t even really met her yet, but she makes beer. So she’s definitely on the list of favorite people. And Ayla Kapahi, that’s right, you got it. Yes. That’s because she told me before the show how to say it.

Ayla Kapahi

Most people I’ve known for decades have not been able to say it right. So you did well.

Tom Heath

Thank you. Thank you. Well, welcome to the show. Kind of excited. Not just because you make beer, but you represent a brand that is really big here in Tucson and Borderlands. You got an expansion going on, all kinds of fun stuff. So first of all, let’s start with you. You are like multiple titles. You’re like the Head brewer, you’re like director of operations.

Ayla Kapahi

I think I just really have all those titles because my real title is the beer chick that gets stuff done for the brewery. But yes, but you’re right. Head brewer and director of production operations. Basically that means anything that has to do with Borderlands beer production is my responsibility.

Tom Heath

And how long have you been with Borderlands?

Ayla Kapahi

It has been five and a half years.

Tom Heath

Oh my gosh. So you joined them. Pre COVID dealt with that madness. Indeed. And now you’re part of their expansion.

Ayla Kapahi

That’s right. So of course, like all small businesses, we’ve seen a lot of change and we’re so fortunate that when COVID hit, of course we were forced to think very creatively. We have access downtown to this huge, beautiful patio and it was really being underutilized until we figured out what to do with it. So if anything, post COVID, our brand and entities and properties have been just stronger than ever. So we’re really fortunate.

Tom Heath

Good. We’ve had doing the show for six years now. I’ve had a few different breweries on and it always amazes me how well you all get along.

Ayla Kapahi

Oh yeah. No one can see my face right now, but it’s true. You know what’s so awesome is when I go out of state and out of town to different beer conferences and events and get togethers. The number one comment I always hear from people in craft beer is they say the craft beer community is collaborative but there’s something special about Arizona and there’s something special about Tucson. And they say, what is it about your Tucson craft beer scene? I’ve heard that many times.

Tom Heath

Yeah, it’s just interesting. You always think that you’re competing. And I had someone on and this is early on and I asked because there were new breweries popping up and I asked him if there was too much and he said there’s never too much of a good thing. And we’re all kind of competing against the big brands. And if collectively we’re good enough, we’ll take market share and we’ll share that.

Ayla Kapahi

That’s exactly right. And that’s really the reason why we have our Voltron Brewing Cooperative facility that we share with Firetruck Brewing. It’s the same mentality. These are two different brands that are being produced. But ultimately we collaborate together so that we have the buying power, so that we have other power. Like a larger macro brewery. And you’re right, that’s exactly what Tucson breweries do.

Tom Heath

It’s a Voltron and that’s on Tool.

Ayla Kapahi

Is that yes, that’s right. It’s confusing because downtown’s borderlands location is also on Tool. But this one is South Tool, very close to Barrio Brewing Company and we share a wall with rocks and ropes, climbing gym.

Tom Heath

And you have a tap room I saw at Voltron. Is that true too?

Ayla Kapahi

That’s right. We just recently reopened our Voltron tap room post COVID.

Tom Heath

Okay. Yeah. Kind of hard to see. So look for the signs. It’s tucked away in a little warehouse back there, but a good place to brew beer. And I’m sure I haven’t been in as a tap room, but I’m sure it’s a good place to enjoy a beverage.

Ayla Kapahi

It’s awesome. We have these huge cutout windows in our tap room space so you can sit there with your beer and see what we’re up to.

Tom Heath

And is that where you do all your brewing?

Ayla Kapahi

Yes, that’s where I live. That’s my beer cave.

Tom Heath

Okay, so then you put that together and you ship it off to both of your restaurants. But you’re in restaurants and wholesale and retail everywhere, aren’t you?

Ayla Kapahi

That’s right. We really have scaled back from retail and stores, grocery stores in the last couple of years because we’ve been focusing on opening up our other tap room concepts. This has given us the ability to focus on creating small batches and unique batches that we normally don’t have available through wholesale.

Tom Heath

Okay, so if you’re doing the wholesale, then you’ve got to create obviously a lot more product and there’s less experimentation. You can’t come up these funky cool names. Is there anything about the beer? Is it just the names you sit around? Like, let’s create something call.

Ayla Kapahi

So here’s the thing. I take pride. I’d like to think I do my job pretty well and have contributed to our brew success. The one thing I do here though, is nobody asks my opinions when it comes to naming beers. Because if it were up to me, I would name all of our beers names like the Tangerine Sour, the Watermelon Ale, which to me is descriptive. But I’ve been told from our marketing.

Tom Heath

Team that what do those end up becoming called then?

Ayla Kapahi

Those two names actually stuck because that’s before our new marketing team got involved and they said, ale, that’s the last time you’re going to name the beers. I think it’s descriptive, but it doesn’t sound as good as some fun names.

Tom Heath

Okay, well, form over function or function. I don’t know what it is, but I like knowing what I’m drinking. Sometimes when I drink wine, for example, I’ll look at the bottle. I like the bottle, but I have no idea what I’m drinking. And it’s kind of gotten the same way with a lot of the beers is I really like the name, but I don’t think there’s chocolate cake in this. And I’m not 100% sure if there’s chocolate cake in this particular beer. I read a very interesting article because I do a little research every now and then. So I read a really interesting article from Tucson Foodie, which really sucked me in because it said that you went to UC Davis and UC Davis has this really good brewing program and they put together a Master’s and all of this stuff. And I’m like, that’s fantastic. And then it goes on to say, but Ayla didn’t take any of that stuff.

Ayla Kapahi

That’s exactly right. Actually, I was nervous when I first read that article because, uh oh, where is Jesse Mann’s going with this? I didn’t complete the brewing program at UC Davis. And yes, that’s all.

Tom Heath

Oh, that was a really relevant article, tucson Foodie. But you were what were you studying?

Tom Heath

I don’t remember.

Ayla Kapahi

I was in psychology and human development, so I was working in the field of social work, basically. So I will say what’s funny is know, maybe in Arizona folks are familiar with the UC system and with UC Davis in Northern California, but of course, in the beer world, as soon as I tell someone that’s where my undergraduate degree was at, they all assume, they’re like, oh my gosh, yeah, UC Davis, that’s so great. And then I have to kind of tamper them like, oh, but it wasn’t for brewing. And everyone just kind of goes, oh.

Tom Heath

I went to Juilliard to take yeah, exactly.

Ayla Kapahi

Everyone goes, huh? And I’m like, hmm, would you like to try this tangerine sour? It’s really good.

Tom Heath

And the title says it all. It was interesting, but the article, I think, was really well done and gives a lot of your bio. And if people are out there, definitely look it up. It’s just from like 2019, 2020. So it’s not too long after you started with Borderlands, that one, if it’s.

Ayla Kapahi

The one I’m thinking of from Tucson Foodie by Jesse Mance. It was maybe six months ago.

Tom Heath

Okay.

Ayla Kapahi

This year.

Tom Heath

Okay.

Ayla Kapahi

If it mentioned the U of A.

Tom Heath

LR MBA program, either way, look it up. It’s Tucson foodie. You can’t really mean ailer’s name is everywhere when you talk about brewing in Tucson. So you’ll pop it up. Especially when you pop in women brewers in Tucson. Your name is always on that list of people making things happen, which is nice to see. I I understand. I had an interview with someone from Iron John’s a few years ago, elise, I believe her name is, and we were talking and she we’re just it’s not that we’re entering the field, it’s we’re taking it. Right. That women were brewing beer for the longest time.

Ayla Kapahi

That’s exactly right. So women have a long standing history of being the original brewers. That stated back actually, even to ancient times when we look at ancient Egyptian alcohol production. But even in the last 200 years, women really were the original home brewers. They were the ones even selling beer on a kind of a black market, so to speak. If anyone is familiar with the beer witches kind of air quotes, your eyebrows say that.

Tom Heath

No, you can’t see my face right now.

Ayla Kapahi

You’re like, what the heck? What did she say?

Tom Heath

I mean, I’ve heard of when they talk about like witches brew and things like that.

Ayla Kapahi

I don’t know if that’s yeah, so actually it’s even kind of mixed in with around the time of the Salem trials. So when you think of when women and people were accused of being witches, women homebrewers at that time when they were selling their beer in the black market, they distinguished themselves by wearing pointy hats that kind of look like witch hats. So it’s not to say that the homebrewers were the ones during the Salem trials, but there was certainly it was their same time period and similar kind of folklore and story that’s going on there.

Tom Heath

It’s always interesting when you think you know something and you think you have this really progressive story and you realize we’re just sort of returning back to our roots.

Ayla Kapahi

That’s exactly right. That’s why a lot of my friends have the shirt that says the future of beer is female. But again, it’s just the past and the future, both of it.

Tom Heath

Right.

Ayla Kapahi

We’re really just reclaiming the beer story.

Tom Heath

We’ll be back to finish up the interview with Ayla in just a moment and find out how that reclamation of the beer story is coming. But first, I want to remind you that you’re listening to life along the streetcar in downtown Radio 99.1 FM and streaming on downtownradio.org.

Tom Heath

All right, we are back to finish up our interview. We’re talking with ayla Kapahi, the head brewer over at Borderlands Brewery. We were just talking about the Salem witch trial. So we’re going to fast forward a few years and find out what’s happening here in the now and soon in the future.

Tom Heath

With Borderlands, you got into this then from a different perspective. You didn’t start with Borderlands like, hey, I’m going to come become your brewer because you didn’t have that background. So how did that path take you?

Ayla Kapahi

When I was ready for a career change and I decided to join the craft beer industry, I really just begged a brewery for a job that was public brew house. A lot of folks might remember them tucked behind Hermanos off of Fourth Avenue and they brewed on a two barrel system, which is really just a glorified homebrew setup. I had homebrewing experience, or at least I thought I had, like, decent experience. I didn’t know what I was doing when I first started there, but I basically begged them for a job. I said, I’ll scrub floors. I’ll wash kegs. As long as you can teach me how to brew commercially, I’ll work your bar. Do you have any jobs available? And at first, this was the first week they were open, and they said, well, we’re not really hiring. We just opened. Or maybe we do have a position available. The owners are the ones who are brewing. And I was just relentless. I think they just wanted to have me stop going in there and bugging them. And they finally just said, all right, here’s a job.

Ayla Kapahi

All right, here. Just sweep the floor.

Tom Heath

We’ll spend less time if you work here than trying to explain to you why you can’t work here.

Ayla Kapahi

Exactly.

Tom Heath

So you get in, you get going, and then you learned how to brew there, then or commercially brew.

Ayla Kapahi

That’s right. I learned as much as I could. I’m so grateful for that experience and working on such a small system, because when you do that, folks know this. In the commercial beer brewing world, there are a lot of issues that arise, right? Like, you’re basically working with homebrew equipment. And so when you work on such a small scale, you really intimately get to know your product. You get to know the process and understand the mechanics and the machinery of everything. So I’m so grateful for that experience because all of the troubleshooting, all of the critical thinking about saying, hey, we don’t have this huge budget to resolve this problem. We don’t have this huge budget to create these delicious and creative beers. What are we going to do? And I really attribute a lot of that to my current success.

Tom Heath

Oh, interesting. I guess then as you get into larger scale and you’ve got more resources, then it becomes a little easier to navigate some of that. But the critical thinking that gets you there doesn’t change.

Ayla Kapahi

Definitely. And even when you start working on a larger scale, like I did with Borderlands, sure, there are brewing processes that are easier. A lot of them are more automated. But there are different challenges, right? If the beer is available in grocery stores, I need to make sure that product tastes exactly the same every single time. So you just come into new challenges.

Tom Heath

And you had mentioned earlier, so let’s kind of jump back to that. You wanted to focus less on the retail side because you’re building out some tap room concepts. Are those built out yet, or are you still working on those in the process?

Ayla Kapahi

So we, of course, have our original downtown tap room location. The Sam Hughes location is the newest one that’s currently opened. It opened in January of this year. That’s located at Tucson and 6th street. It’s actually where the old PJ subs location used to be. So that place is open and thriving. It’s a partnership with Chef Maria Maison from Boca Tacos. And the next concept, Dose, is opening on river and Craycroft area in that Whole Foods parking lot. That’s. Another partnership with Maria Maison. Tentative date of opening, about two months. We’re hoping for mid September.

Tom Heath

Okay. And since the show is recorded, we’re going to tell you what date it is now because two months in this world could be anything, especially in Tucson.

Ayla Kapahi

Who knows?

Tom Heath

Things happen. I went to your location on Deal on 6th in Tucson not too long ago, and I did not realize until after I left that it was a partnership. And the beverages were delicious, but the food was just unbelievable. It was such a small menu, but it’s just executed so well.

Ayla Kapahi

We’re so grateful. We have been wanting to work with Chef Maria for years, and it took us a long time to figure out what kind of a partnership we could make happen. I wholeheartedly agree. I purposely like to have my lunch meetings there. So then I can leave my beer cave and say, oh, it’s lunchtime. I guess I have to eat something.

Tom Heath

I guess I have to I guess I have to have some delicious Maria food. So then Dos will open. And so you’ve got then the original location. Sam Hughes partnership in voltron dose. That’s a lot.

Ayla Kapahi

Yeah, there’s another one too.

Tom Heath

Oh. Can you tell us, is that a teaser or is it just you’re going to have to tune in next year for that.

Ayla Kapahi

I think there’s already press or something about it. Within a year, we’re opening Sonora Moonshine Company, and that’s primarily going to be an agave and Tequila mescal bar.

Tom Heath

Interesting. You have a location for that?

Ayla Kapahi

Yes, off of Broadway. And.

Tom Heath

She’S pointing to give directions, which is horrible on the radio button.

Ayla Kapahi

It is. It’s terrible. The listeners are like, what is going on here?

Tom Heath

It’s that away. Is it downtown area?

Ayla Kapahi

It is downtown, relatively close to the Thunder Canyon location. Okay.

Tom Heath

Interesting. Wow, there’s a lot going on there. And you’re spearheading all of this. You’ve got to be exhausted.

Ayla Kapahi

Fortunately, we have a great CEO who knows what he’s doing, and I’m there just to support him the best way that I can. But certainly for production, it is a lot of work right. For us to keep up with these new concepts. We also want to create new beers for some of these different concepts as well. So we’re quite busy.

Tom Heath

So then are you getting into the agave distillation, or is that a partnership with something, or is that going to expand what you’re doing?

Ayla Kapahi

That is a partnership with a company in Sonora, Mexico. Legally, we don’t have the licensing to be able to distill and all of that in our current production space. It’s also not a skill set yet in my wheelhouse. So fortunately, we do have a partnership with that. I am very excited to brew Agave inspired beers with it. So it would be great to use cactus and roasted cactus in our beers.

Tom Heath

And that was something else. I think I read this in either that article, tucson Foodie or something else. But you’re also using a lot of native grains and you’re focusing on the region.

Ayla Kapahi

That’s right. We brew beers that are inspired by our southwestern landscape and desert. So that is why our prickly pear wheat is so successful. We use an organic and local prickly pear provider here to produce that. We are working with local grains, sonora White Wheat at BKW Farms, which is located in Mariana, and we try as much as possible to source local ingredients when we can because we really believe that our beer should reflect the flavors that we celebrate here.

Tom Heath

So where do people follow you and keep up with all this stuff?

Ayla Kapahi

I pause because, like, that’s a great question. Honestly, our website, especially our Instagram page and Facebook are the best sources. We keep it pretty up to date.

Tom Heath

Is it just Borderlands or is it Borderlands beer? Borderlands.

Ayla Kapahi

Tucson Borderlands Brewing Company on Instagram. And same with Facebook, same with our website. We updated them probably every day.

Tom Heath

Okay. This is airing in late July. Anything coming up soon that we need to know about? Any big events or any new releases that we can tease the audience with?

Ayla Kapahi

It will be mid September, but in two short weeks, we have many women brewers from Mexico visiting our facility to brew the next Las Ramanas beer, which is a, we haven’t told this to the public yet, but now you’re going to find out. It’s a Vienna lager yeah, we’re really excited about. And the beer will be released mid September.

Tom Heath

Okay. Breaking news. We don’t always get breaking news on the Life Along the Streetcar podcast, but this is so exciting. And then does Borderlands do they do tours? Can people get a look behind the curtain at what you’re doing or are you just too busy for that?

Ayla Kapahi

We do offer tours on our website quarterly, so stay tuned for the next one. I don’t know the date for the next one, but we do heavily advertise that.

Tom Heath

All right, well, we’ll link to all that stuff from our Facebook page in case you miss any of that stuff. Ayla, you are making some amazing things here happen in Tucson for a beer chick that gets things done pretty soon. An Agave chick that gets things done. Right.

Ayla Kapahi

I know. What else can I add to the titles? All the titles.

Tom Heath

Well, anything else you want to add before I wrap up?

Ayla Kapahi

I just want to say how much I love Tucson and I want to go back just really quickly about understanding how connected our beer community is and how our community is in know one thing that’s really awesome. What I think makes us so close is that we’re vulnerable and just honest with each other. It’s no problem for myself or for other people in our industry to call each other and say, hey, this thing happened at my brewery. Do you have any advice for how to handle it? Or what price should I charge my beer at if it cost me this much? And I think just being honest and transparent really gets rid of that stereotype of competition in the beer industry to say, oh, but you’re my competitor, because really we all thrive when we work together.

Tom Heath

Alica Pye, head brewer over at Borderlands Brewery, telling a really fantastic journey of someone that just had a passion, wanted to get involved and found a way to make it happen. Very inspirational that she’s doing what she loves and the path that she took to get there. Always a pleasure when we get to sit down with successful people that have kind of helped define their own direction. Also looking forward to many of those projects. I think Agave has just been really exploding in popularity over the last, I don’t know, five or six years, especially in Tucson with Todd Hanley and his efforts with the Agave Heritage Festival. So I’m excited about that project that they’re launching. All kinds of cool stuff coming. Speaking of cool stuff, you are listening to life along the streetcar on downtown radio 99.1 FM. And we’re streaming on downtownradio.org.

Speaker 6

Thank you very much. Enjoy your evening.

Tom Heath

Bye bye. As Brother Mock does a couple shows here, radio Club Crawl is one I love to point out. He plays music from all the bands they’re going to be playing in Tucson in the upcoming week. So you can get a little taste of him on his show. Then if you like him, he tells you where they’re playing, when they’re playing, and you can go check them out live. It’s called radio Club crawl. And Ted, Brother Mock there does some other shows as well on the station. And if you want to check out our full lineup, head over to Downtownradio.org. You’ll see, Sunday is pretty much kind of an alternative music day and talk shows. But Monday through Saturday, we have fabulous rock and roll shows. We’ve got the Roadside rest stop there on Monday nights. Got the Arizona four one one. All Arizona made music. We’ve got surfing shows, anime, all kinds of just different eclectic styles. And they’re brought to you by very talented, very knowledgeable and eager to educate DJs. And did I mention they’re all volunteers,

Tom Heath

everyone staff that keeps the station running, the board of directors, the DJs, the show host. Anytime you donate money, it goes to the programming, the studio equipment, the rent, the overhead, the things that we need to stay on the air and to improve the quality of the shows that we bring to you. So while you’re checking out everything on downtownradio.org, you’ll notice a little donate button there. I’m not going to be too upset if you hit that button and pass off a dollar or two or 20 or 100. And if you’re so inclined, that monthly ongoing donation is a fabulous way for us to kind of budget the necessary items here within the station. Any donation, a one time donation is gratefully accepted, but those ongoing donations really are so helpful in the budgeting process. Well, again, another huge shout out to Ayla. I want to thank her for spending some time with us. And if there’s a topic you think we should be covering, why don’t you hit us up on our Facebook and Instagram the Life along

Tom Heath

the Streetcar. You can also head over to our website lifelongthstreetcar.org. There’s a contact button and we would love to hear from you about those hidden gems we have here in Tucson. Well, our opening music is always courtesy of Ryan Hood. Thought we should finally start giving them some plugs because we play their music for the last eight years. And we’re going to leave you today with music by Seamus Kennedy. Seemed appropriate for the day. It’s from an album in 2003 called on the Rocks. It’s the beer song. I hope you have a great week and tune in next Sunday for more life along the streetcar.

Speaker 6

When you read, you start with ABC. When you drink, you start with do. Ray me dough buys beer, it buys me beer. Ray? The guy who sells me beer, me. The one who drinks my beer? Far a long way to the jawn? So I’ll have another beer? Lager lager lager? Beer, tea? No thanks, I’ll have a beer that will bring us back to dodo doe buys beer, it buys me beer. Ray? The guy who sells me beer, me. The one who drinks my beer? Far a long way to the john? So I’ll have another beer? Lager lager lager? Beer, tea? No thanks, I’ll have a beer that will bring us back to do buys beer, it buys me beer? Ray, ray? The guy who sells me beer, me. The one who drinks my beer? A long way to the jungle? So I’ll have another beer. Laugh. Lager lager lager? Beer, tea? No thanks, I’ll have a beer here that will bring us back good old.