Today we’d like to introduce you to Javier and Jennifer Perez.
Javi has been brewing since the late 1980s, when he began brewing in Berkeley, California, with his brother Victor and their friend John Ramirez. As a child, Javi was fascinated with science and, thanks to his parents, Espi and Javier, he spent many hours working with chemistry kits and microscopes from their neighborhood hobby shop in Long Beach, California, where Javi was born and raised. In addition to his preoccupation with science, Javi was also interested in cooking and checked out many cookbooks from their local library. He used to fall asleep reading them at night!
The inspiration for Cheluna’s brews and decor comes from Javi’s paternal grandparents, who were from Oaxaca, Mexico, and his mother’s family, who come from Mexico City, Mexico. It turns out that brewing is a great way to combine a love of science and the creativity of cooking, and after more than 25 years of home brewing and over a decade of working as an emergency room physician, Javi is lucky enough to put five decades of life experience, energy, and hard work into Cheluna Brewing Company.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Thankfully the brewing community is very collaborative, so when we’ve encountered problems, like configuring our brewhouse into a small footprint/space, friends with experience setting up tanks stepped up to advise. During the buildout of our taproom and brewhouse, we befriended many professional tradespeople, like electricians and plumbers, and we always make a point of saving contact information for future reference, for the inevitable emergency.
We expect a roller coaster ride and that’s pretty much the way it goes; we get a little nervous if there’s a long stretch of smooth sailing. Recently our chiller died during a period of pretty nasty wet and very cold weather, but the people we had hired almost four years ago to install it rush ordered a replacement and went up on the roof to install it the next day. Our relationship building helps out when we need help quickly; we aspire to be excellent to everyone, and we in turn pay it forward by helping out others, too.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Cheluna Brewing Company – what should we know?Cheluna is a production brewery and taproom specializing in super clean and delicious German-style beer with a Latin flair. We offer live music three nights a week, a homebrewing club, weekly trivia, a weekly running & dinner group, a monthly book club and we host artists about once a month for crafts like printmaking and sewing classes. Our mezzanine is used several times a week for special events and social gatherings such as birthday parties, baby showers, graduation celebrations, and rehearsal dinners.
We believe our co-ownership by a first-generation Mexican American and a woman (Javier and Jennifer) is very unique in the brewing industry. Javier is also our head brewer and was our only brewer until we were able to hire a full-time brewer, Eric Nichols, who brings a similar work ethic, dedication to the craft, and meticulous eye for detail to Cheluna. Javier also works outside of the brewery full time as an ER physician for the Denver VA and is proud to serve veterans in this capacity.
In a city that has become prohibitively expensive for many residents, we’re super proud of our employee retention and satisfaction. We are very small and don’t have many employees, so we’re a lot like a family. It’s very gratifying to help our employees establish themselves by paying them fairly and enabling them to buy first homes, move out on their own, and put themselves through school.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2501 N. Dallas St. #148
Aurora, CO 80010 - Website: www.cheluna.com
- Phone: 720-600-0020
- Email: info@cheluna.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chelunabrewing/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chelunabrewing/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/cheluna-brewing-co-aurora
Image Credit:
Frankie Zarantonello
Dustin Hall/Brewtography Project
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