What's the last thing you'd expect to find on an island off the coast of Honduras in the Caribbean? How about a Czech brewery? The innkeepers here at Cocolobo told me there was a local brewer on Roatan, but his beer was hard to find. Aha! A challenge. So yesterday when I rented a car to explore the island, I went looking for the brewery. I found it. Three months too late.
The Bay Islands Brewery sits high atop a hill, next to a couple of telecommunications towers. There is a sign on the road announcing its presence and the fact that it is for sale:
I drove up the driveway, ignoring the do not enter sign, hoping they might have a tasting room. The facilities are imposing - a huge stone fortress surrounded by worksheds and guarded by an orange brewery cat:
The owner came up to greet me as his worker stayed in the background. The worker looked like John Belushi playing a Mexican bandito, only with a much larger gut. Which was in full display as he appeared to be wearing only underpants. I eventually figured out they were just very dingy Speedos. Still, not a sight for those with a weak stomach. I didn't dare try to photograph either of them.
I ended up having quite a chat with the owner/founder, Jiri Maska. Sadly, the first thing he told me was that there was no more beer. He had distributed his product only in kegs to selected establishments around the island. But he had put out of business by the national big name in beer, Cervecería Hondureña, S.A. They had gone to every one of his customers and offered them large cash payments for exclusivity, ranging up to $50,000, he said. Put him right out of business, at least for the moment. I've had three of their four beers. They're essentially the same as typical American piss-water beers. Which isn't surprising, as they're owned by Miller. They'll do as a safe cold beverage on a hot day, compared to the tap water here, but that's about all they have to recommend them.
Maska isn't giving up, though. He said, "I'm from the Czech Republic. We had a communist dictator. We got through that, and I'll get through this." He has a bunch of plans. One is to bottle his beer so he can distribute it to a lot more small retailers to beat the monopoly efforts of Miller. Another is to make a local line of sodas and bottle them as well. He has a Honduran trademark for the name Cola Loca and already has it painted on his delivery truck.
The facility was quite an undertaking. He built it to withstand tropical storms and last for generations. He found the rock on a hillside on the island and asked the owner if he could buy some. The owner said sure, but he had no power for tools. So Maska hired a gang of four guys to quarry the rock by hand with pick and shovel. He said he's not looking to sell it. But the sign is there in case some insanely rich person gets off a cruise ship and wants to make him an offer he can't refuse.
And then there are his engineering plans. Another of his challenges was reliable electrical supply to run the operation, since his lager needed chilling for weeks before selling it. The utility on the island has been notoriously unreliable (although not while I'm here) as well as seriously expensive. So he has been trying to make his operation independent of it. He has a row of solar panels as well as wind turbines:
Only one of the turbines is currently functional. A hurricane knocked them all down and he has restored only one of them so far. His big plan, though, is to get into hydrogen. He'll produce it himself, presumably using the wind and solar, and then run generators with the hydrogen.
Pretty ambitious efforts, no doubt. But he did manage to get the first (and perhaps only) microbrewery license in Honduras. He used open fermentation and had a capacity to produce 2000 liters a day when he was operational. Hope he's successful so I can back some day and try his brew.
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Posted by: WilsonBernadine | March 02, 2010 at 09:34 AM