Brownsville’s band of brewery brothers is inching closer to opening the city’s first soup-to-nuts craft beer business.

The Pluton Brewery Company is nearing completion of its 5,280-square-foot building on 805 E. Elizabeth in the city’s downtown. It’s a long time coming for Daniel Arizpe and Joey Martinez along with their partners and team of employees. They are taking their dream from making beer in the garage of a west Brownsville home to a robust operation of interconnected kettles, tanks and fermenting equipment to make their products on a large scale and for individual pour overs on tap at bars and lounges.

“It’s a passion,” Arizpe said while giving a recent tour of the Pluton facility, which will open later this month. “What we do comes from the heart.”

Making beer from scratch is a long and complicated process. Learning how to do it right takes years of practice, trial and error. Having the right mentors to guide the process toward proficiency is essential as well. For Arizpe and Pluton, the big brothers in that regard are 5X5 Brewing of Mission. The veteran-owned craft brewery took the upstart Brownsville brewers under its wing. 

The students are now ready to join their teachers in opening a brewery that will feature a continuous process of making Pluton-branded beers for large volume sales. Pluton also aims to be a place in downtown Brownsville where friends can gather barside to enjoy a cold one. Maybe a sports bar setting could provide a place to watch football games and boxing matches. There’s room for all of that and more in a building that once housed grocery stores and furniture shops. It is now filled with everything needed to make a wide selection of craft beers.

“We’re here because of how hard we’ve worked and how we just kept at it, learning and adding to the knowledge of being in this business,” Arizpe said. “And now it’s all blossoming. We’re here and ready to go.”

Finding The Right Spot

It wasn’t easy to find a building that could serve as a production facility while also being an inviting place to gather for drinks to watch a ballgame or just hang out.

Added to the search was that Arizpe and his team wanted a downtown location, a part of Brownsville that’s on the upswing. Public and private investments are revitalizing historic buildings and repurposing them for retailing and trendy restaurants. The Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation has been a major player in these efforts. Its grants help small business owners with construction costs while BCIC also offers insights on budget planning and marketing.

Pluton is among the businesses that have benefitted from the BCIC’s help. From the start, their search for a location to house their production and bar/lounge combo business focused on downtown. It took over a dozen building searches before they found the right one on try number 13. Their Elizabeth Street location is just a few blocks north of the iconic 1930s-era federal courthouse building. In the years to come, the annual Charro Days parades will make their way past the Pluton Brewery building. 

“It felt fitting,” Arizpe said of locating Pluton downtown. “It means a lot to us to be part of the revitalization of downtown. We love our city and we don’t want downtown to be forgotten.”

Long Road

Arizpe and Diego Garcia, an engineer and brewer for Pluton, gave an information-packed tour of the soon-to-open crafty brewery and did so with the gusto of the beer they will make on Elizabeth Street.

There is a network of silver kettles and tanks lined up in connecting form, with the brewers explaining that production of Pluton’s beers will be a continuous process once everything gets going. This is where the grains and hops will be added and expertly mixed with a fermentation process that gives beer its alcohol content and carbonation. It takes about two weeks for beer to complete the fermentation process.

It’s highly technical work but will make for good viewing for Pluton’s patrons when looking through clear vinyl plastic walls and watching the brewers at work. The Pluton plan is to have in-house customers enjoying the variety of craft beers made onsite while also being a supplier of beers for area bars and lounges. Arizpe and his team also have ambitions to package beer at their site for retail sales at area grocers and stores. 

It’s all a long way from where they started as childhood friends in the neighborhoods of west Brownsville to growing up into adulthood and acquiring interests and hobbies, one of which they are now developing into one of their hometown’s more unique businesses. Their brewery is named for one of the streets of their Galaxia neighborhood that’s located by the Military Highway.

“It’s a huge deal for us to be here,” Arizpe said, anticipating Pluton’s imminent opening. “It’s a cool thing to see the impact we’re having.”