Canteen Brewhouse is Albuquerque’s oldest operating brewery, brewing in the city since 1994 and now pouring at two locations: the Aztec Road brewhouse in the city’s Brewery District and a second taproom out on Tramway Boulevard. It has also collected more Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup medals than any other brewery in New Mexico.
What is striking about a brewery that old is how little has changed at the top. The same ownership group that opened the doors in 1994 still runs it, which in a thirty-year-old craft brewery is close to unheard of.
From a Nob Hill pizza oven to Aztec Road
The brewery did not start as a brewery. It started as a pizzeria’s answer to a question its customers kept asking.
In 1994 it opened as Il Vicino Brewing Company, tucked inside the Nob Hill location of Il Vicino Wood Oven Pizza on Vassar Drive NE. Partners Greg Atkin, Rick Post and Thomas White, along with former partner Tom Hennessy, had noticed how many diners wanted a craft beer with a wood-fired pie instead of whatever came in a bottle. The first batch, Old Route 66 Golden Ale, was brewed in December 1993.
Validation came fast. In 1995, barely a year in, Il Vicino’s Wet Mountain IPA won the brewery its first Great American Beer Festival medal. Hennessy later left to found Colorado Boy Brewing in Colorado.
Growth meant space. In 2011 the brewery opened a 6,500-square-foot taproom in Albuquerque’s Brewery District, on Aztec Road, and in September 2014 the whole operation took the name Canteen Brewhouse. A second taproom followed on Tramway Boulevard in 2016.
What does Canteen Brewhouse brew?
Broadly: a classic American brewpub lineup, with unusual depth in German and Czech lagers and in dark beer. There is no single house style the place is built around, which is a little unfashionable in 2026 and very much the point of a brewery that has been pleasing the same neighborhood for three decades.
Untappd’s listing for the brewery runs to more than 250 beers. A few that anchor the regular rotation:
- Flashback IPA — an American IPA, listed at 7.2% ABV and 80 IBU. Bitterness that high is a deliberate choice; most American IPAs sit well below it.
- High Plains Pils — a Czech-style pilsner at 5.3% and 25 IBU. Czech pilsner is the softer, bready, more generously hopped cousin of the crisp German style.
- Dougie Style Amber — the American amber ale, 6.1% and 40 IBU, and the beer that took GABF gold in 2014.
- Dark & Lusty — a foreign export stout at 6.8%, a style built to travel: stronger and drier than an Irish stout.
- Panama Joe Coffee Stout — 8%, and the highest-rated of the regulars on Untappd at 4.09 from more than 500 ratings.
- Helles Awaits — a 5.2% Munich helles, the pale, malt-forward lager that Bavarians drink by the liter.
Seasonals move through on top of that: a Märzen for fall, a Valentine’s milk stout, fruited sours, a Russian imperial stout that Untappd lists at 10.5%. For the thirtieth anniversary in 2024 the brewery released a collaboration with New Mexico Piñon Coffee, a company that happened to be turning thirty the same year.
The deepest medal cabinet in New Mexico
Canteen’s own count is more than 150 awards across local, national and international competitions. The two that beer judges weigh most are the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup, and on those two Canteen has thirteen GABF medals and seven World Beer Cup medals — the most combined of any brewery in the state. It has also won the New Mexico IPA Challenge six times.
The 2014 GABF was the brewery’s best single showing: gold for Dougie Style in American-style amber ale, plus silver in the aged beer category for Saint Bob’s Imperial Stout ’07 — a beer that had sat for seven years before it was judged.
Then the medals stopped for a while. The 2023 World Beer Cup silver for Work of Heart, a sweet stout, was the brewery’s first new medal since 2016. Head brewer Zach Guilmette, who has worked at Canteen for well over a decade, told a New Mexico beer blog that year that he had aimed for a chocolatey, creamy stout rather than a heavily roasted one, building it on pale chocolate and Munich malts. Work of Heart started as a Valentine’s Day release and has become an annual one.
Canteen has also been a training ground. Brady McKeown brewed there before going on to open Quarter Celtic Brewpub in Albuquerque with his brother Ror.
Two taprooms, two different evenings
The two locations pour the same beer and are not the same visit.
The Canteen Brewhouse on Aztec Road is the production side and the bigger room, with a patio stage that hosts live music a couple of nights a week. Regulars talk about it as a place where food arrives fast, the patio is shaded in summer, and dogs are welcome on it. There is a full kitchen, and six-packs, crowlers and growlers to go.
The Canteen Taproom on Tramway, open since 2016, sits on the east side of town against the foothills, and the thing people mention first is the view of the Sandias from the enclosed patio — heated in winter, cooled by misters and fans in summer. Trivia nights fill it. Both rooms open at noon daily and run to 9 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.
Addresses: 2381 Aztec Rd NE and 417 Tramway Blvd NE. Hours shift around holidays, so it is worth a look at canteenbrewhouse.com before a long drive across town.
Is Canteen Brewhouse the oldest brewery in New Mexico?
No — it is the oldest in Albuquerque, and second-oldest in the state. Santa Fe Brewing Company, which started in 1988, holds the state record. Canteen’s 1994 opening makes it Albuquerque’s first brewpub and the longest continuously operating brewery in the city.
That order matters less than what the two have in common: both were brewing in New Mexico before most people here had tasted an IPA, and both are still doing it.
Where to start
If you want to understand the brewery in one flight, order across its range rather than down one style: High Plains Pils, Dougie Style, Flashback, and whichever dark beer is on. That is thirty years of a brewery that never specialized, laid out side by side.
Both Canteen locations are on the New Mexico Breweries map, along with every other brewery, brewpub, taproom and cidery in the state. If you are making an afternoon of the Brewery District, sort out a designated driver or a rideshare first — several breweries sit within a short drive of Aztec Road.
Beer details from Untappd.
