Beer Zombies Keeps Legacies Alive In Vegas
Born from social media, a brand continues to mature
When we lived in Las Vegas, I watched what was once widely considered a terrible beer city and state evolve into an amazing market.
I was able to write about it in my book about the state’s beer history, Nevada Beer, which is well worth reading just for the weird cosmopolitan history of Virginia City and Reno, and this neat article for Thrillist.
But more importantly, I made a lot of cool friends. That includes Chris Jacobs, the founder of Beer Zombies. (I actually included him in the same Beer Connoisseur article as Beny and Teo from Crowns and Hops back in 2019.)
BZ started as a social media account and helped fuel the hype that was beer in the late ’10s. Then it grew into a taproom and more, until finally into a brewery, all while taking over one of the oldest breweries in Nevada, Tenaya Creek.
I chatted with Chris to see his take on the beer industry, coincidentally just ahead of Tenaya Creek’s 25th-anniversary party today.
Staying hip with Beer Zombies
When Chris Jacobs started his Beer Zombies social persona on the Internet, his goal was to interact with everyone who engaged in his beer adventure.
“I only posted things I enjoy a lot,” Jacobs told me in a 2019 Beer Connoisseur article. “There’s a lot of accounts that will post things and say, ‘This was awful,’ but I wanted to be more of a positive influence.”
The main Beer Zombies Instagram now has more than 58,000 followers.
An artist, he built out the business, first with murals at breweries around the West Coast, then with merchandise from Beer Zombies, like pint glasses, and collaborations with breweries. Then he started a Beer Zombies Festival, which eventually spiraled into the first Beer Zombies Bottle Shop (which, thankfully, was right around the corner from our house). With that, he helped bring in incredibly desired beers from across the country and made it a destination for whale seekers (a term for hard-to-find beers; see the article in the good reads section.)
Now, Jacobs has a taproom in Summerlin, just west of the Vegas strip, Boulder City near the Hoover Dam, Salt Lake City and the main brewery in downtown Las Vegas.
The opportunity came to purchase the legacy brewery Tenaya Creek Brewing Company last year, one of the oldest breweries in Nevada. Jacobs’ ultimate goal eventually was to have a brewery, so he renamed it Beer Zombies Brewing Co., nestling the Tenaya Creek brand under the parent company.
Beer Zombies was built on the hype of the beer industry and loved by beer nerds across the country. Jacobs capitalized on that with the collaborations and now with his brewery with big pastry stouts, fruited sours, and hazy IPAs.
Keeping the Tenaya Creek brands alive, he also has room on the 28 taps and across Nevada to involve every beer drinker. And that’s important to the industry at this point, as breweries are struggling to stay alive and relevant.
“There are ebbs and flows in every industry,” Jacob said this week, noting the craft beer sales were down roughly 1% last year. “For a long time, we catered to the beer geek, that’s where we came from. But now those people, a lot of them, have moved on to bourbon or wine or tequila.
“At the end of the day, that’s not what’s driving the American craft beer world. There is some down, but looking at the landscape, even though a lot of breweries are closing, craft sales aren’t changing too much. Maybe they got crunched with a lease, or they aren’t evolving, whatever it might be, but the consumers are still there, maybe not just as vocal about it.”
And evolve Beer Zombies has. While he maintains the trendy styles for the Beer Zombies brand, and now the classic styles of Tenaya Creek, Beer Zombies also has ushered out a packaged ready-to-drink cocktail and a bourbon.
Jacobs says he has a few other projects in the works as well.
“Ten years ago, you could just make good beer. Five years ago, you could make good beer and have cool marketing,” Jacobs said. “Now, it has to be good beer, good branding, good people. For us, in Vegas, we offer ciders, wine, beer slushies, anything we can offer to help capture customers where they are.”
Part of that, too, is keeping the Tenaya Creek history alive. He acknowledged that not a lot of history is kept alive in Las Vegas, so to have the second-oldest brewery in his care now, he had to be sure to keep growing its story. It also helps that the Tenaya Creek business included branded beers for the Las Vegas Aviators Triple-A baseball team and the Wynn and Encore casinos.
He’s now a year out of moving from operating in small taprooms to filling out a 13,000-square-foot brewery with many more employees. He wanted to take some time getting used to that situation before continuing to expand his business’s footprint with even more projects. But he’ll start again soon, mentioning a new Las Vegas property will be announced soon.
But one thing is not changing at Beer Zombies. Jacobs is still the sole voice between the social media accounts and he doesn’t want that to change.
"It’s not a team running the accounts; anybody that talks to someone from Beer Zombies is talking directly to me,” Jacobs said. “It will be the last piece that I give away to someone else. It’s how I built the company, and people expect a reaction, and if they interact, they know they can message the owner, and he’ll respond.
“It adds a layer, and it’s been a community. We’re a business now, and I still have to make big decisions, but I’m still doing this because I love it.”
Literary Libations
This is Alyssa checking in with your weekly drink-and-book pairing! Thanks to all of you who reach out to talk books with me. It’s my love language, and I adore hearing from those who pick up a book you learned about from this section!
I recently dove into this Book of The Month November selection: PS I Hate You by Lauren Connolly. It is a predictable, sweet rom-com and exactly what I need right now given the state of our country. Speaking of which, while I was trying to think of a drink pairing for this novel I kept gravitating toward whiskey and scotch cocktails, drinks I typically associate with the holiday season. I also realized how drawn I have been to anything holiday-related the past week — we went to a Christkindl Markt today and have plans to put up our tree tomorrow. Now, let me emphasize this: I firmly believe Christmas season doesn’t start until after Thanksgiving. I HATE the trend of jumping straight from Halloween to Christmas. Why are we breezing past arguably the best holiday of the year (tables of food, pumpkin pie, five-day weekend, Lions game) during the best season of the year and extending Christmas to two full months?!
So, after that rant, you can imagine how surprised I was to be ready to dive into all things Christmas-y in mid-November and, to put it simply, I decided I am craving anything that can bring me joy right now. And frankly, the joy of Thanksgiving/fall just isn’t enough. So, early holiday season, please bring me some much-needed distraction and happiness as our democracy crumbles to shit around us.
PS I Love This Drink
3 oz scotch, heated in a small saucepan
1.5 oz cinnamon simple syrup
Juice from ½ lemon
Mix all ingredients in a coffee mug (preferably with a snowman on it), turn on The Holiday, drink and read!
Good reads of the week
In the spirit of the Beer Zombies piece (and shout out to our loyal reader Brian who sent it to me), Bloomberg published this cool piece, “Fantastic Beer Whales and Where to Find Them.”
There’s been a lot of fun-flavored whiskies out lately, more than the tailgate shot of Fireball. Recently there’s been caramel whiskey to throw into apple cider, or S’mores whiskey to sip beside a fire. VinePair looked into the surge of the flavored whiskey.
And to keep a check on ourselves, the New York Times detailed the rise in alcohol consumption during the pandemic and its problematic continuation.
What we’re drinking
Sometimes a great martini is fantastic. And it’s also never been easier with a product called Ancient Olive Trees Dirty Martini Juice. Add it to your preferred gin or vodka, garnish as desired and boom! We went with Kāstra Eliōn Vodka, which is made from olives. Now Alyssa’s head is spinning with ways to incorporate this olive vodka into dishes in the kitchen.
I also tried the Angel’s Envy Rye Finished in Rum Barrels. It was delicious and had an almost overwhelming maple syrup vibe.