How Two Brewers Launched a Beer Venture While Hiking

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Matt Leef is certainly not the first long-distance backpacker who, while tromping through the boondocks on a hot summer day, thought to himself, “You know what would taste good right now? A beer!”

But, unlike his less-foresightful thru-hiker compadres, Leef, a veteran of both the Pacific Crest and Continental Divide trails, opted to slake his thirst not by carrying a can or two of his favorite malt beverage from the previous resupply point, but by actually making his own beer while hiking.

You read that right: Leef was, for several thousand trail miles, a one-man walking brewery. This was not a desperate decision brought about by a perpetually parched palate. It was a well-conceived plan birthed by a man who knew what he was doing long before hoisting his pack.

Two years prior to embarking on his 2016 PCT hike, Leef—appropriately known in trail circles as “Brew Hiker”—had graduated from Oregon State University, where he majored in beer-making (technically Food Science with an option in fermentation science). He completed three internships, the last at Boston Beer Company, the country’s fourth-largest brewery.

Leef contends that he has never been much inclined toward sitting on a barstool or around a campfire getting hammered. He has, he says, long been a fan of beer consumption more in the vein of a wine connoisseur savoring a pinot noir rather than, say, something out of  “Animal House.”

“What has interested me most about beer is the range of flavors, trying to understand the process and how the diversity of beer styles was achieved,” he says. “The biochemistry of beer is very complex and fascinating to me.”

That fascination naturally led Leef to take up homebrewing.

“My parents bought me my first homebrewing kit for Christmas,” he says. “My dad stressed to me that brewing was supposed to be a hobby.”

He describes his first few batches as “horrible.”

At the time, Leef was enrolled in a pre-nursing program in San Diego, but via a local beer-tasting club sporting the ingenious acronym “QUAFF”— Quality Ale And Fermentation Fraternity—he started to take brewing more seriously. Through that group, he learned about Oregon State University’s fermentation science program.

“I decided that maybe nursing wasn’t for me,” Leef says.

He visited the OSU campus, was suitably impressed, and cast his  higher-education lot with the ever-expanding craft brewing industry. After graduating and completing his internships, Leef stood there—probably with a microbrew in hand—and asked himself, “What’s next?”

“Growing up in San Diego, I had always wanted to hike the PCT,” he says. “I was active in Boy Scouts and worked for a summer at Philmont Ranch in northern New Mexico. I knew I wanted to take backpacking a bit more seriously, but, at the same time, I didn’t want to give up brewing. My parents had spent a lot of money helping me get my degree. I didn’t want to risk wasting that.”

So, when Leef decided to embark upon his section hike of the PCT in 2016, he did so with the full intention of brewing beer along the way.

Leef contends that his trail formula is actually one of the simplest kinds of beer to make. He would mix four ounces of dry malt extract—which looks a bit like granulated sugar—with a pint of water and boil it in the same pot he used to cook last night’s ramen. He would add some bittering agents he found along the trail, like sage, pine needles, or even rocks “for the minerals.”

After letting the mixture sit for 30 minutes to cool, he would pour it into a liter soda bottle that housed a yeast culture and, as the yeast began fermenting, he would burp the bottle to release building CO2 gas.

Five or six days later, the beer—more or less a Saison style with an ABV of 7 or 8 percent—was ready for consumption.

The system worked well enough that, when Leef began hiking the CDT in 2019, he maintained his Brew Hiker persona.

Soon thereafter, serendipity manifested itself: Leef met Alexa Tubbs—aka “Highlight”—an AT end-to-ender from southern New Jersey who holds a Master’s degree in art business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York.

“We met in Glacier National Park, at Morning Star Lake Campground,” Tubbs remembers. “I just experienced a grizzly bear sighting and I was jazzed to tell everyone. Matt was also at that campsite. That would be his first impression of me—ecstatic storytelling about the mama bear and cubs I had just seen.”

The next day, Tubbs and her trail family hiked over Pitamakan Pass and down to Two Medicine Lake. “Matt was waiting by the bridge for me to come down,” she says. “We shared our first six-pack at the Two Medicine General Store on the patio picnic tables.”

The relationship began to ferment.

It wasn’t long before Leef made the ultimate show of affection: He started sharing his trail beer with Tubbs. She was hooked. He was hooked, too: They hiked together throughout the remainder of their CDT adventure. They started talking about a future that included each other, and decided to open their own brewery. It was just a question of where.

Not surprisingly, they wanted to launch their entrepreneurial odyssey in a trail town. They considered Helena, Lander, Salida, and Santa Fe before settling on Silver City, New Mexico, the first official Gateway Community for the CDT.

Silver City was one of the few CDT trail towns that only had one brewpub. The community has long been very supportive of the CDT, hosting the Trail Days celebration every April. The climate affords year-round hiking and the cost of living is far less than many trail towns. And it has as its backyard the famed Gila Wilderness, the world’s first legally designated Wilderness Area.

“We had both visited Silver City and loved the vibe,” Tubbs says. “We did a hike up the Middle Fork of the Gila River and thought that, if this is how we could spend our weekends, then this would be the place.”

They found an appropriate venue in the nearby village of Santa Clara that is close to an extensive system of trails that connects to the CDT. In 2023, they opened Open Space Brewing, where they keep a rotating list of four or five highly regarded craft beers on tap, none of which are prepared in a pot that was used to cook last night’s ramen.

The walls are adorned with maps, photos of the Gila Wilderness, and local art. Brews on tap feature names like “Hiker Midnight,” “Trail Days Haze,” and “the 11th Essential.” Tubbs, now a member of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition board of directors, and Leef host a wide array of events for environmentally oriented groups, such as New Mexico Wild, the National Forest Foundation, and the Advocates for Snake Preservation. They are also the go-to brewery for the sizable local disc golf demographic.

During their time off, Tubbs and Leef hike in the Gila Wilderness. But these days, Leef leaves his soda bottle brewing setup at home. He says that after spending all week immersed in lagers and IPAs, it’s nice to get away from beer for a few days.

John Fayhee has been writing for Backpacker since 1986. His latest book, “A Long Tangent: Musings by an old man & his young dog hiking every day for a year,” was a 2024 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards winner. He lives in Silver City.