It’s a balmy summer afternoon when I set off with Hernán Castellani on a cruise around the low-slung suburbs of Greater Buenos Aires. We’re in search of what was, until recently, elusive here: good beer, made with care. Castellani, who operates the cuckoo brewing project Sir Hopper, has offered to take me to his favorite taprooms, and to the bars most beloved by the city’s brewers. And who am I to object?
Kraken, a brewery that runs tastings and courses in the Caseros district, is our first stop. We sample its Lemon Pie Pastry Sour and a just-launched, hop-based, sugar-free soda in the first-floor taproom, while production manager (and Castellani’s long-time buddy) Nico Santarossa hovers nearby. Next, we move on to Bierhaus, a more ambitious taproom set-up that, by 5 p.m., is as jammed as pandemic drinking rules allow.
Two bars in and it’s obvious Castellani is in his element, greeting owners and fellow brewers. Later, at our fourth destination, Strange Brewing—curiously located in the residential, middle-class neighborhood of Colegiales—someone offers a fist bump, congratulating Castellani on his Session IPA.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“No idea!” he says.
An unlikely-looking local idol with a jolly, bespectacled face and a single hop tattoo on his forearm, Castellani brushes off the hero-worshipping. It must be routine. He needs little introduction in his home country’s beer circles, where he’s recognized as a maverick brewer, a long-time South Beer Cup judge, and one of the few responsible for breathing life into Argentina’s craft beer industry around a decade ago.
The next day, at our extended crawl’s fifth and final stop, Geppetto—a corner bar in the Villa Devoto area, known as a local gastro hub—I sample Itzel Craft Beer’s Teletubbies Day, an American IPA whose can is adorned with caricatures of Itzel’s brewer, Alberto Rodríguez; Geppetto’s co-owner, Lucas Cuchmeruk; and Castellani himself. Rodríguez is a close friend who also happens to have the Sir Hopper brewery logo inked onto his right arm.
The tale of how the 33-year-old Castellani acquired this level of recognition is long and wide-ranging. It starts in Argentina, then in neighboring Uruguay and Chile, before moving on to Shanghai, Munich, and California. Over the course of his travels, Castellani consulted for dozens of breweries, convinced an air stewardess friend to ferry 40 bags of American hops to Buenos Aires each month, and diligently saved every peso to study at UC Davis’ Master Brewers Certificate Program. (He was in California last year, but once the lockdown came, classes went online and Castellani couldn’t get a repatriation flight. That dream of in situ education popped like a carbonation bubble.)
His story is interwoven with insolvency, family disputes, and flashes of triumph: His first book, La IPA no pasa de moda (IPA Never Goes Out Of Style), was published in December 2020, and its initial print run sold out in six weeks. As for Sir Hopper, his project is currently producing about 68 barrels a month, though Castellani’s working towards putting out three times that much.
Historically, Argentina was known for producing and consuming red wine, for its vermouth-based aperitivo culture, and for drinking Fernandito (Fernet and cola) as well as terrible (but improving) coffee. As far as beer went, most Argentines didn’t go beyond Light Lagers served in one-liter bottles.
“Low in quality, high in quantity. That was our palate, and anyone into drinking good beer was considered crazy,” Castellani says. “There wasn’t anywhere to drink craft beer in Buenos Aires 10 years ago. We homebrewers would ask bar owners’ permission to bring beers to swap among friends—and they’d agree, so long as we ordered some food.”
“Low in quality, high in quantity. That was our palate, and anyone into drinking good beer was considered crazy. There wasn’t anywhere to drink craft beer in Buenos Aires 10 years ago. We homebrewers would ask bar owners’ permission to bring beers to swap among friends—and they’d agree, so long as we ordered some food.”
Before he was a homebrewer, Castellani was a Quilmes-Light-Lager-gulping 17 year old. An exchange program that took him to Germany first opened his eyes—and mouth—to a new drinking world. But it wasn’t until the first class on his first day of college, in 2006, that a fellow chemical engineering student offered him a bottle of tepid English Brown Ale.
“It was 10 a.m. and I was pretty surprised, to be honest,” he says. “He assured me we wouldn’t get drunk and that it was meant to be consumed at room temperature. I never knew his name, never saw him again—but that Ale blew my mind.”
So much so that Castellani snapped up a homebrewing kit, downloaded an eight-page tutorial, and did what he could in a tiny apartment in the city’s Caballito neighborhood. “With next to no knowledge, those first beers were like battery fluid: oxidized, acidic, and bitter,” he remembers wryly.
Before long, he was homebrewing 20 times a month, and his beer was getting more palatable. The next few years were split, increasingly unevenly, between chemical engineering and homebrewing, long before Argentina’s current craft boom took off. Castellani also had a job selling brewery equipment—and hated it. “It’s the only employment I’ve ever had, and I handed in my notice after 11 months,” he says. “I just knew I wanted to make a living from beer because I genuinely liked it—and it didn’t matter what it took.”
Five years on, his thesis handed in, and with just three exams left to sit, he gave up on college. Frustration and doomed projects were routine in the following years. Substantial investments from a colorful array of business partners looking to hit the big time flopped, as they had seemed destined to, but Castellani was always learning something, anything, from these small ventures. That, paired with his uncommon determination and a falling-out with his wealthy father, forced him to stand on his own two feet. (Argentina saw 53.5% inflation in 2019 and 36.1% in 2020; it isn’t a friendly place for the average entrepreneur.)
“My father didn’t set a good example and, while he financially supported me until I was 23, we don’t currently have a relationship,” he says. “I realized that my combined lack of knowledge and experience meant a factory wasn’t the environment for me. Plus, the lack of capital meant I was destined to continue failing. But I’ve always picked myself back up and never got tired of trying again, so I focused on educating myself even though there weren’t many courses available here in 2011.”
That tenacity paid off, and gradually a cobbled-together career took shape. “Consultancy work, such as improving production processes and designing recipes, started trickling in, and I did it for free or for a few cans,” Castellani says. “That opened doors and I started traveling around Argentina, advising in [brewing hubs] Mar del Plata, El Bolsón, and Bariloche.”
Despite the sultry weather, car windows are down to keep the virus at bay and early evening traffic is heavy as we head to the next bar on our list. En route, Castellani recalls the first hop-driven beer he drank, the one that inspired his passion for IPA.
“I was at Toronado bar in San Francisco, and I drank a Blind Pig West Coast American IPA made by Russian River,” he says. “It blew my mind so much that I went back to Argentina obsessed with the idea of making something similar.”
With his air stewardess friend on side to bring in Simcoe and Amarillo hops, Castellani started experimenting in earnest. And, by picking himself up from those previous flops, he began to see that a less-tethered way of life presented the opportunity he was after: to produce small batches of beer with low, fixed costs at an array of breweries. Book-balancing largely banished to the memory bank, the cuckoo brewer Sir Hopper was born.
With no fixed style, no fixed recipes that he returns to, and certainly no fixed abode, Castellani relishes the excitement that his nomadic existence presents. Typically, he stays with breweries for no longer than a single brew day’s duration, though he might remain a little longer if the reciprocal deal—his expertise in exchange for tank space—works all around. Generally, Sir Hopper’s annual production is split 40/60 between kegs and cans.
“I was at Toronado bar in San Francisco, and I drank a Blind Pig West Coast American IPA made by Russian River. It blew my mind so much that I went back to Argentina obsessed with the idea of making something similar.”
“I’m a nerd, I love renewing challenges,” he says. “I’ve made beer at 30 breweries in the past two years. It’s never monotonous, and I never stop learning, practicing, educating myself and others. But I’ve still got a long way to go.”
2020 was a new lesson in rolling with the punches. Since there aren’t any formal beer schools in Argentina, Castellani and his partner of 10 years, Julia Real—who also manages Sir Hopper’s admin, sales, and logistics—had bet on UC Davis, but not on classes going virtual. Castellani was hit hard. “We’d invested our life savings into that master’s program, and I fell into a hole,” he says.
Instead, with the unexpected spare time, Castellani threw himself into what would become his debut book. His mother handled the first edit before he hooked up with his publisher. And Castellani climbed up out of 2020 with a successful manual for making hoppy beers under his belt.
Today, Castellani consults for 15 breweries around Argentina. One of his longest working relationships is with Kraken.
“I really like the spirit of Kraken,” Castellani says. “They truly bet on quality and not quantity when Argentina was living the beer boom between 2016 and 2018, and everyone else simply went for gallons. In fact, Kraken understood where the sector was headed long before I did, and that it’s preferable to make fewer gallons, [so long as they are] super-premium beer.”
In recent years, taprooms have taken off in Greater Buenos Aires, and Castellani has benefited from that flourishing. Sir Hopper moved into our crawl’s second port of call, Bierhaus, located in the upmarket district of San Isidro, three months ago. The brewery produces some 1,280 BBLs per month; favorites include its Dark Vader Black IPA. Here, Castellani is currently honing a West Coast IPA with head brewer José Bini’s blessing.
“Bierhaus is one of Argentina’s most technologically advanced craft breweries,” Castellani says. “Automation is the norm in brewing and fermentation in the USA, for example, but not in Argentina. Other than the very largest industrial factories, and including Kraken, I can count on one hand the number of craft breweries who have this level of automation.”
The taproom burgers are supposed to be a must, so we split a double Blue Steel, loaded with cheddar and blue cheese, mushrooms, and caramelized onions, as well as a pulled pork sandwich. The crowd is mixed, and features serious-looking bearded folk alongside twenty-somethings loudly starting the weekend, happy to be out and socializing after five months of winter lockdown, masks dangling off their ears.
After carefully dividing up the sandwiches, we take the Bierhaus tour, sampling a Mexican Lager, a Scotch Ale, a Honey Ale, a Blonde Ale, a Session IPA, Red and Black IPAs … the entire Bierhaus family. It’s the complex Scotch Ale, with its combination of caramel and German malts, and the refreshing and drinkable Mexican Lager, that most satisfy.
Energy levels rise at our next stop. It is, after all, Friday night in one of South America’s busiest cities, and after the strict lockdown, the porteño residents of Buenos Aires are keen to let loose. Desarmadero Bar, located in leafy Palermo, has an aura of celebrity; co-owner and DJ Harry Salvarrey is a radio big-shot. It’s jammed right from the entrance, which is offset by a mural of el viejo (“old dude”) by renowned street artist Alfredo Segatori, filled with general drinkers after a G&T as well as beer geeks and brewers who want to sample from the 23 rotating taps. Here, over Cerveza Minga’s intense Tornado American Stout, we bump into Itzel’s Rodríguez, and we all bellow at each other, competing with the soundtrack. Later, we tuck into ossobuco empanadas, which help mop up that Stout.
Next, we continue to another local success story, Strange Brewing. Strange started life as a brewery, but demand for its NEIPAs and Sours dictated it fast become a brewpub that serves only its own beers; it’s one of four such brewpubs currently operating in the capital, and just 10 in all of Argentina.
“Stupid bureaucracy doesn’t allow fermentation vessels of any kind to function next to a bar,” Castellani says. It’s the kind of project he’d one day like to call his own, perhaps when red tape has eased up, and at a location somewhere out in Buenos Aires Province. “Brewpubs are new and this is the best in Argentina. Strange only sells its own work and Norwegian head brewer Torstein Hoset continually strives to produce extremely high-quality beer, which I love.”
Our crawl’s final destination is saved for the following evening. At Geppetto, Castellani receives a warm welcome from Cuchmeruk against the backdrop of a painted humpback whale. After hearing them chat for a while, it’s clear they share the same philosophy.
“Lucas finds the best in variety, style, and technique, but he never conforms to fixed criteria,” Castellani says. “It’s the place to drink Sours, hoppy or malty or barrel-aged beers, and where brewers come to hang out.” Just as he says it, Itzel’s Rodríguez turns up again, ready to try Sir Hopper’s American IPA.
“Nine years ago, I had to travel far to drink Gambrinus Stout on tap at The Gibraltar. But today, just four blocks from home, there are easily 10 bars where Julia and I can go for drinks.”
In less than a decade, Argentina and Buenos Aires have come a very long way in terms of producing quality craft beer. Eleven years ago, there were 400 breweries in the country; in 2020, there are 2,250, according to the Cámara de Cerveceros Artesanales Argentine. And while craft beer accounts for no more than 3% of the 45 liters of beer consumed per capita a year, its share is continuing to grow.
The current scene is a far cry from when Castellani asked bars like The Gibraltar, a beloved pub in the traditional San Telmo neighborhood in the city’s south, for permission to share brews with buddies, and threw “making space” parties from his overcrowded one-bedroom apartment in Caballito.
“Nine years ago, I had to travel far to drink Gambrinus Stout on tap at The Gibraltar,” he says. “But today, just four blocks from home, there are easily 10 bars where Julia and I can go for drinks.”
That’s quite a change after less than a decade—and one to which Sir Hopper has undeniably contributed. Castellani has so many temporary homes that he’s become a familiar face all around Buenos Aires. Last week, he co-hosted a coastal East vs. West beer battle, complete with tributes to Shake Shack and In-N-Out burgers, with Palermo pub Growlers. The event was created for the craft beer community, whose members were, until recently, considered oddballs and outliers.
As for the next 10 years, Castellani doesn’t have it all mapped out. But he will likely keep hold of his informal title as the country’s most innovative nomadic brewer. That is, unless he finally takes up permanent residence at a brewpub of his own.
Words by Sorrel Moseley-WilliamsPhotos by Damian Liviciche
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