Old World Brewing in a Historic Point Arena Building

by Dawn Emery Ballantine

We are fortunate to live in an area replete with great beer, wine, cannabis, and food, offering a plethora of good things to meet most folks’ needs. Yet even though we have so many good options, it’s always exciting when a new venture opens its doors. On April 7, 2022, Peter McDowell and Rose Walterbach finally realized their dream of opening The New Museum Brewers & Blenders in Point Arena. It was inspired by one of their very favorite cafes in Belgium, explained Peter, and hopes to be ”a true community brewery that makes its patrons feel at home.”

Peter and Rose have been living in Point Arena for the past two years, waiting out the pandemic and the county building department permitting process. During that time, they have completed much of the remodeling of The New Museum Brewers themselves. The building is the oldest on Main Street, constructed in 1893, and they maintained that feeling of age, grace, and beauty with their renovations. The interior is spacious, furnished with gorgeous black walnut tabletops perched on beer casks, chairs, and a beautiful redwood bar complete with barstools. There is substantial outdoor seating on the deck, and there is even a produce stand featuring local produce from various growers including Wavelength Farm in Manchester, Filigreen Farm in Boonville, and Martin Hayes on the ridge. Both kid- and dog-friendly, there’s an added bonus with the produce and flower stand—a nice diversion for kids who get bored while their parents taste beer.

Most recently hailing from Hood River, Oregon, Peter and Rose met in a skate park in Salem, Oregon when they were young, forming an instant connection. Both life- and work-partners, they have been together—and pursuing their dream of owning their own brewery—for nearly 15 years. They began home brewing in 2011 while living in Portland, with the assistance of friends who were brewers. “We just found so much love and passion for it,” Rose explained, adding “We’ve learned on the job and with a lot of reading.” They began taking turns volunteering at various breweries to gain experience, while the other worked in more mundane jobs to make ends meet and save for future plans.

In 2015, they decided to take the next step toward establishing their own brewery, sending out applications everywhere in the country they could think of to gain more brewery experience. Rose was hired by Anderson Valley Brewery in Boonville as a cellar worker, and while Peter initially landed a job at Bear Republic in Cloverdale, he was soon scooped up by AV Brewery as well. They worked together there from 2015 to 2018, running the brewery’s pilot system under Trey White. The pilot system was the brewery’s smaller, more types of beers for export to Russia, Croatia, and China, as well as a particular export of Summer Solstice to Thailand.

Rose and Peter initially considered this phase of their education to be a stepping stone, and had planned to go back home to Portland to put their experience into action. But when they returned there in 2018, though they were glad to be back among familiar faces and places, they realized how much they missed the camaraderie and the community in Mendocino County. They loved their experiences here, marvelling that “polar opposites can hang out and still have good conversations.” Peter noted that the “good people have each others’ backs,” which is not true everywhere. So they revised their dream and began to plan in earnest for a move back to Mendocino County.

Serendipity happened, in that small town way. Peter and Julian Lopez of Cafe Beaujolais were enjoying a Great Day in Elk, and they mentioned their dream of opening a farmhouse destination brewery to Michael, a friend of Rose and Peter. Rose explained, “Our friend Mike said, ‘I have some friends I know who you could talk to.’ But beer was involved, so they didn’t give our contact information.” Not long after, another friend mentioned to the couple that they knew “people” who wanted to reach out to them. Though they didn’t have the contact information either, they mentioned that the folks owned Cafe Beaujolais. So Rose went to their website and reached out via the contact page, told them their story, and proffered their business plan. Two days later the phone rang, an enthusiastic connection was made, and a partnership was born.

Rose left her job in Oregon to focus solely on this project, and in early 2020, two weeks prior to the pandemic shut-down, Rose moved back to Mendocino County to “do whatever”—a phrase common to many of us who have moved here and figured out how to make it work. She lived with a friend in Navarro and worked at The Company Kitchen and at Lemons’ Market, noting that “the Lemons family really supported me” during her move. Peter had planned to give his notice at the brewery in Hood River, but pandemic shutdowns had begun in earnest. He was lucky enough to keep his job after initial layoffs and thought it might be best to delay his departure for a couple of months.

About half of their beers are a Belgian-type ale—a low alcohol, dry, refreshing farm-style beer—and the remainder are more hop-forward IPAs. “We just brew the beers we like to drink,” Peter said. They recently brewed their first pilsner and tried out a dark lager as well. They handle most brewing tasks together, with Rose brewing one batch and Peter the other, then blending the double batches together. Between the two of them, they handle the brewing, packaging, distributing, selling, and bartending. Peter explained, “We will always be doing everything. Especially in Europe and Belgium, in particular, you go into a brewery and get a beer, and it’s the brewer who’s serving the beer, or the family.”

“We’ve kind of designed, in our eyes, the perfect flow,” Peter said. Rose added, “We’ve designed it so it’s not a job. It’s fun. We built to our capacity . . . the biggest we want to be, which is 1,000 barrels per year. We don’t want to get bigger than that.” They have two cooks now, which has freed them from the kitchen, giving them more time for promotion and distribution to their Sonoma and San Francisco accounts, where their beers have been very well received.

New Museum’s food offerings include several types of tacos, ceviche, salads, and chips, salsa, and guacamole. We tried the cauliflower and potato tacos—both beautiful and stupendously good, perhaps the best vegetarian taco ever; the chips and guac—delicious and not too spicy; and a flight of their beers—a good variety to meet most people’s tastes. Their beers are uniquely named and range from light, refreshing farmhouse style ales such as Among the Ferns and Mild Child, to mid-range hoppier offerings like Another Tale and Fresh Cut Flower, to a dark farmhouse ale. My favorite was Band of Horribles, an unfiltered West Coast IPA, and my dining partner preferred Petal Drop, their darker farmhouse offering. All were easy to drink and paired well with the food.

When asked about their experience moving from Portland to a town as remote as Point Arena, Peter and Rose shared that so many young people who live here are from Oregon or have spent time up there. There are certainly things to miss about city life, but “here there’s such a community, and a lot of young movement and people doing really neat things.” Point Arena has created a foodie enclave, with old favorites such as Franny’s Cup and Saucer, the Little Green Bean Coffee, The Bird Cafe & Supper Club, and Point Arena Pizza, along with the more recent additions such as Izakaya Gama, Pelican Bread, and the soon-to-be-launched Good Food Club. One of their friends recently exclaimed, “Wow! You guys have this little hidden food mecca that two months ago was not there.” Rose and Peter are enjoying and definitely benefitting from the growth and the renaissance of Point Arena.

The New Museum Brewers & Blenders beer can be found locally at The Company Kitchen in Philo, and at Luna Trattoria and The Waiting Room at Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino. New Museum sells growlers for home consumption, or they can refill your unbranded growlers. Come on out to the new food mecca in Point Arena and have a taste, straight from the makers’ hands.

The New Museum Brewers & Blenders
265 Main Street Point Arena
(707) 356-8232 | TheNewMuseumBeer.com

Open Sundays 12pm - 6pm, Saturday 12pm - 9pm
Thursday & Friday 4pm - 9pm