At the heart of making the island’s signature and top-selling beer is a crew that is lean, mean, and filled with passion and pride.  Thirteen team members synergize in the brewhouse to produce Balashi Brewery’s portfolio of beers, including Chill, Magic Mango, and the beer that started it all 25 years ago—Balashi. 

This team of 13 is divided between three shifts and a weekend crew for 24-hour coverage every day.  “We cannot brew a batch and walk away…it needs to be monitored and adjusted along the way,” explains brewmaster Arturo Romero.  “The cooking process for one batch of brew is 7 hours, but three batches are done in one day, which is why we work around the clock with three shifts,” he adds.

The brewing process is overseen from the control room, where state-of-the-art software monitors the process, providing second-by-second feedback on all the brewing variables and alerting the team when they need to make manual adjustments.  Elthon Hernandez, who joined the team two years ago, is a brew and filter room operator on the brew house’s first shift.  He spends his day monitoring processes from this “command central” where computer screens are alive with colorful graphics. Elthon explains that malted barley and other ingredients are digitally weighed and measured to ensure continuity from batch to batch, followed by the milling process to break down barley and wheat kernels to yield fermentable sugars from the grain. 

Richinel Hoevertsz, who launched his career with Balashi five years ago, is the assistant supervisor on this shift, keeping a steady eye on each step of the process, which includes the first phase of beer-making in the mash tun.  The mash tun is where the fermented sugars are created, utilizing the starch that is present in the malted barley and wheat.  This mashing process takes about two hours. 

Shortly after our visit to the control room we meet Jason Donato, who arrives to take over for Elthon on the day’s second shift.  Jason’s first exposure to brewery life came from the Netherlands where he worked on the bottling side of operations.  He returned to Aruba two years ago to begin working for Balashi and proudly states that his official job now is “brewing beer.” 

Part of brewing beer is the phase of taking the fermented sugars produced from the mash tun to the lauter tun, which separates the solids from the liquids.  This lautering process takes anywhere from 2.5 to 3 hours. The solids are referred to as spent grains.  Notably, Balashi Brewery’s revered sustainable efforts include resourcing this spent grain to local farmers for nutritious livestock feed, assuring that nothing goes to waste. 

After lautering, the product then goes back to the mash tun, which acts as a kettle to boil the product, at this stage known as wort, to a temp of 100 degrees Celsius for one hour.  This cooking process is where the hops, which give Balashi beer that pleasant bitterness and distinctive herbal notes and aroma, are added.

The last vessel, the whirlpool, is a clarification vessel designed to separate proteins that are present during boiling, revealing a bright and clear wort.  The wort is then cooled in a heat exchanger to a temperature of 12 degrees Celsius, making it suitable for the yeast.  Once the yeast is in contact with the wort it can now be classified as beer and the fermentation starts.

The next stage of the brewing process takes time and patience.  The product is moved to the cold block where the fermentation tanks are located.  The product (three batches at a time) takes seven days to ferment and another seven days under -1-degree Celsius temp for maturation.  Brewmaster Arturo, an industrial engineer who studied the art and science of brewing at VLB in Berlin, Germany and was an 11-year veteran of Venezuela’s Cervecería Polar, has been with Balashi Brewery since December 2023.  He explains that the actual control during the fermentation maturation continues through the weekend because yeast (a living organism), which is the ‘queen’ so to speak that makes the beer, doesn’t rest or take off days.  This live organism can behave a little differently from batch to batch, necessitating a small crew to control how the yeast is developing.

While touring this part of the brew house, we bump into the dynamic duo of Ronald Solognier, who has been a part of the brew house team for two years, and Nigel Hassell, proudly here for a year now and thrilled with all that he has learned in this short tenure.  The two are tasked with maintaining a pristine space in the cold lock.  Interestingly, Ronald and Nigel personally fill every keg of Balashi that make their way to restaurants and bars across the island. 

Arturo states that although his title is brewmaster, “I cannot stress enough that the job the guys do in the brew house is just as important…they are there for the whole process, step by step, overseeing that every detail of each process is according to the recipe so that the beer always tastes like the Balashi that we all know and love…their dedication and passion with each brew guarantees consistency and quality.

Just like a farmer has a relationship with his crops, the Lucky 13 team has this same emotional response. “It’s the little things that make the difference in quality no matter your role in the process…the 13 people that work here in the brew house are all emotionally connected to each and every batch brewed here and we go above and beyond because we are proud of what we do.  It’s not just our job, we do this because we love it.  It’s rewarding to make something that the Aruban community loves and is also proud of. “

Cheers to Balashi Brewery and the original Balashi beer, now celebrating 25 years!

*Not present during our tour but integral members of the brew house are:

Eduardo Fernow (Head Brewmaster)

Leonte Amaya (Brewhouse Supervisor)

Nigen Servani (Brewhouse operator)

Raymon Croes (Brewhouse operator)

Ivan Molina (Brewhouse operator)

Frido Willems (Brewhouse operator)

Nathan Ras (Brewhouse operator)