Earthly Ties

Relative newcomers-turned-fixtures in the bustling Albuquerque brewery scene, the sibling team that brought us Gravity Bound Brewing Company and, now, Lasso Coffee & Lager had casual beginnings.

I sat down with Cameron Frigon, cofounder and head brewer of both downtown enterprises, on Lasso’s airy patio one bright Wednesday evening to chat about those beginnings and more. Oddly enough, Cameron and his brother Chris, who was finishing up undergrad at the University of Kansas at the time, decided to go into business together over text.

“Yeah, no grand plan or anything like that,” Cameron told me. “Just kind of came up, popped up on a text message, and he said yes.” He had begun home brewing during college years in Fort Collins, Colorado, then completed a brewing certificate program at Central Washington University, spent time at a brewing microbiology lab, and was coming off a multiyear stint as head brewer at the Bronx Brewery in New York City when he floated the idea to his brother. After a breakup, he said, “I was kind of looking for a place to settle down at, or a place to set some roots in, and Albuquerque was the place that called to me the most, I guess.” He’d never been.

For a business started on what some might call a whim, Gravity Bound and Lasso, the pair’s second venture, have quickly woven their way into the fabric of the downtown beers ’n’ hang scene.

Gravity Bound, which opened in 2020, features a rotating lineup of creative brews, including the Quick Take, a bright, citrusy 2022 New Mexico IPA Challenge winner, and the Nightly Ritual, a dark, toasty Mexican lager with a hint of sweetness up front. The venue’s Earthship-y bottle walls, distinctive roll-up doors, and planter-
anchored picnic tables call to mind an intentional union of humans and the earth around them—gravity bound indeed.

The crowd reflects this ethos well: Standing at the threshold between downtown and Wells Park, Martineztown and the courthouse district, Gravity Bound’s taproom and patio are invariably full of neighborhood regulars, often outdoorsy types, bikes or dogs in tow. “We’re so integrated into the community at this point,” Cameron said. “I swear to God, you go into Gravity Bound, like, you know 50 percent of the people there.”

Earth and planet vibes aren’t just an aesthetic here. The Frigons built Gravity Bound with a distinct focus on sustainability, from the all-electric brewery that’s 20 percent solar powered to rainwater capture for landscaping, plastic-free can carriers, and donating spent grain to local farms. Glance around and you’ll see an abundance of reclaimed materials, like the tires repurposed as planters and the pallet wood used for the bar and doors.

Lasso, which opened in late 2025, is like Gravity Bound’s slightly more cosmopolitan, lager-centric cousin. Think white and green subway tiles and lots of midcentury modern flair. The downtown crowd can sip craft coffee throughout the day and transition to light German-style brews along with cocktails in the evening, enjoying pop-up appearances from vendors like Sentli: Nixtamal Kitchen and Smash N Crispy Burgers. The name, which the Frigons picked without “rhyme or reason”—Cameron said they liked the brevity, the fun Southwestern vibe, and how easy the word was to remember—is, totally by coincidence, a mash-up of “lager” and “espresso,” friends later pointed out. With barista service starting at 7 am on weekdays and beers available until as late as 11 pm on Fridays and Saturdays, the crowd is a slightly more eclectic mix of downtown wanderers and neighborhood locals.

Since their initial partnership, Cameron said, the siblings have solidified their respective roles. Chris mostly tackles front-of-house hospitality, and Cameron does the brewing. And when it comes to some of the building projects they do themselves, Cameron said of Chris, “He’s super handy. He’s really really good at that kind of work. The way that I put it is, anything that’s round and kind of messy, I did—[I did] all the bottle walls and . . . we used to have some stucco planters that were kind of round—and anything that has a straight edge, he did.”

When it comes to beer, Gravity Bound and Lasso take decidedly different approaches. Cameron brews Lasso’s handful of lagers at the building they share with Boese Brew Co., who occupied the retail space before them, while Gravity Bound has its own brewing setup. He characterizes Gravity Bound’s lineup as “modern American” with a constantly changing menu of “bolder flavors,” while Lasso’s lineup of four or five lagers hews closely to tradition. Cameron describes Lasso as a “traditional German-style brewery, where . . . we don’t like to break the rules, [and] we like to keep everything very moderate.”

Cameron’s always loved a German-style beer, and that’s where the idea for Lasso came from. “After you’ve been in the industry for a while—craft beer was built on full flavors—you’re kind of like, I actually just really do love very good drinkable beer,” he said. “That was ultimately the impetus for this spot, just making super-drinkable beer that you can have a few of and still get on with your day.” The German Pils is crisp, just a little hoppy, and mildly floral, with a bright snap at the finish. The Helles is refreshing, mellow, and a beautiful shade of the palest blonde.

At Lasso, Cameron uses a four-vessel system with a lagering tank and a decoction process where the grain mash is removed, boiled, and returned to the main vessel to raise temperatures and impart certain flavor compounds. These steps are rare for many American craft brewers but deeply rooted in German and Czech brewing traditions. Perhaps counterintuitively for the casual beer drinker, these lighter, crisper beers take much longer to make. “The lager beers that I brew are pretty time consuming,” Cameron said.

Brewing days for the lagers can last as long as twelve hours, and between fermentation in their open tank, where yeast converts sugars into alcohol, and lagering, where the beer sits at colder temperatures that smooth out its flavors, a new batch can take seven to eight weeks from start to finish. “Lager” literally means “to store.” But the payoff is well worth it. His current favorite at Lasso is the Helles, which he calls the “most basic” of the lineup, with just two pilsner malts and one variety of hops. “When I drink it, I’m like, oh yeah, this feels like [you] could be at a beer garden in Germany.”

The cocktails, including a solid espresso martini, are few but well executed. For nonalcoholic sips, the house-made Palo Santo Wood & Mint Kombucha is not to be missed. It’s a surprisingly light, botanical elixir that feels every bit as special as a complex beer on a summer night. Made with organic cane sugar and green and black tea from New Mexico Tea Company, after two to three weeks fermenting, it’s steeped with palo santo wood, herbs, and spices for another few days.

“There’s very much a kombucha crowd too,” Cameron said, speaking of people who specifically seek out these fermented infusions, such as a woman who stopped him to say that she was going through a hard time and came to look forward to their kombucha as her treat at the end of each day. “That’s really touching,” he said. “It was so nice. Yeah, you don’t expect that day to day.”

Despite the German influence, you won’t find any ceramic steins, barrels, or hunting motifs at Lasso, said Marquez Torres, Albuquerque artist and Lasso’s in-house designer. “When you hear about a concept that’s like ‘We’re opening up a lager-based beer concept downtown,’ people immediately want to make it a little European or kind of have that old Germanic tone to it,” Torres said, “and it was just really refreshing to kind of modernize that idea and open up the space, have brighter windows, keeping a lot of the old elements from the building.” The building was a Studebaker dealership in the 1950s, and Torres said he wanted to preserve details like the intricate glass-block windows and polychrome brick walls.

What both neighborhood hubs share, beyond the Frigon brothers, is a sense of community. According to Cameron, both Gravity Bound and Lasso’s beertenders and baristas know “the vast majority of people that are walking in the door.”

A big part of that is the essence of the place itself. “I kind of feel like New Mexico is a bit like Colorado was in like the ’90s and early 2000s, when we were growing up, you know? It’s still off the radar a little bit, but there’s so many cool things, amazing things, here,” Cameron said. “It’s smaller—I love the midsize-city feel—it’s just, you know, you’re riding your bike around the neighborhood, and you’re like, ‘Hey neighbor,’ you know? It’s wonderful to get to know, [and] just feel so connected to where you’re at.”

He added, “I do think hospitality can be difficult, like really difficult, but it makes it a lot easier when it’s a bunch of people you know, a bunch of people that you . . . share the Albuquerque experience with.”

Gravity Bound Brewing Company 816 Third Street NW, 505-308-3081, gravityboundbrewing.com

Lasso Coffee & Lager 601 Gold SW, 505-548-8467, lassobrewing.com