OUR STORY
“There’s gotta be more than this…”
These were the words bouncing inside Fred Calope’s head back in 2010 as he sat at a bar in Manila. Having spent lots of time outside of the Philippines at various points in his life, he just knew that Filipinos deserved more when it came to beer; more options, more beer styles, just…
So, armed with nothing more than his desire for variety and his memories of brewing beer in college 15 years prior, Fred set out on a journey to realize his dream: Tasty beers at awesome prices.
He went back to basics and began brewing beer in his kitchen on a stovetop in 2011.
Buoyed by the results, in 2013, he invested in a 1BBL brewhouse and 3 2BBL fermenters and rented a small townhouse in Cubao, Quezon City which served as a brewery and office.
Three tedious years later, in October 2016, Boondocks Brewing Company was officially launched.
By September 2018, Boondocks Brewing moved into its present facility in Marikina City with a 30 BBL brewhouse and fermenters.
The “boondocks” is an American colloquialism that refers to any rural area. The closest comparison in the Philippines would be probinsya. However, the familiarity of the word boondocks to Filipinos is not a coincidence, because the word itself is a derivation for the Tagalog word bundok which means “mountain.”
Fred is a “probinsyano” at heart; he still calls Laoag, Ilocos Norte his home. But, much like the word “boondocks,” he comes from the Philippines, found himself away from home, eventually came back, somewhat changed, but very much still the same.
