The building sits in a part of Albuquerque, N.M., he describes as “the ’hood.” Carson once lived here before moving to the more affluent Northeast Heights in the 1960s, where he attended high school with only three other Black students.
“You got a Black guy going back to his old neighborhood and upgrading a building,” Carson said.
Despite the closure, Nexus has thrived, but life in the food and beer business wasn’t always what Carson had envisioned for himself.
“I started thinking, this bank’s gonna fail, I’m going to be unemployed,” Carson said.
“I became a fan of breweries before it became popular,” Carson said.
While building out Nexus, Carson began to hear of a lot of other breweries trying to open.
“At the time I would say we were probably the only soul food brewery in the world, back in 2011,” Carson said.
After hiring a brewer, Carson began researching what food would work best.
“I decided to do fried chicken anyway,” Carson said.
Carson’s menu would be headlined by chicken and waffles, but he began incorporating New Mexican soul food using local red and green chiles.
“His comment was that he hadn’t had collard greens that good on this side of the Mississippi,” Carson recalls.
More recently, Beam Me Up (Higher), Scotty won a silver in the Old Ale category of the 2022 World Beer Cup. All three of Carson’s brewers have made award-winning beers.
Carson said there really isn’t a method to hiring medaled brewers—it’s more of having them try to match the food quality and giving them the reins to do what they want in the brewery.
When first submitting beers to competitions, Carson looked to his customers for inspiration on what to enter from Nexus’ portfolio.
“When we won the first award, we just knew the beer was good and our customers liked it,” Carson said.
Carson thinks the bar is high for beer quality in New Mexico as well, but winning awards validates Nexus’ mission.
“We feel very appreciative,” Carson said.
“It’s very light, it doesn’t have a whole lot of hops or contrary flavors,” Carson said.
Then place greens, onions, crushed chile pods, garlic, bacon, hot sauce, and salt in the pot.