Eat local, shop local… drink local? The Freitas family would certainly agree. In 2009, Turlock native John Freitas started Sandude Brewery out of his garage. Just six years later, the beer brand is sold in 300 different locations from Fresno to Sacramento. Freitas plans to expand the operation to include a Turlock taproom in early 2016.
The name is an homage to an old nickname, “sand dude,” referring to Freitas’s love of the beach. The four different signature flavors of his beer also reflect his adoration of days spent at the beach with names like “Suntan Blonde” and “Shades of Amber.”
“There’s a flavor for each season of the year,” Freitas said as he showed me around the brew house with his wife, Jeanette, who handles the sales side of the operation. “We have a light beer for summer and darker beers for winter.”
“The fastest beer we do is about 11 days from grain to glass. Beer is all about timing and weights. Two or three degrees will change the taste of the beer,” Freitas said.
Six years ago, he watched a friend’s home brewing process for the first time.
“I just loved every bit of it. The science behind it, the way you can make so many different flavors and alcohol contents from the same malts. I told him that day that I was going to open up a brewery in Turlock.”
“He’s a welder by trade,” Jeanette said. “The next week, he built his pilot system.”
He used this system for the next three years, supplying Sandude beer to six restaurants in Turlock.
It took 12 hours to make three kegs with the pilot system, but now, in the brew house he built almost entirely by himself, the much larger equivalent of that first machinery produces 60 kegs in three hours. The pilot system could hold 15 gallons; after those first three years of brewing at home while building his future premises, he can now process 930 gallons at a time.
Think that’s impressive?
“This system is actually big enough to serve about 25 states,” Freitas said, and he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. 
“If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life,” he said.