About Javi & Jen
Prior to founding Cheluna Jen and Javi spent several decades working in community service – Jen as a Peace Corps volunteer, public school teacher and counselor, and Javi as a Jesuit volunteer, public school teacher, and VA physician. They met over 30 years ago working together as New York City Outward Bound instructors. Cheluna was borne of their shared spirit of adventure, strong work ethics, and love of Mexican culture.
After decades of working as an ER physician, Javi retired from his medical practice having spent the final 12 years of his emergency medicine career serving veterans utilizing the Denver VA Hospital. Javi’s very proud to have worked with veterans like Jen’s dad who was a WWII veteran and was the reason Javi transitioned from private emergency medical practice to his ER practice within the Veteran’s Administration hospital system.
Most days you’ll find Javi and Jen running through metro Denver or the mountains, skate skiing through the winter and working at Cheluna together, reminiscent of the time they spent together when they first met working for NYC Outward Bound.
Jen is very proud to serve the Colorado craft beer community on both the Government Affairs Committee and on the Board of Directors for the Colorado Brewers Guild. Every summer Jen and Javi travel to Washington, DC with the Brewers Association to lobby on behalf of small and independently owned breweries.
Photo: Javi & Jen Perez ©Life Unstill Creative
OUR TEAM
Javier Perez
Owner & Founder
Jennifer Perez
Owner & Lead Product Tester
Tomas Barrios
Brewmaster
Welcome to Cheluna
Inspired by zócalos found throughout Mexico, Cheluna was conceived in 2014 and opened in 2016 as a community gathering place, having since become the heart of Stanley Marketplace, our one and only location.
Cheluna has garnered awards ranging from 5280 Magazine’s Best New Brewery and Best Breweries in Denver Suburbs to prestigious Great American Beer Festival competition gold, silver and bronze medals for our delicious + meticulously crafted beer, brewed on site.
We invite you to relax in our taproom, where you can enjoy a wide range of beer styles, our Riesling white wine yeast fermented hard seltzer, a beer or hard seltzer cocktail, or our NA hibiscus lime agua fresca. European style giant pretzels and our housemade lime + chile peanuts are also available for purchase, or feel free to bring in food from Stanley Marketplace vendors.
Whether you’re part of a group event at Cheluna, sport spectating, enjoying our live music offerings or hanging out and working solo, we welcome you to stay a while and hope you find our environment relaxing, warm, and welcoming.
What does Cheluna mean?
We wanted to convey the idea of our business, a Mexican-inspired brewery, with our name. ‘Chela’ is a slang word for beer, widely used throughout Mexico. ‘Luna’ is the Spanish word for moon, which is in our sun/moon logo. ‘Cheluna’ is a combination of both chela and luna. The logo connotes the idea of balance, which is an important element in all beers we create. In addition to connoting balance, the sun/moon logo we’ve chosen is commonly seen in art and decor throughout Mexico.
Prehispanic Mayans placed great importance upon astronomy and celestial events, and indeed created a calendar based on solar and lunar positions, along with architecturally significant pyramids of the sun and moon in ancient Teotihuacán, located in modern-day Mexico City. This may be why the sun/moon image is so ubiquitous today, both in Mexico and throughout the southwestern parts of the United States.
Early Inspiration
Javi has been brewing since the late 1980s, when he began brewing in Berkeley, California, with his brother Victor and their friend John Ramirez. As a child, Javi was fascinated with science and, thanks to his parents, Espi and Javier, he spent many hours working with chemistry kits and microscopes from their neighborhood hobby shop in Long Beach, California, where Javi was born and raised. In addition to his preoccupation with science, Javi was also interested in cooking, and checked out many cookbooks from their local library. He used to fall asleep reading them at night!
The inspiration for Cheluna’s brews and decor comes from Javi’s paternal grandparents, who were from Oaxaca, Mexico.
It turns out that brewing is a great way to combine a love of science and the creativity of cooking, and after more than 25 years of home brewing and over a decade of working as an emergency room physician, Javi is lucky enough to put five decades of life experience, energy, and hard work into Cheluna Brewing Company.
Javi as a kid
Javi at Oaxacan market
Mural Art
Both of the murals at Cheluna (and pictured below) are inspired by the Alebrijes from Oaxaca, following the inspiration behind Cheluna brewing, which was also inspired by the home of Javi’s grandparents.
Julio Mendosa is a Denver based International Artist and Muralist whose style is defined greatly by his Mexican Heritage and Latino culture. It is of utmost importance to him to incorporate his roots from La Madre Patria (mother country) of Mexico into his art. In Julio’s words, “I am who I am in most part because of my Mexican and Latino heritage, therefore incorporating my heritage into my art is meaningful to me and I feel it’s meaningful to those that can relate to that sentiment as well.”
According to Julio, the greatest gift is to be inspired by one’s own culture: traditions, food, people and colors, and he feels blessed to be able to put such inspirations into art pieces and to be able to invoke inspiration in others. Julio’s goal is to keep his culture’s traditions alive for generations to come through the celebration and preservation of them. Much of Julio’s work celebrates the colors of Mexico and venerates the iconic and mythical figures of his youth, which was largely spent in Mexico. Jen and Javi, the owners of Cheluna, are proud to support local artists like Julio, and hope that Cheluna taproom guests enjoy the murals as much as they do!
Xolito
After meeting a couple of times with Jen and Javi, I decided to create a Xoloitzquintle mural, which is a very sacred and ancient Mexican dog breed. The popular children’s movie Coco has made the Xolo dog a much more commonly recognized symbol of Mexico, and the remains of Xoloitzquintle dogs have been found in Aztec and Mayan burial sites. Xolos, or Xoloitzquintles, are thought to accompany the souls of the departed into the afterworld, and as such, they have held, and still hold, an elevated status in both indigenous and modern day Mexican households. Julio loved the scale of the big wall outside of Cheluna and thought it perfect to have a larger than life Xoloitzquintle mural welcoming the people to Cheluna.
Corazón
Julio and Javi saw the location of his second Cheluna mural, the Corazon, or heart, and knew that the heart was perfect for the heart of Cheluna. Julio loves creating variations of his anatomical heart artwork, and felt that the space needed something to tie all the art around the taproom together. The upper level wall where the Corazon is located needed a piece that would welcome you as soon as you entered Cheluna, which is exactly what the illuminated and hauntingly beautiful heart mural does, welcoming all who enter Cheluna, ‘Bienvenido a Cheluna!’ This is the heart of Cheluna, el Corazón de Cheluna.