DarkHeart Brewing brings quirky taste to the outer edge of Sacramento’s beer scene
Nestled behind and next to auto body shops, DarkHeart Brewing doesn’t seem a likely spot for a craft beer community to converge. And their location on the northeast outskirts of Sacramento isn’t what you would usually call the heart of the beer industry.
There’s a Bible college across the street, for one. And there’s dozens of auto shops and related businesses within a mile of their location on Auburn Road. Yes, co-owner Cynthia Lee notes, there used to be a topless place down the street. But this is exactly where she and husband Rick Lee wanted to be.
“It’s become kind of a community center,” Cynthia Lee said. “We want to be a chill spot where you come in and play some games with your friends.”
Oddly, the combination all works.
The bar has a clubhouse feel, with games in abundance. The beer lineup is arcane, featuring a very solid wee heavy as one of the flagship beers. It had a blonde, a cream ale and a maibock on a fall visit. And of course, there’s always a couple of IPAs.
On the wall over the bar hangs a motto: “To all that enters these walls, may truth be your compass, courage your true north, honor your anchor and DarkHeart your home port.”
“It’s a refuge from a world that sometimes beats you up,” Cynthia Lee said.
It’s also a sneaky-good location. Pull up a brewery map and note there is exactly one brewery between midtown Sacramento and The Monk’s Cellar in Roseville, 18 miles away.
“(Customers) ask where the nearest brewery is and we can’t even think of one,” co-owner Rick Lee said. “That worked out for a demographic, plus for both of us it’s on our way home from work.”
Yes, like many other small breweries, the owners have day jobs. Rick Lee works in Natomas in facilities management; Cynthia Lee runs a dental office in Fair Oaks.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, DarkHeart isn’t like other breweries. They have zero debt, for starters. They have seven-barrel fermenters which put out about 210 gallons of beer at a time. They just added a few more seven-barrel fermenters. And they have no debt, in part because they have five investors and three owners who share the workload in the brewery. They haven’t yet had to pay for an employee. They take turns working shifts behind the bar.
Rick Lee is a constant in the brew house though. He’s the brewer. He’s the mechanic. He’s the MacGyver that fixes things.
He and his wife Cynthia also have about 500 beer recipes, dating back to their start with a homebrew club. Rick will work a full day in Natomas, then work late in the brewery, sometimes until 3 a.m. He and Cynthia laugh talking about the one time they stayed until sunrise — and then went to their day jobs.
“It’s the creativity and the joy of doing it, especially seeing people enjoy it on tap,” Rick Lee said. “We try not to brew every day so we can sit down with them and chit chat and see people enjoy something you’ve created.”
The creations are certainly lively. The double IPA is 8.9 percent alcohol by volume. The wee heavy is 9.7 percent. By comparison, a Budweiser is 5 percent.
Sure, they’d like to get their beer out on draft to some restaurants. But it’s not about getting rich, the Lees say. Ask them about business and they’re likely to start telling you about all their friends from DarkHeart. They’d like to make enough money one day to only have one job. But the Lees are people who go on vacation to Mexico and end up spending a day working on a Cabo San Lucas’ brewing problems just for fun. They’re just different. Kind of like their brewery.
“Anybody that goes into this business with the idea they’re going to be rich and famous, you’re doing it for all the wrong reasons,” Cynthia Lee said. “For us, it’s a way of life.”
This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 1:33 PM.