Beer Week is in the rearview mirror, but the Crew has stayed busy visiting breweries, drinking beer, and then procrastinating any writing about those beers. Yeah, sometimes we’re just really lazy. Or really busy, like this past weekend (yours truly, Stoutmeister, spent about 10 hours or so covering the Great Southwest Track & Field Classic; those are 10 hours of my life I never get back).

So here is a rapid recap of all the beers and places we visited in the last week. Don’t forget to check out E-Rock’s weekly preview of the beers and events at breweries around town. Odds are we will be at some of those places, we just don’t know when.

Turtle Mountain

Way back on May 26, a couple Saturdays ago, I trekked out to Rio Rancho for a quick bite and a brew to celebrate my uncle’s pending retirement from the U.S. Post Office. A quick scan of the beer menu led me to my lone pint of the day (had to cover the Isotopes at night, so I had to limit myself to one). The Arsenal Porter is a burly, Baltic-style beast. It has strong, smoked flavors that ranks it among Turtle Mountain’s best beers. While I know it’s hardly dark beer season, it is still nice to have our local breweries catering to those of us who stay away from hoptopia most of the time. I highly recommend a trip to Rio Rancho for this. And if you still need your hops, Turtle Mountain’s Hybrid IPA is one of the best in town, to the point of where even La Cumbre’s Jeff Erway sang its praises on Facebook. When “rival” brewers are throwing compliments around, you know it’s worth checking out.

Blues & Brews

So … many … beers. We (myself, E-Rock, the Professor Emeritus) did our best to try as many as possible at last Sunday’s massive festival. E-Rock and the Professor had the advantage of being there the whole three hours, while a certain sports writer had to go interview that Matt Kemp guy (he’s kind of a big deal) and missed the first hour.

Anyway, we could recap every beer we tried, but that would require clear memories and us having written stuff down, but the pace of B&B was so quick (the lines looked long, but other than the Dukes of Ale competition, they moved very fast) that we did not have the time. Still, there were some very memorable out-of-town beers and it was also our first chance to sample ABQ’s next brewery, Boar’s Nest.

Boar’s Nest hopes to finally open in July, once it clears the last of the government red-tape hurdles. We are greatly looking forward to seeing what else they had to offer beyond the styles at B&B. My personal favorite was the Hotel California Red Ale, while E-Rock enjoyed the Crazy Train Strong Ale and the War Pigs Imperial Russian Stout. (if you are wondering what the names represent, either you don’t like classic rock or were born after the 1980s)

While there were plenty of our favorites from out-of-state breweries (Left Hand Milk Stout, Deschutes Black Butte Porter, Odell 90 Shilling, etc.), we were happy to try some new places. Mad River Brewing, from Blue Lake, Calif., had two delicious dark beers in the Serious Madness Black Ale and the Steelhead Extra Stout. Wasatch Brewery, from Park City, Utah (the state’s great oasis from conservatism), boasted a brutal beer aptly named Devastator. Drink this and purge all thoughts of what Michael Bay did to the character of Devastator in that horrible second Transformers movie. We were also happy to enjoy a pint of Silverton Brewing’s Bear Ass Brown, the flagship beer from the little brewery up in the mountains of Colorado. Sniff around ABQ’s beer-selling establishments and see if you can find a six-pack or bomber.

Second Street and the Santa Fe Fuego

With no Isotopes game for me and no musical gig for E-Rock last Thursday, we trekked up I-25 to Santa Fe to visit our favorite establishment there, Second Street Brewery (the original location, not the trendier Railyard location). Though we were sad to learn that the cream stout had run out the day before, there was still plenty of goodness to partake in.

The state’s best extra special bitter was on tap, as it almost always is, and was as good as ever. Many of the regular patrons on hand were enjoying it as well. It’s the current darkest beer on tap, as Second Street has rolled into the summer beer season with a slew of IPAs, pale ales, and other lighter lagers, ales and pilsners. I enjoyed a pint of the cool, crisp Kolsch, the perfect German summer beer. While it is a lot lighter than my usual fare, it offered up a nice little bite at the start and a clean finish.

E-Rock snagged pints of the maibock and the Citraweizen: “The maibock was clean and refreshing. Perfect for a lazy summer day in the back patio. The Citraweizen was fruity and a little light on taste,” E-Rock said.

After a nice, relaxing time on the nicest beer patio in New Mexico, we headed over to Fort Marcy Park to watch the Santa Fe Fuego, an honest-to-goodness professional baseball team playing its inaugural season in the independent Pecos League. While the caliber of play is far below the Isotopes, it was nowhere near as bad as the folks at the New Mexican have been describing. The game ended in less than three hours, with the Fuego snapping out of a recent funk with a 12-5 victory over the Las Cruces Vaqueros. The ballpark is an odd construct, with amphitheater-style seating (if you have back problems, or just don’t like sitting on hard concrete, bring a lawn chair like a lot of fans). The tickets are cheap ($6.50), the local food truck on site served up good eats (Realburger) and there is plenty of room for kids to run amok and burn off any sugar-fueled energy.

Oh, yeah, and there is also a beer garden down along the third-base line. The garden is fenced off, so if you get a beer you will have to sit there until it is finished. The good news is that rather than offer up some cheap macrobrews, the Fuego struck a deal with Santa Fe Brewing. SFB brings cans of its finest creations (Happy Camper, Irish Red, Java Stout, etc.) for an affordable price ($4-$5). That’s a better quality of beer than at many ballparks and a better price, too (I really don’t want to say what I paid for a plastic bottle of Gordon Biersch Marzen at Dodger Stadium a few years back).

Check the Fuego’s upcoming schedule and head up to Santa Fe to enjoy a game, a beer and don’t forget to stop at Second Street before or after to enjoy what they have to offer as well.

Broken Bottle

Franz Solo, Mrs. Solo and I stopped by to try the new Fat Willy’s Smoke Stout on Friday evening. We were quite the trio, all exhausted from the day’s events, chilling out in the nice leather chairs near the entrance way, semi-watching the Celtics-Heat game on the four TVs around us. The Smoke Stout is actually a hybrid beer, created out of the house stout and the Scottish ale. The peat-smoked flavor of the Scottish certainly stands out, but there is a balance created by the stout flavors. As Broken Bottle’s first seasonal offering, it is a solid effort. The regular house beers have improved in flavor batch-by-batch, and we are looking forward to the next seasonal beer, Nacho Brau, when that arrives in the coming weeks.

Il Vicino Canteen

E-Rock and I stopped by there Monday afternoon, where I wrote most of this post (but held off on publishing it until after all the Tractor/City Council results came in). I could not resist the Irish Red, as they were nearly out, but E-Rock was good enough to try a couple of the new offerings. Here are his thoughts on those beers: “The Belgian Strong was sweet and golden. Another great summer beer. I also had the Bock. This brown beast was very sweet.”

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OK, that should cover things through the start of this week. We will try to stay better on top of things in terms of writing in more a timely manner this week. There are still a lot of beers to enjoy in ABQ and its neighboring towns, so get on out there!

Cheers!

— Stoutmeister