Greetings friends! Forgive me for the rather late post. Got to love summer school, but a late post is better than no post.

Back at the beginning of the month, Stoutmeister and I made time for a very quick trip up to the state capital to visit our state’s oldest brewery to get a sample of a very small batch brewed in collaboration with our friends the Babes in Brewland.

This collaboration was first brought to our attention by the group at our meet and greet event at Marble downtown during ABQ Beer Week back in April. All that they would tell us is that “it’s a peach.”

They weren’t kidding about peach!

After waiting in line and a toast of thanks to SFBC, Stoutmeister and I scored our pints and sat down to sample and watch the sizeable crowd of people packing in at the bar. “You’re a Peach” is, as you all have guessed, a peach ale. The base beer, however, is not just any ale but a pale ale. It was a fantastic change-up from all of the fruit-infused wheats, which we greatly appreciated. “This beer has close to 14 to 16 pounds of fresh peaches, hand mashed and put in to the fermentation,” Dana from Babes in Brewland told us. “This was our very first batch we have gotten to do as a full group. The hardest part was coming up with what we wanted to do. At first, we thought about doing a Peach IPA.” (Trust me, we know how hard it is getting a group of people together at once to do anything. We have six Brew Crew members; I can’t imagine getting a larger group like the Babes organized.)

Now for our review!

You’re a Peach is, well, a peach! It’s very peachy. This pale ale has a very crisp, naturally sweet taste, and for 14 to 16 pounds of fruit, I’d sure hope so. The color is a rich golden hue with a mellow bite towards the middle palate and a fresh, peachy-apricot finish. Although there were no apricots used, there are subtle overtones. All in all, it was a very refreshing beer for these hot summer days. Too bad it was only a small batch.

Stoutmeister shared his thoughts: You’re asking me to remember so many beers ago. Well, what I recalled most was that despite the sweetness of the peach flavor it did not overwhelm the rest of the beer. You could still pick up hints of the slightly dry, bitterness from the pale ale hops. I wonder if that hop-peach mixture is what produced the apricot flavor you tasted, Shilling. Normally I shy away from the fruit beers but this was perfectly drinkable. Cheers to the Babes in Brewland and the staff at Santa Fe Brewing for working together to create a unique, flavorful beer. And yes, this inspires me to someday get the Crew together and do a collaboration beer with a local brewery. All details on that are TBA. We have to wait for Derek to finish working on that Johnny Depp movie they’re filming around New Mexico right now. And for Derek to finish bragging about Johnny liking his “Nightmare on Elm Street” shirt the other day. (sigh)

So what’s up next for the Babes?

“We are hoping to brew again in the very near future,” Dana said. “Thinking about doing another summer beer with a release for sometime later in the summer. Haven’t totally decided on the final recipe. Whatever we brew, this one will be made in Albuquerque.”

Thank you to the Babes in Brewland for inviting us out to Santa Fe for a great small batch.

We look forward to their next collaboration project, whatever it may be and wherever it may be brewed.

Cheers!

— Shilling