August 2013 – DARK SIDE BREW CREW

The Week Ahead in Beer: Don’t labor for your pints this weekend

Greetings New Mexico craft beer lovers, this is E-Rock back to bring you another Tuesday installment of The Week Ahead in Beer. This column is hand-crafted to keep you up to date on all of the seasonal beers, news, and events served up at breweries and tap rooms in and around Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and…

Fighting that post-major-beer-event-malaise

Happy Friday, beer lovers. Stoutmeister here with one of those posts where I write about a bunch of stuff that we hope to write in the future. Yeah, it’s kind of lazy, but it’s what we’ve got right now. There is always that period of post-event exhaustion. Now, the IPA Challenge did not wear us…

Meet me at the Fair for another beer competition

Before the actual NM State Fair kicks off — and come on, you know it’s coming soon since friend of the Crew Lauren Poole is playing Lynette in the commercials again — they hold a Pro-Am competition where a bunch of judges figure out some of the best beers in the land. Our friends at…

The Week Ahead in Beer: Back to school

IPA Challenge: And the winner is …

For the first time in the 12-year history of the IPA Challenge, a brewery outside of the Albuquerque metro area will take the trophy home. Blue Corn’s Resurgence captured the title with a resounding victory after the fourth and final round at Marble’s downtown pub on Saturday afternoon. “It’s pretty good,” said Blue Corn brewer…

IPA Challenge: Blue Corn takes command after Round 3

Stoutmeister here with the recap of round three of the IPA Challenge on Friday night, with E-Rock sending the info down from Santa Fe Brewing. The big news is that Blue Corn’s Resurgence has seized control of the competition with Saturday’s big final round at Marble’s downtown pub looming. The good news is 100 voters,…

IPA Challenge: Let the final rounds commence

The weekend is upon us, which means the final two rounds of the IPA Challenge are about to begin. This week we have tackled the reasoning behind the popularity of IPAs, given you a survival guide for first-time participants, and now it’s time to wrap things up with a look at what some of the…

IPA Challenge: The Crew’s survival guide for new participants

During my series of interviews last week with local brewers and brewery owners I found that even some of them have never attended an IPA Challenge before. “I haven’t actually been to an IPA Challenge,” said Bosque co-owner Jotham Michnovicz. “Bosque hasn’t been there yet, but I’ve never been to one (either). Every year it’s…

IPA Challenge: How we learned to stop worrying and love the (hop) bomb

During this break between IPA Challenge rounds it seemed like a perfectly good time to address this little question. Why do beer lovers in New Mexico rank the IPA as their favorite beer? We in the Crew certainly have our theories but in the end, we are hardly experts. So while I, Stoutmeister, was conducting…