Beer Premiere gets delightfully weird with the brews this time around

It’s back with more brand-new beers than ever before!

The Beer Premiere, the final calendar event of 2018 for the New Mexico Brewers Guild, returns this Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. at Canteen Brewhouse. This year there will be a record 20 breweries participating (up from 18 last year, 15 the year before that), each of whom will bring a brand-new, never-before-released beer.

“There are going to be at least a couple sours — The 377 is doing a sour, Bow & Arrow is doing a sour,” Guild executive director John Gozigian said. “We’ve got a bunch of barrel-aged beers. It’s going to be pretty much all over the spectrum. I don’t think there’s a single normal beer in the whole lineup. Everything is a unique beer in some way.”

Abnormal beers right before Halloween? How fitting.

As of Tuesday, there were only 39 tickets left online and a handful at Canteen. They cost $25 apiece. That gets you samples of all 20 beers, a goblet fill of your choice, and you get to keep the commemorative goblet. The Beer Premiere is a smaller event, which enables the Guild to have it held at breweries.

“We’re going back to what we did last year, to a smaller brewery space so it’s (more) intimate,” John said. “It’s going to be about 150 maximum of tickets. Then on top of that we’ll have about 50 brewery people. The ratio will be really good, it’s going to be 3-to-1 civilians to brewers, which is kind of the whole point of this thing. The brewers aren’t going to be pouring the beers, they’re going to be out milling about so they can actually talk to people. We’ll have volunteers pouring the beer, Brewers Guild board members and a couple others helping out.”

Brewers Guild executive director John Gozigian channeled his inner Tony last year.

Keeping with the season, there will also be a costume party, with the staff dressing up as well.

“This year we’re pushing the costume party a bit harder,” John said. “I have a surprise costume that I’m going to wear. (Last year) it was like a combination of Tony Montana and John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever, whatever his name was.”

(For the record, thanks to the Internet Movie Database, it was Tony Manero.)

Get your costume on, grab a ticket, and head over to Canteen this weekend.

Oh, yeah, and here are all of those weird beers, or at least the 19 out of 20 that were reported to the Guild (think of the other three as a secret surprise). Any brewery with an asterisk (*) is a first-time participant at the Beer Premiere.

Bosque: Chai Hard (Spiced Brown Ale, 5.6% ABV)
Bow & Arrow: Dream Mesa (Golden Sour Saison aged in red wine barrels, 8% ABV)
Canteen: Old Feral Mind (Whiskey BA Old Ale conditioned on Brett Claus and Balaton Cherries, 9% ABV)
Chili Line*: Dark Smoked Christmas Lager
Flix Brewhouse*: Rhapsody Bohemian Pilsner (5% ABV)
Kaktus*: Munich Helles Lager (5.1% ABV)
La Cumbre: Hysterical Daisy (Hazy Double IPA, 8% ABV)
Marble: Alpha Acid Trip (Triple IPA, 10% ABV)
Nexus*: Strawberry Milkshake IPA (Brewed with lactose and strawberry, 6.8% ABV)
Ponderosa: Golden Graham Amber Lager (Yes, it is actually made with the cereal from our local General Mills plant, 5.6% ABV)
Quarter Celtic: Bourbon-Barrel-Aged Kill or be Kilt Scotch Ale
Roosevelt*: Bull Moose Stout (American Imperial Stout aged six months, 10.5% ABV)
Santa Fe: T.J. (Mexican-style lager brewed with lime and salt, 4.8% ABV)
Sidetrack: Orange You Glad It’s Not IPA (English-style Brown Ale on cask, 5.3% ABV)
Steel Bender/High and Dry: Wee Stache Collaboration (Scotch Ale on cask, 7.43% ABV)
Taos Mesa: TBA
The 377*: Belgian Sour Quad aged on dark cherries (50/50 blend of Belgian Quad with Flanders Red aged eight weeks on organic dark cherries)
Three Rivers: Big Black Dickel (bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stout with coffee, 10% ABV)
Tractor: Tractor Apple Ale (fermented malt and apple juice with ale yeast, then they added peaches, cranberries, blueberries, and a splash of lime, 6.3% ABV)
Turtle Mountain: Tomb of the Mutilated (black IPA with blood oranges, 7% ABV)

If I was going (boo, work, boo), my plan of attack would be to hit the lagers and pilsners first, then work up to the bigger beers. Either save the hop-forward entries for last, or cleanse the palate Brew Crew-style with one of the barrel-aged behemoths. At least some of these beers will be on tap at their respective breweries next week, so if you are also stuck at work Saturday, fear not, you may still get a chance to try them. Ultimately, though, if you are free, don’t hedge your bets and grab a Beer Premiere ticket before they sell out.

Cheers!

— Stoutmeister