It has been a long, long time since multiple members of the Crew piled into a vehicle and hit the road to visit breweries beyond the confines of the Albuquerque and Santa Fe metro areas.

Well, with vaccine coursing through our systems, and eager to avoid a potential influx of Texas tourists in the summer, three of us — Stoutmeister, Luke, Andrew — are trekking south to visit the likes of 575 Brewing in Alamogordo, Cloudcroft Brewing, Lost Hiker Brewing in Ruidoso, and Bonito Valley Brewing in Lincoln.

Those breweries will be new to the three of us, though we should note that AmyO passed through this region in the pre-COVID times. Our hope is to follow up on what she wrote, do some interviews, and learn a little more about each brewery, the towns they call home, and the customers who have loyally supported them throughout this pandemic.

Why go now? Well, there’s the aforementioned desire to miss out on tourist season, but also, as one might have inferred from my recent story about visiting Beer Creek and Second Street, we are all kinda eager to escape the surroundings that have surrounded us since last March. Is it safe? We will continue to take all the necessary precautions, wearing masks, washing our hands, staying socially distant from other patrons, and so on and so forth.

This also stems from a bit of a recent drought in beer news stories up here, as things are (very) slowly ramping up for a summer that may, or may not, be filled with events. Content is good, and since we figure quite a few of you might also be ready for a trip or two out of town, it might be nice to know what’s out there in our state.

In the end, we have always said that we want to cover the entire New Mexico craft beer scene, not just the breweries we can drive to in an hour or far less. We were already overdue to visit these places more in-depth before the pandemic hit. Now we shall do so, with plenty of metal albums ready to go, an open road ahead of us, and that glimmer of hope on the horizon.

Oh, yeah, and we know the weather is probably gonna suck, but that’s what hoodies are for, folks.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister