Every now and again, the Crew receives emails from the Brewers Association. Sometimes they are just reminders about the Great American Beer Festival and Craft Brewers Conference, or perhaps an invitation to sit in on a Zoom chat about the state of the industry. The most recent delivery was a reminder that American Craft Beer Week will start on Monday and run through the following weekend.

There is not much to it, locally, just a national effort to try to increase awareness about local breweries and promote those brands a little extra before the busier summer months arrive.

Yet, it was also a reminder of the email we never received this year. For the first time (save for the pandemic years) since we started this site in 2012, there is no ABQ Beer Week on the schedule. Conceived even before that by Marne Gaston and Patrick Cavanaugh, the once-marathon 10-day series of beer-loving events is no more.

Tractor and Rowley Farmhouse Ales are still having their Sour Hour later this month, but that is about all we see out there, a final scrap of legacy.

All things have their time and place, and yes, in many ways the world that ABQ Beer Week entered into has changed a great deal. Distributors are no longer pushing out-of-state craft like they used to in these parts. They long ago ceded the majority of the craft scene to the local breweries.

Those local breweries, in turn, are now well established in their communities. In this current era of fiscal austerity, doing lots of external events has become a thing of the past, as we have covered numerous times in this post-pandemic world.

Back at its peak in 2015 and 2016, the Crew churned out a combined 50 articles on all things ABQ Beer Week. The number of articles dropped with the drop-off in events, and by 2022, we only wrote 12 articles. There were just two last year, mainly focusing on how Tractor Brewing was essentially the last great epicenter of events.

Though the demise of ABQ Beer Week could be mourned, we choose to just enjoy the memories it provided. There was the 505-Five Collaboration beer among multiple local breweries, with some epically silly brew days at places long gone such as Chama River. There was the Tower of Sour at Back Alley Draft House, which we guess kinda morphed into Sour Hour at Tractor years later.

Anyone remember the Battle of the Beer Geeks? We choose to remember the first year, when the Crew won the tasting competition among local beer groups. The second year went well, too, as the Babes in Brewland took the title. Things got a little messy after that, so we will skip those memories.

There were other events, from Beer 101 at Marble, to the birth of the Beer, Cheese, and More there as well. Red Door held a food truck battle, the Crew anchored a variety show (no, really, we did, and it was as unbelievably dumb and over the top as you could imagine), and the Brewers Guild even launched the first Beer Premier event during ABW back in 2016.

Blues and Brews, the big festival in the middle of ABQ Beer Week, came back one last time in 2022, wasn’t held in 2023, and now is clearly no more. It was the last major unlimited sampling event held at an area tribal casino. We doubt that it is really missed by the breweries, who never seemed to like giving away that much beer for free, but we still enjoyed it from time to time. There was the edition held outdoors at Isleta Amphitheater one year. There were the times I got to sell my book out of the Brewers Guild booth. The rest of the memories were, well, a bit blurry.

Maybe someday a new beer week will be born, perhaps one beyond just the Albuquerque metro area. Or, perhaps not, as the beer scene evolves and adapts and lurches forward.

Until then, or if then, we raise a glass in a final tribute to the organizers, volunteers, and participating breweries, beer bars, restaurants and more that helped define a nascent era of craft beer in Burque.

If you have any fond, or foolish, memories of ABQ Beer Week, share away.

Cheers!

— Stoutmeister