It has been a little while since any of us in the Crew had the opportunity to travel to breweries in New Mexico outside the Albuquerque and Santa Fe metro areas, so long before the windy forecast popped up, I made the decision to head south for an overdue visit. Wish me luck with the…
Author: Stoutmeister
Former sports writer in Tucson, LA, and Burque. Now I write about craft beer, which is a totally reasonable way to support my hobby of spending afternoons and evenings indulging in the finest stouts, lagers, and more.
The Week Ahead in Beer: La Cumbre lends a hoppy hand with charitable IPA
As the pollen blows and swirls around us 24-7 this time of year, a proper hop-forward beer can offer a semblance of at least momentary relief, with its strong aroma and biting flavor restoring senses dulled by juniper and elm. While we joke about IPAs as allergy relief, La Cumbre believes that a proper beer…
Fate of the Fests: Mapping out a future for craft beer events
Over the weekend, several of us in the Crew were able to enjoy the annual Cask Festival at Sidetrack Brewing. During the course of our day, we discussed more than just the tasty beers at hand, but also in how this was a model small-scale festival. That brought us back to a story that we…
Cask Festival returns to Sidetrack with varied lineup from 13 breweries
Well, first, the good news is that the annual Cask Festival is back at Sidetrack Brewing this Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. The bad news is that it has sold out, so if you were not lucky enough to snag a ticket, continuing to read this could just make you sad and a bit…
The Week Ahead in Beer: Celebrating women, baseball and a Run with Joy
Some weeks it can be hard to pick a single thing to focus on here in the intro. This week, the dilemma was more what don’t we focus on, and leave out, and subsequently feel really bad about doing that. Ah, to heck with it, let us sum up a very event-heavy week with some…
Turtle Mountain prepares to celebrate a quarter century of beers and bites
Years ago, Turtle Mountain Brewing owner Nico Ortiz told me a story about when he first opened his brewpub in Rio Rancho back in 1999 in a building that used to be a laundromat. Sometimes, people would walk in the door with a basket of laundry under their arm and stare in wonder at what…
The Week Ahead in Beer: Boxing Bear taps into world of competitive pinball
Last week, I made an overdue stop at Boxing Bear Firestone for a pint, and then ended up playing Iron Maiden and Foo Fighters pinball with members of the staff. The games from Road Runner Pinball are quite popular with the brewing team as well as customers, and this coming Friday will feature a full-on…
Ex Novo, Bosque and La Cumbre lead the way in Untappd Community Awards
Late last week, the Crew noticed some online chatter about something called the Untappd Community Awards. This was new, at least to us, and led us over to the website where the beer ranking/recording app had compiled the collective ratings of every beer in certain style categories, divided up among the 50 states. The final…
The mostly complete guide to all the St. Patrick’s Day shenanigans
As we promised back in The Week Ahead in Beer, we have compiled a separate post highlighting all the events tied to St. Patrick’s Day this weekend. There is a lot, and probably even more than we are listing here, so make sure to check with any breweries not listed. Most of this is all…
Steel Bender aims to be purposeful in all that they do throughout 2024
Well, we did it again. I sat down with the staff of Steel Bender Brewyard for their annual Look Back/Look Ahead Series interview, and when it came time to type up said interview, I realized that we were all talking for 50 minutes. That came out to more than 4,100 words when printed out. Oof….
DARK SIDE BREW CREW 