Greeting, beer-gazers! As the Los Alamos correspondent for the Dark Side Brew Crew, I don’t often have a lot of hometown news to write about. Los Alamos is kind of a sleepy little town out in the middle of the boonies, about 30 miles past your last shot at a locally-brewed beer. Well, changes are…
Category: Interviews
Time to get festive with Marble’s Septemberfest
Beer festival season is upon us, the official kickoff to fall in Albuquerque. First up is Marble’s Septemberfest, which will be held from noon to 5 p.m. this Saturday. Tickets are available online and at all three Marble locations. This year’s event will see some changes from previous formats, so to get the lowdown on…
Second Street’s got one sweet can!
Last week I had the opportunity to watch some awesome history in the making. Santa Fe’s Second Street canned their first beer inside their brewery. “Why is that awesome?” I hear you asking yourself. Besides the fact that we can now pick up a canned version of their Pivotal IPA and take it along on…
Black Diamond’s brewer brings his creations home to Albuquerque
Every year new breweries come in from out of the state to start distributing their beers in New Mexico. Not many of them have a brewer who hails from Albuquerque. Paul Mallory took over as head brewer at Black Diamond Brewing Company last year and now he will be coming home with his beers in…
And La Cumbre’s getting larger
Pardon the bad paraphrasing of a quote from “Airplane!” in the headline, but I could not resist. After having spent nearly two weeks doing nothing but writing about sports (Saturday’s six-hour high school track and field meet was the brutal finale), I have finally gotten back to the local beer scene. After Sunday stops at…
Second Street brews up plenty of new beer goodness
Lately the Crew has been writing a lot on all the new brewers and new breweries in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. That does not mean that the news has stopped with many of our old favorites. The folks at Second Street Brewery up in Santa Fe contacted us about all the wonderful things that brewer…
Blue Corn’s new brewer has some big shoes to fill
Every new brewer will always face a challenge when taking over an established brewery. Some, though, arrive in the shadow of a predecessor who just went out and put that brewery on the map. That is the challenge facing James Warren, the new brewer at Blue Corn, who succeeds John Bullard at the well-established Santa…
Bosque’s new brewhouse moving ever closer to activation
The other day I mentioned to the rest of the Brew Crew that Bosque’s new brewhouse was close to being fully operational. E-Rock naturally replied with “It’s a trap!” proving that once again we are all giant nerds in this group. Anyway, all Return of the Jedi jokes aside, I decided to head over to…
Nexus’ new brewer aims to keep a good thing going
For the finale of our series of interviews of new brewers around the Albuquerque metro area, I visited Nexus on Wednesday morning before they opened. Kaylynn McKnight, formerly an assistant brewer at La Cumbre, is in the process of taking the reins from Manuel Mussen. She will be the first female head brewer in the…
Turtle Mountain’s new brewer prepares for some big changes
Back during the holiday hustle and bustle, I sat down with Turtle Mountain owner Nico Ortiz and talked about his plans for his soon-to-be-15-year-old brewery in 2014. One thing he mentioned was a desire to push the beer forward to a level that could compete with metro area heavyweights like La Cumbre, Il Vicino, and…