Well, hello there, 2026. We hope that you are a year of growth and positivity, but after a year like 2025, any marginal improvement would be considered a win. This past year was a rough one, culminating in the closure of one of the biggest breweries in the state, both in terms of barrels produced…
Category: Year in Review
The Thunder From Dortmunder Cup: Picking the best beer name of 2025
Once again, it is time to select the best beer name of the year. We name this pseudo award after Marble’s Thunder from Dortmunder, the first local beer name to crack us up years ago. The rules are fairly simple: A brewery has to come up with an original name and release it for the…
The Year in Beer: 2024 marked a wild year of good and bad news across industry
To finish off our recap of the year that was, we are once again rolling through the top stories as voted upon by all of you (as in the ones you read the most) and, when that differs, our picks for the newsiest of the newsy. Or, something like that. Anyway, as most know by…
The Thunder from Dortmunder Cup: Picking the best beer name of 2024
Once again, it is time to select the best beer name of the year. We name this pseudo award after Marble’s Thunder from Dortmunder, the first local beer name to crack us up years ago. The rules are fairly simple: A brewery has to come up with an original name and release it for the…
The Year in Beer: The Crew picks our favorite local brews of 2024
We are not beer critics. Oh, sure, we will review a beer every now and again, but our mantra from the beginning has been information over opinion. Still, toward the end of every year, we will often talk to one another about what our favorite local beers were over the prior 12 months. Sometimes we…
The Year in Beer: The Crew picks our favorite local brews of 2023
We are not beer critics. Oh, sure, we will review a beer every now and again, but our mantra from the beginning has been information over opinion. Still, toward the end of every year, we will often talk to one another about what our favorite local beers were over the prior 12 months. Sometimes we…
The Thunder From Dortmunder Cup: Picking the best beer name of 2023
Many breweries love to come up with clever names for their seasonal and specialty beers. We love reading those names, and then drinking the beers. Over the course of the past year, we jotted down a list of our favorite beer names, and after double-checking that we didn’t miss any by going back through every…
The Year in Beer: Breaking down a wildly inconsistent 2023 for breweries
It was a weird year. Yeah, we could probably say that a lot about past 12-month stretches in New Mexico, but for some reason, 2023 just felt strange. Only one new brewery opened in Albuquerque. Two closed, one with the intent of moving to Moriarty, and a fan-favorite taproom will bid adieu this weekend. Two…
The Year in Beer: The Crew picks our favorites from the last 12 months
Back before the holidays, I sent an email out to the rest of the Crew to start making their picks for some best of the year elements in the world of craft beer. I did not follow that up with a text, so then I had to email them again, because that is what happens…
The Year in Beer: 2022 saw a return to some normalcy amid new challenges
The best-laid plans tend to come undone at the end of the year. Like this story, for instance, which should have run during the week, but ended up appearing here on a Saturday. All (or at least most) of the Crew will have our picks for things like best beer, best event, and so on…
DARK SIDE BREW CREW 