Time and work have a way of dominating my creative juices at times. I have sat on this and another of our year-end articles for too long by my reckoning, and to the consternation of my editor to be sure. (Yeah, just a bit. — S) A while back I had the utmost pleasure of sitting…
Stout Challenge V: Another year, another new champion
The Dark Side Brew Crew gathered on Super Bowl Sunday for the fifth straight year to hold a blind taste test to determine the best house stout in the Albuquerque metro area. And for a fifth straight year, we had a different winner. So who was it? Well, rather than keep everyone in suspense, here…
Brewers Guild gives official word on why they changed directors
Earlier today (Friday) we posted a link to the Albuquerque Business First story about a change at the top of the New Mexico Brewers Guild. Chris Goblet is out and John Gozigian is in as executive director of the Guild. Goblet had been running things since the Guild formed in 2012, but the board of…
Stout Challenge V: The few, the proud, the insane to take on this many
Super Bowl Sunday is almost upon us once again, and while folks will pick between the old (Denver and Peyton) and the new (Carolina and Cam), all of us in the Crew will choose something even more important. Namely, who has the best stout in the ABQ metro area. As we have done four times…
A lack of carbonation is the issue with the initial lineup at Firkin Brewhouse
The public opening of The Firkin Brewhouse is set for today (Thursday) at 11:30 a.m. They will have seven different beers on tap right out of the gate. I got to pop in for the soft opening Wednesday night to get a sample tray and do a quick review of the beers. My first impression…
A kaiju could fit inside the massive Marble expansion
Ever look at a building and think hey, that’s pretty big, only to then go inside and realize just how enormous it is? Yeah, that happened to the Crew on Tuesday afternoon as we visited the massive expansion building at Marble downtown. Bharley Quinn and I, plus our intrepid staff photographer Mario Caldwell, got a…
The Week Ahead in Beer: It’s still winter so keep on keeping on with those big beers
Greetings, New Mexico craft beer lovers. Stoutmeister here with The Week Ahead in Beer. This column covers all the breweries in Bernalillo and Sandoval counties, with Santa Fe’s four breweries and a pair of newcomers, one down in Socorro and the other in Los Alamos, also joining the party. It was warm just a day…
San Diego, part three — The best beer tour that almost wasn’t
Hello, beer lovers. Our friends from Oregon and Las Vegas meet up with us regularly when we can all arrange a convenient location. A couple of years ago we started doing beer tours when we meet in San Diego. Last week, our third San Diego beer tour got off to a bit of a shaky…
Santa Fe Brewing Company made some noise in 2015 and aims to be larger and louder in 2016
A lot can happen in a year. Much can change for us, personally and professionally in just 12 months. This is especially true in the ever-changing, rapidly-growing craft beer industry. That’s why the Dark Side Brew Crew does these Look Back/Look Ahead Series articles. It’s hard to predict all that will happen in one year,…
Somebody turn down the volume in our taprooms
Recently one of the first questions we were asked about a just-opened brewery came as a bit of a surprise. Rather than ask about the beer or hours or something like that, our reader asked us this simple question: “How loud is it inside?” While we could answer “not too loud,” we did so by…
DARK SIDE BREW CREW 