IPA Challenge: Let the final rounds commence

The weekend is upon us, which means the final two rounds of the IPA Challenge are about to begin. This week we have tackled the reasoning behind the popularity of IPAs, given you a survival guide for first-time participants, and now it’s time to wrap things up with a look at what some of the…

IPA Challenge: The Crew’s survival guide for new participants

During my series of interviews last week with local brewers and brewery owners I found that even some of them have never attended an IPA Challenge before. “I haven’t actually been to an IPA Challenge,” said Bosque co-owner Jotham Michnovicz. “Bosque hasn’t been there yet, but I’ve never been to one (either). Every year it’s…

IPA Challenge: Taos hates IPAs, or something like that

Stoutmeister here with the actual voting totals from round two of the IPA Challenge at Taos Mesa on Saturday. That’s it? A total of 24 votes? On the day of Taos Mesa’s one-year anniversary all that showed up were 24 people? Wow. That’s sad. Deeply sad. Either people in Taos don’t like IPA or something…

IPA Challenge: Turtle’s Genesis takes lead after Round 1

Stoutmeister here with a quick tally of the votes from Round One of the 2013 IPA Challenge. Held at Las Cruces’ High Desert Brewing on Friday night, a total of 102 voters cast their picks in the blind taste test for the best IPA in New Mexico. The results, well, were a bit surprising. Sitting…

The Great Beer Roundup: Slowdown summer

Stoutmeister here with another Beer Roundup. We did the last one three weeks ago but hope to stick to more of a biweekly schedule from here on out (the July 4 extended holiday weekend threw us off). As we stated last time, the idea of the Beer Roundup is to provide our readers with short…

The Great Beer Roundup: No swoon in June

We drink a lot of beer. Shocking, I know, but between the six members of the Dark Side Brew Crew, we really do have a lot of different beers every month. The more I thought about this, while of course filling out another beer check-in on Untappd, I realized we were missing a perfectly good…

NM Brewers Guild brews up some Summer fun

Psst, hey you, beer lover. Come here for a second. It’s safe, I promise. I’m Stoutmeister, nice to meet you. Did you know there are some awesome upcoming beer events? Yeah, even in the summertime here in New Mexico. I mean, good lord, it’s hotter than hell out there and this drought isn’t going away…

The Week Ahead in Beer — Give a pale ale for Father’s Day

Greetings New Mexico craft beer lovers, this is E-Rock back with another Tuesday installment of The Week Ahead in Beer. This column is now hand-crafted to keep you up to date on all of the seasonal beers, music, and events served up in and around Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Taos. I am happy to announce…

The Week Ahead in Beer — Welcome Santa Fe and Taos

Greetings New Mexico beer drinkers, this is E-Rock here to bring you my first official Tuesday installment of The Week Ahead in Beer. I started writing this column a year ago, and one thing I always wanted to do since I started was expand the scope of this column to include Santa Fe and Taos….

The Week Ahead in Beer — Get Belgian in Back Alley

Greetings Burque beer drinkers, this is E-Rock here to bring you another Monday installment of The Week Ahead in Beer. As always, this column is hand-crafted to keep you up to date on all of the seasonal beers, music, and events served up in and around the Albuquerque metro area. As per usual, I am…