Brew Day 2: Swimming with stouts at Chama River

As advertised Friday, the Crew got another opportunity to make a beer at a local brewery this weekend. On the heels of our trip to Canteen to create Dark Side Baltic Porter, this time around we went to Chama River to join Zach and David and create Obey the Darkside, a foreign export stout for…

Beer Notes: Yup, we’re brewing again

Greetings, everyone. May this dark and dreary Friday nonetheless be filled with the promise of a good weekend filled with quality beer. All of us in the Brew Crew are looking forward to it, even though we have to get up awfully early (by our mostly nocturnal standards) on Saturday. Why would we be getting…

Holy @#$% the Crew is brewing at Canteen

Morning, everyone. Just wanted to pass along this little tidbit. We’re brewing a beer at Canteen Brewhouse today (Friday). Not some little beer on a pilot system, either. We’re brewing up a big old Baltic Porter for all of you to enjoy on Canteen’s full system. No, seriously, head brewer Brady McKeown is letting us…

Bacon plus beer equalled many happy people

I attended the Southwest Bacon Fest at the Balloon Park this past Saturday. Normally, I might not write up any information on a bacon festival for a beer website. However, quite a few local breweries were there. And goodness, many of those beers went so well with the bacon food items. In particular, I had…

Beer Notes: The quiet time is upon us

Put away those sample glasses. Don’t worry about what’s being served. Festival season for 2014 is over (well, save for one event, see below) and as such, the beer news is grinding (almost) to a halt. It’s the quiet period, which usually lasts from now through the holidays, and it can be maddening for a…

Best of the (Brew) Fest plus other notes from one wild afternoon

No one got sunburned! Well, that’s how we all looked back on NM Brew Fest 5 after a long, rough Sunday (our football teams, real and fantasy, didn’t help our hangovers, either). OK, we also looked back at the many great beers we drank and how much fun we had. From the VIP barrel-aged beginning…

More fun than a barrel of monkeys, er, beer, it’s NM Brew Fest 5

Beer festival season wraps up (sniff) in our state with the fifth annual NM Brew Fest at Expo New Mexico (the fairgrounds) this Saturday. It promises to go out with a bang, thanks to a special early event admission where you get to taste multiple barrel-aged beers brought in by the NM Brewers Guild. Yes,…

New brewers bring gold home to New Mexico from GABF

Among the six different New Mexico breweries who won medals at the Great American Beer Festival last weekend, Blue Corn and Chama River sit slightly apart from the rest. Both breweries brought in new head brewers this year, meaning for Blue Corn’s James Warren and Chama’s Zach Guilmette it was the first time either had…

New Mexico racks up more medals at GABF 2014

Well, the results are in, and New Mexico has once again shined at the Great American Beer Festival. A year after a record eight medals (the best mark before that in a single year had been just four), NM breweries piled up another eight this time around in Denver, including a record five gold medals….

The Balloon Fiesta tourist’s guide to craft beer in New Mexico

It’s that time of year again, when lots of folks from outside Albuquerque and New Mexico descend upon the Duke City for the Balloon Fiesta. While a lot of us locals grumble about the increase in traffic, even we’re big softies for the Fiesta (assuming we wake up in time). Well, we are, our dogs…