And we are off! The preliminary round of the 2016 New Mexico IPA Challenge is complete, with 16 15 breweries advancing to the three main rounds that will begin next weekend at Santa Fe Brewing. This came out of the 28 beers that were sampled in a blind taste test Saturday afternoon at Rio Bravo….
Tag: Kaktus Brewing
NM IPA Challenge returns with a slightly adjusted opening-round format
The announcement went out on Tuesday, and hopheads across the state rejoiced, for the New Mexico IPA Challenge is returning to the land. Now 28 breweries will do battle, as all seek to remove the three-time king, John Bullard, from his iron throne. OK, fine, it is a bit of Game of Thrones there, but…
The Week Ahead in Beer: Kaktus kicks it up with their 1st barrel-aged beer
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 one down in Socorro and the other in Los Alamos also joining the party. Back at the start of the year, Kaktus said they…
Kaktus finds their footing after adjusting to having two locations
Kaktus Brewing made the big leap into opening a second location at the very end of 2015. Since then, they have had to endure a few ups and downs, and some resulting adjustments, to finding their place in Nob Hill. To catch me up on all that has happened, I sat down with owner Dana…
Beer Notes: The we-swear-we-are-not-dead edition
We are still alive, still chasing down beer news. Due to various factors in life, none of it was ready for publication today, but next week is gonna be busy. Catching up on the canning lines In case anyone missed their Facebook post, the gang over at Canteen has begun canning Dougie Style Amber and…
Beer Notes: New Mexico keeps rolling at National IPA Championship
Lots of little news tidbits demand a roundup, thus, Beer Notes is back! Locals keep rolling at NIPAC Five of the six remaining New Mexico entries advanced to the fourth round of the Brewing News National IPA Challenge. Of course, only five could advance since Bosque’s Scale Tipper and Boxing Bear’s Uppercut were going head…
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…
Kaktus kicks it up a notch with a new taproom and more
My latest story for our annual Look Back/Look Ahead Series took me to two different towns. That is what happens when Kaktus Brewing moves out of just their cozy space in Bernalillo and opens a taproom in Nob Hill. That alone was the big move of 2015 for Kaktus, but it was far from the…
And the winner of the best beer name of 2015 is …
Baby Got Bock! Yes, Red Door’s homage to a “classic” song was the winner of our first poll. Since we did not add a timing element to the poll itself, we just decided all votes after 10 p.m. MST would not count. Thus, Baby Got Bock proved to be the winner. (We should add it…
The Week Ahead in Beer: Ring in the New Beer, er, Year!
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. Now that we all (hopefully) survived…
DARK SIDE BREW CREW 