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…

Say guten tag to Heimat House and its big German beer list

Every year the various “best of ABQ” restaurant polls come out, all with some variation of “what style of restaurant would you like to see here?” Personally, I put down “German” every year, but the hipsters always want Ethiopian, because they’re hipsters and German is so 19th Century or something like that. (Oh, go cry…

Beer Notes: There is not enough time this weekend

So I usually try to keep Beer Notes limited to once a week, but this weekend screamed out for some sort of preview. Originally we were going to have a sneak preview of Heimat House, the new German restaurant/brewpub in the Northeast Heights, but they got just a bit busy preparing for their grand opening…

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,…

Mr. Oktober(fest) steps to the plate and goes deep

The Brew Crew gathered at Franz Solo’s house this Sunday for our first Oktoberfest challenge. Like our previous challenges, it was a blind taste test (thanks to our wonderful beer maiden, Taylor). This was the first time we felt there were enough marzen-style beers on tap at the same time to hold this sort of…

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…

New Mexico breweries head to the Great American Beer Festival

Every year around this time, breweries from all over the US bring their best and most interesting beers to a huge three-day gathering in Denver known as the Great American Beer Festival, or, as we beer dudes casually refer to it as the “GABF” (like we know the guy personally or something). (And some of us…

ABQ now gets to party every day

I’m not one to rush out to an opening of a new chain restaurant. I may get there eventually, but I’ll give it some time. The lure of 52 taps proved to be too much, and, against my better judgment I went to Rock & Brews on their first weekend (they opened the Monday before)…