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 Week Ahead in Beer: Bad Breaks and Challenging IPAs

Greetings New Mexico craft beer lovers, this is Stoutmeister, filling in again for E-Rock and bringing you another Tuesday installment of The Week Ahead in Beer. This column is hand-crafted to keep you up to date on all of the seasonal beers, news, and events served up at breweries and tap rooms in and around…

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…

Pint for a Pint Blood Drive returns

Our friends in the ABQ Craft Beer Drinkers group are stepping up to organize a good cause in the middle of the summer. The Pint for a Pint Challenge Blood Drive, normally held at Tractor during ABQ Beer Week, will return with three chances at three different breweries for people to give blood and receive…

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…

ABQ Beer Week: That’s a (belated) wrap!

Well, that was fun. ABQ Beer Week 2013 has come and gone, and now that a certain baseball team is on the road, ol’ Stoutmeister here has a chance to catch up and recap the last two days of events, Friday and Saturday. These were a couple of big days for the Brew Crew with…

ABQ Beer Week: Join us in the Dark Ages

The day is finally upon us. Today is the day we in the New Mexico Dark Side Brew Crew turn ArtBar dark. Very dark. Dark cabaret, dark music, dark trivia, and above all else, dark beer. It shall flow tonight. Welcome to the Dark Ages! We realize some of you may still be going “what…

ABQ Beer Week is creeping closer and closer

Well, hello there, ABQ-area beer lovers. Stoutmeister here, freed from the “shackles” of Isotopes Park for a few days. While I’ve been neck deep in baseball coverage, all those TBD events for ABQ Beer Week 2013 are suddenly coming into focus with full details and the like. With so much info floating around out there,…

Star of the Season: March’s most magnificent seasonal was …

Geez, March was a busy month. You don’t tend to realize it until you go and look at the long list of seasonal beers that came out and how few you managed to try. For me, Stoutmeister, the last month included lots of high school sports coverage, the Lobo baseball team being back, and my…