Four New Mexico breweries bring home four medals from GABF awards ceremony

A quartet of New Mexico breweries, including two first-time winners, captured medals at the 2021 Great American Beer Festival awards ceremony on Friday evening. Ex Novo Corrales and Ponderosa each won their first medals, and in both cases, those medals were gold. Ex Novo, whose sister brewery in Portland won gold last year for Perle…

Beer Notes: Updates on all the new places still in progress

With the recent openings (re-openings?) of two closed-turned-new-breweries — Lizard Tail Industrial (neé Cantero) and Juno (ex-Dialogue) — we figured it might be a good time to catch up on what is still in the forthcoming brewery/taproom pipeline. Also, our planned story for today fell through, so here we are, going to Plan B. Got an…

Ponderosa Brewing has high spirits for the new year

While the pandemic shuttered many businesses across the state, one of Albuquerque’s most up-and-coming neighborhoods, The Sawmill District, has experienced rapid growth even in the past year. At the heart of it is Ponderosa Brewing, which just completed its sixth year in business this September, and remains a steadfast presence in the local brewery scene….

Local breweries name their MVPs for this most difficult of years

During a conversation with a front-of-house employee from a local brewery, he noted that it felt rather nice to see words of praise from one of the owners in a recent Brew Crew story. That got me thinking about how much it might mean to other brewery employees to see some public recognition for their…

Aluminum can shortage begins to hit NM breweries where it hurts

The buzz about a nationwide aluminum can shortage has been getting louder in the last couple of months. We have been waiting and wondering when it was truly going to hit our craft breweries in New Mexico, and starting late last week we started asking around via email. It is not something that will hit…