WinterBrew 2015 was an epic fest for the ages!

It’s been a week now, and the dust has finally settled on another successful WinterBrew. New Mexico beer enthusiasts have been back, hard at work, with memories (hopefully) of many great beers, plenty of new friends on their Facebook rosters, and a slew of crazy pictures on their cellphones. From the beer, to the food,…

The time has come for Stout Challenge IV: The Overload

Greetings, everyone, on this snowy Friday. Do be careful out there tonight when in pursuit of beer. Stuff is melting but not evaporating, so that means sheets of ice. And New Mexico drivers are bad enough without ice under their tires, so go slow if you desperately need some nocturnal pints. By Sunday, though, all…

WinterBrew set to kick off 2015 festival season in style

The first beer festival of 2015 is upon us. WinterBrew is set for Friday at the Santa Fe Farmers Market from 4 to 9 p.m. The event, run by the New Mexico Brewers Guild, has already sold out all 750 of its tickets. So for those 750 lucky people, this preview is for you. For…

The Crew’s holiday beer merch guide — Santa Fe edition

Editor’s note: By popular request, the Crew is compiling all the info you will need on all the non-beer gifts you can purchase for others (or yourself) from our local breweries this holiday season. Luke, our Santa Fe-based writer, handled the breweries up there. We had hoped to get more of these stories ready before…

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…

Best of the Septemberfest beers

One festival down, many to go. Marble’s Septemberfest kicked off festival season on Saturday afternoon. It was a fun, efficiently-run event with a good crowd. Kudos to Ted and Amberly Rice and the hard-working Leah Black for putting it all together. It was never overcrowded and the beer line moved quickly. Remarkably, even with all…