Blaze a trail to Las Cruces to kick off festival season

The third annual Blazin’ Brewfest will hit Las Cruces this Saturday from 4 to 9 p.m., officially kicking off festival season in New Mexico. The event will be held again on Main Street, with plenty of food trucks and live music to go with the offerings from 15 different breweries, including the event’s four host…

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,…

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 best New Mexico beers of 2014 in our humble opinion

As noted in the most recent edition of The Week Ahead in Beer, the Crew put out the call for everyone’s favorite beers from New Mexico breweries for 2014. The replies from our readers, not to mention from all of our writers, were fairly diverse. We’re not gonna do an ultimate ranking or anything —…

19th annual Taos Brew Master’s Festival hits the slopes

This past Saturday, I made the trip up to Taos Ski Valley for their 19th annual Brew Master’s Festival, and I gotta tell you it was one smooth, powder-filled ride down beer mountain, and one of my favorite brewfests in recent memory. From the moment the doors opened and the lines got moving, brewfesters were…

Time to trek to Taos for annual Brew Master’s Festival

Ah, yes, it’s that time of year when I have to cover a football game and not go to the Taos Brew Master’s Festival. Of course, the rest of you don’t have to write about the New Mexico Bowl to pay for future beers, so you might as well hit the road Saturday afternoon and…

Oktoberfest in Red River: It’s like a party in the Alps

Every year, around the middle of October, we take the short trip up to Red River for their Oktoberfest celebration. Set in the small Northern New Mexico mountain resort town, Oktoberfest is an ideal excuse to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life and spend some time drinking beer amid nature, as…

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,…

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…