IPA Challenge: Marble takes lead after two rounds

The second round of the IPA Challenge was held at 3 Rivers Brewery in Farmington on Tuesday night, with results coming out this morning from the New Mexico Brewers Guild. After tying Il Vicino with 28 votes apiece in Sunday’s opening round at Nexus, Marble moved into sole possession of first place, picking up a…

IPA Challenge all tied up after round one

None of the Crew could make it over to Nexus for round one of the 2012 IPA Challenge on Sunday (I know, I know, bad beer bloggers putting work/life ahead of beer). But thankfully the good folks at the New Mexico Brewers Guild posted the results on Facebook when all the votes were tallied. A…

One of our own guest writes for Tractor

Our very own Stoutmeister wrote up a guest post for the Tractor Brewery blog, Livin La Vida Tractor, this week. Since our blog has grown was inspired name-wise by a Tractor beer (read the post to find out how) and has grown in readership while reporting on the Tractor growler issue, it seemed only natural…

Beer Notebook: Local stores are getting Elevated

Stoutmeister here. Shilling has kept track of some local beer news of note while E-Rock and I were in Durango. Speaking of Durango, we will have our next post (Ska Brewing) up shortly. We hit three breweries on Wednesday alone and were not in shape to do much in the way of write-ups that day….

Belated recap of the beer-filled weekend that was

Stoutmeister here, finally getting around to recapping the beer awesomeness that was this past weekend. If I had a good excuse for waiting this long to write about things, I would use it, but in the end it was just the usual stuff (Topes, watching Euro 2012) and some unusual stuff (moving furniture around, a…

Tractor passes through City Council gauntlet

Take a deep breath, loyal patrons. Only one more hurdle remains before Tractor can start selling growlers again. Yes, one more hurdle. Welcome to the fun of city government. In this case, however, it is hard to slam the City of Albuquerque, which has done good by Nob Hill’s favorite tap room. Tractor went before…

Beer Week: Finishing with a flourish

First off, happy birthday to Franz Solo, who turns the big 3-0 today (Saturday), though the celebration began last night as he and E-Rock took in some more ABQ Beer Week events before I caught up to them to close the night out at Marble and Tractor. E-Rock recaps things below, since after all, we…

Beer Week: E-Rock tackles taste-a-palooza

Many breweries had tastings on Tuesday night. I made it to four different establishments to see what was new for Beer Week. I started the evening at Two Fools where Sierra Nevada released Hoptimum (100 IBU, 7.8% ABV). This dry and hoppy double IPA was what Stoutmeister would refer to as a kung-fu kick to…

Beer Week notes: So many events, so little time!

ABQ Beer Week keeps rolling right along, with a slew of midweek events that we are all trying our darnedest to keep up with. Monday got a little too busy for most of us (I was covering the Isotopes, E-Rock wrote up his last post and then had rehearsal, Franz Solo is being a good…

Beer Week notes: Lazy weekend, shifting venues

The Crew took Saturday off from attending any ABQ Beer Week events, but there were actually only three things going on. The ABQ Trolley Ale Trail sold out long before we ever tried to buy tickets and none of us were worthy of giving blood (in my case, I am unable due to living in…