Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once again, though it’s been quite a while), ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your friendly-ish guest FNBB blogger tonight, with esquimaux taking a well-deserved Friday evening off from FNBB duties. This is actually my first, and thus correspondingly weak, attempt at a travelogue FNBB, which other folks here do much better than me. As the title implies, the travel location of focus here is New Mexico, where self the loser took a short vacation this summer. Since 3CM is also a linky goodness dweeb, some light-hearted background reading is available c/o the NM Dark Side Brew Crew blog, this “mostly complete timeline” of beer brewing history in NM. The early history emphasis is obviously on more mass market beers, to 1939, with craft beers showing up after 1988 (curious, that near 50-year break in beer production in NM).
Fittingly, the place to start is Albuquerque, a common port of entry for out-of-state folk by means of their construction and transportation symbol of global heating, namely the Albuquerque Sunport (their name for their airport). Perhaps also fittingly, the one Albuquerque craft beer establishment that I visited is not all that far from the Albuquerque Sunport, namely The 377 Brewery. The selection in the picture above is 377 Brewery’s Red Horse Lager.
With visits to two museums in Albuquerque accomplished, the main destination of the vacation was the state capital, for summer culture vulture stuff. But the itinerary had room for a beer and food festival at this location, where 9 craft beer establishments and 1 hard cider business were the featured libation-meisters.
Needless to say (so 3CM the loser will, of course, say it), self’s goal was to sample as many of the beverages as possible, without a full pour, in order to remain somewhat mentally lucid for opera in the evening. However, I tipped each establishment for the samples, of course. So, INPO:
Bosque Brewing (Bernalillo, NM) had two flavors in cans (no makeshift tap).
Beer Creek Brewing (Santa Fe, NM) had 5 flavors to sample, 4 of them on their standard on-line offerings, and what appeared to be a one-off with a bespoke name evidently for the occasion (no prizes for guessing which one):
* Abiquiu Amber
* Get to Da Hoppa (IPA)
* “Las Golondrinas” Golden Ale
* Lone Butte Lager
* Picture Rock Porter
Little Toad Creek Brewery & Distillery (Silver City, NM) had 3 offerings:
* Grumpy Old Troll IPA
* Lucky Toad Lager
* Pendejo Porter
Leaf & Hive (Santa Fe, NM) had three “honeybrews” to sample:
* Hibiscus
* House “OG”
* Lavender Lemongrass
The selections from Leaf & Hive were definitely not ones for the Rheinheitsgebot, as Leaf & Hive uses honey in its brews, again to state the obvious. But perhaps because I have a bit of a sweet tooth, the Hibiscus was probably my favorite of all the selections here and at the other stations.
Speaking of the other stations:
Marble Brewery (Albuquerque, NM) had 5 selections for sampling:
* Cerveza
* Desert Fog (hazy IPA)
* Helles
* IPA
* Pink Lemonade Lager
Of course, I sampled their flavors in their suggested order as you see listed in the pic, rather than in alphabetical order 😉 . Same deal with Beer Creek Brewery above.
The one outlier among the establishments here was obviously New Mexico Hard Cider (Santa Fe, NM), with these 4 hard ciders on offer for sampling:
* Apricot
* Blood Orange
* Blueberry
* Semi-Sweet
Since the picture with the New Mexico Hard Cider station shows two establishments for the price of one, the selections from Second Street Brewery (Santa Fe, NM) should appear next:
* Czech Pilsner
* House IPA
* Kölsch (the umlaut is mine, not theirs)
* 2920 IPA (the number refers to the establishment’s address)
Second Street Brewery was less of a new experience for me, as I’ve been to their Rufina Street location. By contrast, the selections from Rio Bravo Brewing (Albuquerque, NM) were new to me:
* Double Stuffed (“Oreo pastry stout” – well, that’s what Rio Bravo Brewing describes it as)
* Freak Juice (hazy New England IPA)
* Honey Ginger (blonde ale)
Steel Bender Brewyard (Los Ranchos, NM) had three selections to sample:
* Hefe Lifting Hefeweizen
* Raspberry Dynamite Kettle Sour (did manage to get to one sour, for you FNBB sour aficionados — you know who you are :) )
* Skull Bucket IPA
Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery (Santa Fe, NM) had these flavors to sample:
* La Magia Negra (dark lager)
* Radio Flyer Red
* Sunrise Lager
So in terms of geographic distribution throughout the state:
Albuquerque = 2
Bernalillo = 1
Los Ranchos = 1
Santa Fe = 5
Silver City = 1
I pretty much managed to sample each of these,, from each of the establishmens. If one is going to trash one’s liver and general insides, and shorten one’s life span ever so slightly, there are much worse beverage-based means of doing so. I did eat very heartily before arriving at the festival, and had food there later on, when it became quite clear that I needed more food 😊 .
The rules of this beer and food festival forbade bringing libation from these establishments off site. So to bring a suitable souvenir home, I had to look elsewhere, which certainly wasn’t difficult. Perhaps suitably in keeping with the Leaf & Hive selections, the souvenir, and the featured selection chez 3CM for tonight’s edition, is the “Horned Honey" Pale Ale from Lizard Tail Brewing, based in Albuquerque. A nice touch about the production of this brew is LTB’s own use of honey, to help out a fellow local business, per their blurb:
“Think honey and a little orange marmalade on a fresh baked biscuit. A portion of the proceeds go to Ferraris for Bee Farmers, because holy %$#@!, good honey is pricey, and we use a boatload in this one.”
This actually is a really nice pale ale, and the “taste of honey” adds a nice finishing touch.
I probably should put in a good word about the host location for this beer & food festival, from the venue’s history page:
“El Rancho de Las Golondrinas (The Ranch of the Swallows) a historic rancho and now a living history museum, was strategically located on the Camino Real, the Royal Road that extended from Mexico City to Santa Fe. The ranch provided goods for trade and was a place where the caravans that plied the road would stop on their journey coming from or going to Santa Fe. It was a paraje or an official rest stop for travelers on the Camino Real.”
Well worth a visit if you’re in the Santa Fe area. With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you sipping tonight? Anyone brewing their own? I don’t expect anyone here to have any selections from New Mexico, unless by chance, you do have them on hand. Or perhaps someone from NM will stop by FNBB tonight :) .