That feeling you get when both your beer and your body are sweating profusely, and you’ve lost the warm, golden feeling of late-spring. You’re dirty and dusty, and that garden you started with so much enthusiasm has proven bare your lack of organization. Most of it is dead – everything but your cannabis plants, which you water religiously.
It is mid-august and the monsoons have passed. Albuquerque is now in that stretch of unbearable, dry heat that drags out until mid-october. I’ve been to quite a few breweries and taprooms over the last few months, with only a few posts left to catch up on (editing takes at least twice as long as the draft), but plenty worth talking about. It’s been an adventure, mostly afternoons, and only a few cans from the largest brewers here have made it home to get analyzed properly – while watching a movie.
Out on the patio of the local burger joint drinking a 22oz mug, I’m pondering the nature of the business in NM (as ever). The taprooms here often don’t serve any food of their own, which is a by-product of the licensing process down here. In Oregon, if I recall correctly, taprooms are generally required to offer some sort of food, while down here they just have a ‘hard’ “3 DRINK LIMIT” at places where food isn’t the primary business. It’s kind of strange, honestly, but the rules are the rules, and it seems like the laws here don’t favor the small business as much as the larger chains, which have more resources to throw around when it comes to permitting. I’m sure I’ve missed some crucial detail – as always – but as I think about the places I’ve been here, the fact that many of the brewery taprooms rely on food trucks 100% for service is kind of bonkers.
THE OLD GUYS
I have pints once a week with some old friends, and we sort of rotate where we go based on who’s buying that week. A lot of the choices made this way revolve around ‘is there food at the taproom?” and we’ve not been to a few promising breweries because they don’t have a reliable food offering. I feel like we’re missing out on some great beers and locations because they don’t have a kitchen, and that’s just the way it is down here. If you want ‘that’ beer, you’ll put up with whatever they throw at you to get a 6-pack or whatever.
So last week, me and the Old Guy Beer Club found ourselves at a place called Tin Can Alley, which is made to look like it’s built from shipping containers, but that’s just the facade – it’s all custom built to hold multiple food operations and a taproom for Santa Fe Brewing, which lays claim as NM’s oldest brewery. They’re based in Santa Fe, surprise, but have several taprooms in ABQ to push the brand, two of which are similar concepts, a taproom and multiple small food vendors in a space that looks like shipping containers. At least they’ve got a consistent theme going.
SFBC has a bunch of styles, including sours and ciders, to fill out their taprails, and I feel like I’ve tried a lot of their stuff but have somehow missed their opus, that one beer that just calls out. I wish I could say it was their “Chicken Killer’ barley wine, which I’ve been a fan of since 2004, or their ‘7K IPA’, supposedly west-coast but missing that mark in several ways. They make solid, drinkable beers overall, don’t get me wrong. I just haven’t caught that one that makes me go back often. But their taprooms are a nice place to visit, if you’ve got a group of people who might like to try different foods, for instance. Gourmet burgers, handmade Cubanos, Frito Pies and all sorts of other stuff can be had to compliment that huge array of beers SFB offer…I suppose some people go there just for the food, it’s that good. I saw families and such enjoying themselves.
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A Few days later
Drinking a double west coast style IPA at what remains my favorite brewery in ABQ, La Cumbre. The ceiling over the bar area is pretty low and it feels pretty dark overall, but that sets it apart a little from all the stripmall-style taprooms and big industrial warehouse spaces that seem to have taken over the brewing scene. The rafters are low enough to touch and the HVAC is exposed, and there are old bomber bottles lining the top of the beams, filling the space of the I-beams that hold the upper floor aloft. Those bottles have remained the same as they were on opening day well more than a decade ago, a leftover from days past that served to advertise your beer knowledge and taste. I recognized more than few of those labels on my first visit, and the beer from La Cumbre has represented those various examples well.
They’ve expanded a little, don’t get me wrong, but I still relish the stout and won’t turn down the Elevated IPA. This DIPA I’m trying to drink slowly is clean and mouthwateringly crisp, with all the appropriate flavors for the style. A lot of the IPAs in the SW trend towards piney hop bombs with an earthy, spicy malt back that makes you sit up a litle when you drink them, and there are several examples of that approach on tap tonight, AND two that are specifically labeled as WC IPA.
No, you’re a Dort
There’s a Dortmunder and a mild ale, a couple of hazies, a few lagers and even Oktoberfest, which feels early but it’s already late August so it’s just in time for the seasonal, monthlong holiday that some of us feel compelled to celebrate. There’s even a few bottles of the latest wine/beer barreling experiment, if you’re feeling adventurous. It’s hard to pick any one of these out as a favorite, but the stout has always captured my attention. I miss the days of random, wild barreling of any dark beer (or any beer that wasn’t fully attenuated). Let’s just say that if you’re pouring a beer that looks like chocolate syrup, I’m interested.
THE COYOTES TAKE EVERYTHING
Some time has passed since I wrote thje opening of this – it’s mid January, and people are complaining about how cold it is outside, along with some commentary about how vicious the local coyote population is. It’s entertaining at best, filled with anecdotal tales and fearful speculation about the hunting abilities of a pack of coyotes vs the size of a standard Lab.
The Dunkel and dortmunder are still on tap, and there have been a bunch of others, but the current Project Dank is on my lips this afternoon. La Cumbre on the Westside again instead of the OG spot, and they’ve had their 14th anniversary since I wrote about them last. There’s some great barrel-aged stouts still hanging around in bottle form, but most of the fall surge of beers LCBC had on offer have come and gone, only remembered by untapped logins and hopefully the smell (hops being such a pungent ingredient and all).
Things have changed a bit, and the attitudes of most people are a hesitant embrace of the future, despite the details. Turns out most people don’t care that much about politics or the people who make the choices for them (I’m not terribly surprised…) and are willing to put faith in known liars long after they’ve been proven to be such. I’m left feeling the need to say, “I TOLD YOU SO” now, if you’re one of those people who fell for it, and leave it there for future reference. I fear another pandemic, or the tariff/trade war we’re about to live through, or any of the hundreds of waiting disasters that a handful of television personalities are simply not equipped to handle.
Beer will end up costing more, in the long run. We’ve already moved well beyond the $5 pint at your local taproom in most larger markets, and $7 or $8 is more likely to be the asking price for a standard pint moving forward. Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll keep charging a decent price for the big 20oz glass, or the happy hour specials for that big 22oz mug I was drinking on when I started this entry. Even though I pay for the mug club membership here at LCBC, which is supposed to give me some sort of discount on beer, it doesn’t apply to certain beers (like the one I’m drinking) and they don’t have mugs at this location, for some reason, and only offer $1 off the 20oz pour of the beers that count. Sigh.
My personal situation is also changing, in that my ward is needing different care that he did when I first got down here. As people age, and you take responsibilities off their hands, they sort of atrophy and, in this case, forget the basics of caring for oneself to the point they’re no longer able to complete the simple tasks of life. Simply filling the coffeemaker – the ritual of the start of the day – becomes impossible once dementia sets in and the memories are lost. This means I’ve inadvertantly made myself indispensable beyond the intended. Popsicle needs someone to make him his food, and bring it to him, and even though he cannot make anything on his own, he will still throw the food I’ve cooked for him away and…then I go back into my office space and play iRacing for 3 or 4 hours before I try it all again for dinner. I don’t know what I’m trying to tell you here
DON’T GET OLD
Mentally, anyways. I live with someone who has shut out the current life flow and desires to only sit in his chair and watch random shit on broadcast television. There is almost zero outside connection and interaction, and it’s heartbreaking. My grandfather used to play instruments like the bass guitar, and all he can do now is complain that I’ve requisitioned his gear to practice and re-learn something I first enjoyed almost 30 years ago – until my gear was stolen out of my house a few years later. I never replaced it. I wish my grandfather had been a part of my life back when I first moved to Albuquerque, and we’d have shared some sort of connection, but now all that’s left is a lingering possession issue, where he knows it’s his guitar but hasn’t been able to even pick it up, let alone play it, in years. Now that I’ve pulled it out and played it a few times, he’s all upset because it’s his, and I’m left to gently explain the situation to him. Life is weird, y’all.
This all means that I’ve curtailed my adventures here in ABQ, for a little while at least, and the beer writing might be sparse. I’m also pelted with ideas but my organization is terrible. I need a personal life coach to get my shit off the ground, I have no doubt. I always try to be a partner and positive impact on people around me, but I’m often let down by the return on those investments. There’s nobody calling me up for pint somewhere after I’ve put gramps to bed – and New Mexico’s strict DUI laws and occasional checkpoints discourage poorly planned adventures anyways.
Most of my writing is like that, a poorly planned adventure through my current thoughts, and I still want to change that. I’m just puttering along trying to keep my spirits up right now, and my high ideas will continue to sit on a shelf until something changes. It might be, say, mid April, but eventually something will change*cough*and maybe I’ll reach out to the people I’ve met down here who were willing to be bothered by a dumb beer blog writer.
Maybe.