Monday, March 14, 2016

Albuquerque: Doing at Least One Thing Right

With Albuquerque's charming combination of poverty, drugs, crime, and some seriously fucked up people wandering the streets (anyone notice the guy who patrols Central between 1st and 5th with his pants around his knees? I mean, I know a little sag is kind of a fashion thing for some, but he puts SO much effort into holding his pants at that height, and he can barely shuffle from one empty store front to the next. You'd think he'd get tired of it and move on to some suspenders or something), it's nice to able to say we are the best at something. And no, I'm not talking about that recent report that named Albuquerque "one of America's greatest cities", thanks to the well-respected "real estate news" ( and it turned out we were in 41st place. Yay.); I'm talking about March Madness! Talking Lob..oh. March Madness, that is, in the form of the Brewing News and their annual National IPA Championships, where , for the second year IN A ROW, Bosque Brewing's Scale Tipper once again was named the best IPA in the country. Not only was this the second straight win for the Albuquerque brewery, it was the third straight year that an Albuquerque brewery won the competition (La Cumbre's Project Dank was the previous winner). No longer will these meaningless crappy internet sites be able to make us click through a painfully slow-loading slideshow so we can see Albuquerque listed as one of "America's Most Underrated Beer Cities"! Jokes aside for the moment, hiring John Bullard was the best decision the Bosque folks ever made. The entire brewing community respects the guy as he is as down to earth as they come and is a hell of a brewer. Congratulations to him and the Bosque team.

Buyer Beware: Jubilation had listed Deschutes Hop Henge as being a "new item" on their Facebook page, though what is in the cooler was released in 2015. Late 2015, mind you, but 2015 nonetheless. And here I looked at the hop bill and thought they decided to use the exact ones as last year (recipe changes year to year). Nope. Says clear as day "2015 Release", but I was too dense to notice. Not a bad tasting DIPA with some age on it but I thought other dense people might want to be warned.