Albuquerque Beer Guide - 2018

I made it to 2nd Street and Rowley Farmhouse in Santa Fe as well as Taos Mesa during our trip. I was more impressed with the pizza than the beer at Taos Mesa. I thought both 2nd Street and Rowley Farmhouse had what I would consider good to very good beers, totally approachable and worth a visit. Also drank my share of Elevated and 7K throughout the trip.

 

Just what I was looking for! I'll be in ABQ for work Wed-Fri, so I'll be reading through this thread when I get some time later today.

 

Hi,

I have been to La Cumbre a few times on previous trips, I will be in town tomorrow- Sunday. What does the new West Side location have to offer? Is it preferred now, or either works?

Can't wait to try some of the options I have missed in the past including Bow & Arrow and Sidetrack.

Anything special being released this week or any brewery/beer events going on this weekend?

 

Any bar/restaurants that shouldn’t be missed in Albuquerque for food/beer?

 

I’m at Bow & Arrow on Thursday and really enjoy the Bolos and Bling on tap. The type of Brett brew that everyone could enjoy and I could drink it all the time, bit of funk balanced nicely by the oak barrel and Mosaic adds nice fruity hop flavors

 

My go-tos were the Sister/Anodyne combination.

Sister will have a few good beers on and they have pretty damn good bar food and excellent cocktails (and often shows at night).

Anodyne usually has one or two good beers on and a good number of cool bottles. They’ll charge you $7 for just about any beer and it’ll come in a 16 ounce shaker. I’ve gotten pretty wasted off of repeated pours of Bomb!, KBS or CBS, etc because I couldn’t resist the quantity/price combination.

 

Bow & Arrow is doing plenty of cool, and good, stuff.

Boxing Bear is doing a tap takeover at Sister tonight, FYI.

 

I'll have to disagree with ONovoMexicano not just about his unnatural lust for SN Celebration but for his praise of Anodyne. Four of the 10 or 11 taps are constants (Left Hand Milk Stout, Rogue Dead Guy, Dale's Pale Ale, and La Cumbre Elevated). Fine. I don't want any of 'em, but fine for Celebration lovers. My problem is all the taps taste like whatever style the beer is supposed to be mixed in with a Flanders Red. The lines themselves are very short; someone is doing them a disservice and not cleaning them properly. It is pretty crazy to be served a shaker pint of CBS though!

 

I have been to a lot of ABQ breweries in the past 5 years via work trips. La Cumbre was always way and above.

This trip I was super impressed by Bow & Arrow and Sidetrack and Marble.

I was impressed by each of these for different reasons. Bow & Arrow was new to me and represented a modern brewery with nice variety, great space to hang out and a few really impressive beers.

Sidetrack is just my kind of place. Comfortable, relaxed, good quality from many varieties that would make all different types of beer drinkers happy. Service was just kind of right attentive.

Marble was packed but efficient. Staff attentive. Beers continuing to improve and wide variety. I’ve been here 5 times, this time I left most impressed by beer quality. They are definitely popular based on crowds, but improvement over the years is the most impressive part. They keep things rolling in the right direction

 

Haha! I am not sure praise is the word for Anodyne. I agree with you on the dirty taplines and what not. Still, $7 pours in shitty shakers of beers that cost 3x that is irresistible to me.

 

Love the praise for B&A and Sidetrack. Share those sentiments. I hope you were at Sidetrack when Nestor was behind the bar. Great dude and he has helped Sidetrack carve a niche with the vinyl collection and music. Partnering frequently with Zendo (the coffee shop next door) and having that great little patio make it a special place too.

 

Nice to see some activity here

@jhavs
Thanks for the outsider insights. I live 3 miles from marble but haven't been in a year. I guess the urge to try new creations isn't there for me. Still haven't been to their other locations. Glad to see they're still busy.

Their packages items were on sale recently at a grocery store so I got to revisit some classics. Not much has changed from their core lineup. Not a bad thing. Oatmeal stout can contend with anyone. Their double white makes me gag now. Not sure if I changed or it changed. Their pilsner in cans seems to have some quality issues. Half the cans I get foam up and squirt out of the can, as if I shook it.

Bow and arrow on the other hand. I've been there three times in a months time. Strawberry amigo is a poor man's HV beer. Really liked their desert punch hazy dipa. Their pastry imperial stout sounds intriguing. Prices are a bit crazy so I tend not to go out too often. Between la Cumbre and bow and arrow, those two have been taking a good chunk of my beer budget v

I did happen to go to a beer premier with 20 local Breweries releasing a new beer each. La Cumbre's hazy dipa stood out. Along with bow and arrows saison, and marbles strawberry IPA, which was more IPA than strawberries. I won't name names but there are still breweries out there producing mediocre products. About 5 of the 20 were iffy to bad.

Still haven't been to sidetrack. I'll need to add it to my must see list. I hadn't been to bow and arrow for months before this recent spike.

Anyone been to New places like Toltec, cantero, drafty kilt. Anything new at steel bender?

 

Spying on this feed since I'm in town and may (may!) have time to check out Cumbre's latest line on tap. La Negra looks great, and I've never had the Citra or the El Jugo. We get their major can offerings, but nothing too rare up in Colorado. Cheers, if you have other recs... beyond what is in this feed (just read all 2 pages) add away. I'll be going to B&A for sure, and probably Marble since it's walkable from my hotel.

 

This is flat out false about any line of Elevated, or any other La Cumbre beer in any bar or restaurant anywhere from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. While I am not intimately familiar with Anodyne's system personally, we as a company service that line and any line of our draft beer and our entire team knows how serious I am about draft line cleanliness and maintenance.

 

That's good to hear. I actually left our group playing pool to go downstairs and have a quick El Jugo at Sister last week because I have had too many unpleasant experiences with drafts at Anodyne. Glad there is still hope for one tap there.