Hey Southwest BAs. My folks recently moved to the Scottsdale area and I'm heading down that way for the holidays. Wanted to get an idea of what local beers to look out for or anything great that doesn't reach me in Colorado. Any seasonal offerings like BA stouts, barley wines etc? Anybody making good wild ales down in that neck of the woods? What fresh IPAs should I keep an eye out for? Sorry if this is a repeat post, I didn't see much in the way of AZ beer talk in recent forum posts. Thanks!
Anheuser Busch aka Four Peaks still makes some great tasting seasonal beers, look for their Odelay or Sirius Black. AZ Wilderness has the sours for you but I'm not a fan of their regular offerings, I find they are more often than not underattenuated and not very well carbonated. For the IPA's Sun Up, Huss and Papago have the best ones around IMHO and Four Peaks Hop Knot is a great go to IPA (similar to Modus) but not as outstanding as the ones by the other three I mentioned. Craft 64 just did a contract IPA at Sun Up that should be coming out soon.
Founders and Bell's for national distro that skips Colorado. Having tried it myself but Mother Roads's Tower Station IPA seems to be getting a ton of love. And I always enjoy the already mentioned Hop Knot. Not a world class IPA but an always enjoyable one, IMO.
Use the TapHunter app to see what is on tap at various places in town. A healthy percentage of the best beer bars use that app. If you want local, I'd recommend not putting all of your eggs in one basket and just trying one brewery, or just one person's preferences. Go to Craft 64 in Scottsdale where ALL of the beer is local and drink broadly to make your own assessment of how good AZ beer is. http://www.craft64.com/ The Whole Foods in north Scottsdale on Mayo also has some mandatory local taps, but if you tire of those then you can find other good offerings from Bell's, Founder's, and other top regional breweries. Scottsdale is large area so I guess it depends on where you are and how far you want to drive. Some of the south Scottsdale stuff can be quite a drive in traffic if your parents live in far north Scottsdale.
For wild ales try taking a trip to AZ Wilderness. You can check their website first but they typically have at least one on tap. Also, I'd say seeking out a Borderlands Citrana. It's often on tap in the valley and I just saw it at Wholefoods in N Phoenix today.
Thanks for the tips guys. Went by AZ Wilderness on Saturday and enjoyed a nice Berliner Weiss. Their other stuff ranged from so-so to rather gimmicky IMO. Also picked up a 4 pack of Tower Station which is very tasty but probably one of the ugliest IPAs I've had. I don't mind cloudy but there were tons of floaties in each can. Reminds me of some of my homebrews Had a couple of the regular offerings from 4 Peaks (Hop Knot and Kilt Lifter) but was not overly impressed. I'll look out for their seasonals still so I can give them a fair trial. Planning on checking out a few more places today, hopefully make it to Craft 64 to try some more of what AZ has to offer. What are all your thoughts on Grand Canyon Brewing? Picked up a waxed bottle of coffee stout because I was curious about this "oak stick" for bottle conditioning. Looks like a little plastic tube floating around in the bottle... Cheers, Dan
Most of the Grand Canyon beers are rather pedestrian, the plastic inserts are pretty gimmicky and don't do much to the beers IMHO. See if you can try some beers from Lumberyard like their IPA and double IPA, Papago's IPA and Oude Zuipers Triple, Sun Up's White Russian Stout and IPA and Huss Koffee Kolsch and IPA,
Skip Grand Canyon entirely. I thought that coffee bean stout rather ghastly. If you're into stouts, Sun Up's White Russian is a must, and for general all-around good beer (not to mention good food), Fate would be my #1 recc.
