Summer of Pubs, Part One - Santa Fe Stopover

A Dodgy Start

When I first conceived of this summer's road trip, I had several goals in mind:  hit the brewpubs (natch), do some geocaching, and visit friends/family.  Well, okay... that's not really it actually.  I also have an unwritten rule every summer: make sure to see something I haven't seen before during my 4-5 week road trip in July and early August.  This year, I knew I was going to meet up with a friend in Seattle to drive up to British Columbia and the mysterious Bowen Island so that definitely ticked off the "visiting the unknown" box.  But that wasn't quite sufficient.  No, this year, I decided to take it one step further and plan my route through the northern plains, driving north and east to get west.  As I have never been to North Dakota or Montana, I decide to plan a route through the Black Hills, see Mt. Rushmore (another first), finally terminating my easterly quest in Bismarck, then heading towards the west coast via multiple stops along the way.  That also meant visiting Billings and Missoula, which apparently have substantial craft beer scenes these days.  Naturally, I also found breweries in Rapid City and Bismarck and even decided to publish "meet and greet" events in various places to meet local geocachers.  Yes, it was an ambitious goal but I started off small, settling into Santa Fe for the night of July 1st, a scant 4 1/2 hours north of my home.  Easy, right?

My friend Suzi on Santa Fe BC's upper patio

Well, yes... and no.  A few problems seemed to plague my journey from the start, not least of which was the closure of Casa Abril, a highly recommended winery about halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, whose owners had the audacity to be closed for the holiday weekend.  From there, I caravanned with a geo friend up to Santa Fe Brewing Company, where an ill-conceived geo pub crawl was created by me for the evening.  I say ill conceived for a couple of reasons.  One, most of the local geocaching population were up in Denver already for the weekend of GeoWoodstock events, one of the biggest events on the geocaching calendar.  Secondly, it turns out that Santa Fe Brewing Company's taproom is rustic at best; severely underwhelming was more like.  Despite the enormity of the building, the tasting room is hot, meager, and dilapidated, many of the tables in ill repair.  Outside seating wasn't much better, with no landscaping or windbreaks to prevent the surrounding dust from getting into every orifice and beer.  We settled finally on the upper balcony, which was a bit rain splattered but at least wasn't hot, stuffy or full of dust.  We split a flight of completely ordinary beers, ranging from the skunky (and Heineken-like) Pilsner to the least barrel-aged tasting, bourbon barrel aged porter I've ever tried. The seasonal IPA was okay as was the sour but on the whole, the experience left us with a less-than-great experience.  Given the massive size of the building, I have to think that this brewery is really focusing on canning at this point, leaving their tasting room in a rather inadequate state.  Honestly, if Santa Fe BC wants to have a tasting room at all, they are really going to have do much better than this.  After all, Santa Fe is home many great brewpubs, which I was to find out first hand and in due course.

Pub Crawl

Sadly, Suzi had to leave me sooner than desired as she was off to one of her other obsessions, a ballooning festival outside of Raton, NM. Nevertheless, I had always conceived of the Santa Fe stop as a pub crawl of sorts; apart from Blue Corn Cafe (which is more of a restaurant than a brewpub), I had never been to any brewpubs in the state capital up until now so I figured I should try to hit as many as possible during my short, one day visit.  So in sharp contrast to Santa Fe's rather disheveled, character, I moved on to Duel Brewing Company, a newer and far more upscale place right off of Cerrillos Road, the main artery of Santa Fe and the bane of all travelers attempting to traverse it's insane traffic and even more insane summer road construction.  Fortunately, I met up with Aaron here, a fellow geocacher who had just moved back from New Mexico from a few year stint in Tennessee where his wife had just finished up a PhD.  Aaron, or Fugads as we call him in the geo world, is a seriously hardcore cacher- geo blogger, rock climber, rappeler, and all around mountain goat.  He's also an amazingly nice guy and, as I was to find out very shortly, an accomplished beer drinker as well.  Duel was a great place to meet up as the beer was pretty awesome if you could get past the sticker shock ($20 bucks for a speciality saison flight?  Yikes!). But if you have the money, this place is worth it.  They specialize in Belgian style beers, including sours, barrel aged wonders, and saisons, one more unique than the last. Chief among these was the the Cezanne Magnifique, a red wine barrel-aged Imperial Saison that clocked in at a whopping 10.5% ABV and which really highlighted its presence in wine barrels, an almost tannin-like quality permeating the palate.  And each saison had it's own unique and delightful quality, some bringing out the clove & banana so common in European brews and others reveling in their sour-like qualities. Also noteworthy was their Belgian style IPA called Fiction, a well-balanced hop feast that allows some sweetness to shine through the finish, thus tempering the bitterness nicely.

It was here that I finally got in touch with my friend Teal, who told me she would meet up with us at our next stop, the venerable Second Street Brewing taproom that I still had never been to. Honestly, I feel completely behind the times on this one, with virtually all beer drinkers I know in New Mexico having been here at least once.  Well, better late than never.  So I arrived with Fugads in tow, meeting up with my friend Teal and her buddy Xander, who I would later find out owns one of the breweries that would be on our docket for the evening.  We also met up with another geocacher, who had just finished walking 300+ miles across the Camino of southern France... and at age 72!  Tell you what: that's what I want to be doing in my 70s, drinking beer, walking across Europe and generally having adventures.  Now, back to the beer... and food!  2nd Street prides themselves on a great menu and they proved it to me, with an awesome grilled chicken salad accompanied by various wonders, including blue cheese, which paired well with their floral Steam Pale Ale.  Their Amber also accompanied food nicely but was otherwise not exceptional.  Their St. George IPA was pretty top notch, however, a well-balanced English style that didn't overwhelm the palate with hops.  Finally, the most unique beer I tried was a gluten free English bitter, the first gluten free beer that I found even drinkable.  But I would have to say that Second Street confirmed by general theory: that breweries that serve good food usually don't have standout beers.  In this case, the beer is solid- make no mistake about it- but it's also safe and predictable, perfectly serviceable for a place a great atmosphere, live music and fabulous food.

For our next stop, the geocachers left us and so did out taste for beer... at least for the time being. So we decided to walk for the rest of the evening, Teal, Xander and I, this time to the New Mexico Hard Cider Taproom.  I had already had their Tart Cherry Cider and loved it, reminding a bit of some of the cherry sours I'd loved from some notable breweries like Victory in Pennsylvania. But the cherry ending up taking a back seat to the most unique cider I've ever had, a tart and vegetable-like wonder made with purple carrots and apples called the Purple Bunny.  This awesome beverage had an almost wine-like quality to it, even port-like, but with none of the residual sugar that comes with that libation.  And while their Granny Smith-like, straight up apple cider called Pippin/Granny was awesome as well, it was the bunny that left the greatest lasting impression.  

At the Chili Line Patio

Then finally, late into the evening, Xander finally walked us over to his place, the Chili Line Brewing Company, which occupies only a small part of the larger business, a family-run wood fired pizza place and wine bar called Pizzeria de Lino.  Xander was the consummate host, issuing us to the back of the restaurant and the outdoor patio nearest his brewing area and grabbing samples as well as a lovely buffalo mozzarella thin crust pizza.  A tour of his brewing area while waiting for the food gave away the daunting task that Xander had: he was trying to make quality beer on a less-than-shoestring budget.  What's more, he decided some substantial time in Germany, that he would specialize in smoked beers, a hard sell in the United States and to me in particular, who had always seen smoked beer as akin to the Islay Scotch Whiskeys: lovely to contemplate, virtually undrinkable to actually consume, the smoke overwhelming the flavor of any other subtly in the drink.  So imagine my surprise when I found myself actually LIKING these beers.  First of all, he doesn't over smoke them so the flavor remains in the background, allowing the other permutations of the brews to come forward and be enjoyed.  The standouts for me where the IPL, a strange hybrid beer resembling bananas foster but with a huge hoppy taste followed by a smooth finish.  I'm not sure how he pulled that one off but he did.  The other big surprise was the Casino Stout, a strong, extra carbonated brew that almost resembled a citrusy porter, owing to Xander's use of saison yeast purchased from Duel Brewing Company.  And I think that's a beautiful way to end my visit to Santa Fe, knowing that the world of micro breweries (or in the case of Xander's place, a nano brewery) see this endeavor as a collaboration, not a rivalry.  Of course, there is competition but it seems that most view this rivalry in the spirit of making their beers better, not tearing others down.  That feels like a metaphor for how our society should operate but seldom does. We need to learn from beer and what a wonderful feeling that is.

Next Up: Colorado, where I dive into beer right across the border and visit the newest recreational substance establishments in our neighbor to the north.