What’s a vacation without a little beer? The Thirsty Hopster takes on Santa Fe

A week ago today, I departed San Francisco on a much needed vacation.  Unlike most of my other recent trips, this one was not supposed to revolve around beer.  Now that my various beer enterprises (this blog, the tastings I host, the beer business ideas I bat around, etc.) consume on the order of 20 hours per week of my free time, I had been starting to feel the need for a vacation from beer, rather than a vacation with beer. 

The plan was simple:

• 4 days in Santa Fe, a city not renowned for its beer, with my sister and a group of 11 co-workers and friends
• 2 days driving Route 1 up the California coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco with a college friend

And we did stick to the plan, more or less, but somehow along the way beer weaseled its way onto the itinerary.  All I can say is

• (A) What? You expect me to drive by a brewery without stopping to poke around? Really! I can’t help it if they just appear along the side of the road.
• (B) I’m so glad I caved because the sudsy parts of the trip were a reminder that when you love what you do, you don’t really need a vacation from it.

Friday, May 23 – Monday, May 26: Santa Fe

Photos to be added tomorrow

The day began early, at 4:15am.  Living in San Francisco, where a cab to SFO costs $45+ and a cab to OAK $55+, and the public transportation requires multiple transfers on vehicles overflowing to the point of active passenger management, I miss the option of an $18 cab ride back home or the $1.25 T ride complete with an almost-guaranteed seat in Boston. 

After taking the J line to the BART to the AirBART shuttle to the Oakland airport, I arrived just in time to hear my flight had been delayed an hour, giving me ample time to gulp down a vat of iced coffee, which I would come to regret while occupying my window seat for the next two hours. 

When I first arrived in Albuquerque it was overcast but warm, but by the time the Sandia shuttle had driven me an hour northeast and 1,700 feet up in elevation, it was pouring hard enough that I was wishing the shuttle were an ark, or at least that I had any one of the following: an umbrella, a jacket, closed-toed shoes, a sister who understood the phrase “unlock the car before I come out from under the awning so I don’t get too wet”.

I’ll spare you the full details of every meal, every conversation, etc., but beer highlight of Friday was our trip to Kokoman Fine Wines & Liquors. 

This place is an oasis in what is quite literally a desert, both beer-wise and otherwise.  They have a large warehouse-like space with one moderately long aisle devoted to beer, half refrigerated, half shelved.  Their selection was about 2/3 domestic, with an emphasis on New Mexico and Colorado beers, a fair showing of California and Pacific Northwest brews, and a smaller but still surprising number of beers from elsewhere stateside.  While the selection beats anywhere else I’ve been in the Santa Fe area, I have one gripe: many of the bottles on the shelves were coated in a none-too-thin layer of dust.  Fresh beer, this was not.  However, as we went to check out, we discovered that inexpensive beer, it was.  At least, it was to us San Franciscans, who need reminders every once in a while that paying $10.99 for a six-pack of microbrew is not inevitable.

We were stocking up with a diverse group of non-devotees in mind, and an eye on the specials, but I think we still assembled a pretty decent stock:

• Jolly Pumpkin Tasting Group:
  • Calabaza Blanca Witbier
  • Bam Biere Saison
  • La Roja Wild Ale
• Full Sail Brewmaster’s Reserve Tasting Group:
  • Vesuvius Belgian-style Strong Pale Ale
  • Nugget Red Ale – it took me a while to find this online, I realize now this is because it was a spring seasonal beer from 2007!  Seriously, someone needs to get inventory management under control at Kokoman.
  • Top Sail Bourbon Barrel Imperial Porter
• General drinking beers:
  • Fort Collins Retro Red Ale
  • Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale Ale
  • Bridgeport IPA

My favorites of the bunch were the Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere and La Roja, and the Full Sail Imperial Porter.  Between them, you’ve got something for drinking at just about every occasion. 

The Bam Biere packed a surprising punch of funkiness for something looked so unassuming in its 12 oz. bottles without any labels screaming “special!”  The La Roja appeals to my recent obsession with sour beers.  I like that the earthiness (which you also can find in the Bam or other pale farmhouse ales) is combined with fruity and sour flavors.  While the Bam is dry and spicy, the La Roja is tart and spicy, without being too sweet. 

The bourbon barrel-aged imperial porter knocked the other two Full Sails out of the park.  I regret that we drank all three out of short plastic cups, because I think the Belgian-style and the red ale suffered for it.  However, I am also sure that part of the problem was oxidation, given that I now know the red was over a year old.  I love the richness of this barrel porter.  You can taste the vanilla oak flavors from the barrels, the whiskey flavors from the Kentucky bourbon that had been in the barrels previously, mild roast flavors from the malt, and a noticeable alcohol presence. 

Though I thought we’d be set for the weekend, by the end of Friday night most of the beer was gone, and I was glad I had hidden a few for Saturday consumption.  We went back to the store on Saturday, but this time only to Albertsons, and only to pick up a few mix packs and get on our way.  We picked up a couple New Belgium Mixed 12-Packs with 1554 (Belgian-style dark ale), Mothership Wit, Fat Tire (American amber ale), and Mighty Arrow (American pale ale).  I stuck to the 1554, which has been a personal comfort-beer of mine for a while now, and which I credit for getting me through the LSATs.  I used to go sit in Rose Pistola on Columbus Ave on a weekday, order a pizza and a bottle of 1554, and run through my practice tests.  Nerdy as it is, I miss those days — they were some of my quietly happiest days from last year. 

We also spent Saturday visiting the Georgia O’Keefe Museum, where we were asked to stand at least a foot from the artwork.  They had a joint Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams exhibit showing, and we had beer staring up close at an Adams photo in which a rock seemed to be floating in a black void surrounded by snow.  After being warned by the security guard (we weren’t being rambunctious, or threatening to touch it, just curious), he followed us around the rest of the museum.  I’ve loved almost everything Ansel Adams did for a while now.  He can take such mundane natural scenes, and some that are spectacular no matter what, and make them seem otherworldly just by cranking up the white/black contrast or focusing on the nearly parallel lines in a stand of trees, or bringing out a precise clarity of texture in the foreground presented against a smooth and texture-less background.  However, I think I’m just starting to appreciate Georgia O’Keefe, mostly the abstracts, though I still hate those ubiquitous sunflowers.  This may just be because they trigger memories of a horror movie I saw as a kid, in which people get lost in a sunflower field full of stalks taller than their heads, and then attacked by aliens.  I think.  The details are sketchy but the aversion to sunflowers remains. 

Then in the afternoon, we set out on an impromptu brewery tour that ended up encompassing Blue Corn Café and Santa Fe Brewing Company. 

At Blue Corn Cafe, we had lunch and ordered sampler platters of their beer, so many platters (between the 13 of us) that they ran out of sample glasses and started pouring us half-tumblers – bad idea.  Though the tray started with a series of benign light beers (a honey wheat, a blonde, a hefeweizen), they started cranking up the body and hops in the medium-range beers (a pale ale, an IPA, an amber, a red), and then finished off with a couple light bodied but dark beers (a brown, a stout).  It was a very complete platter. 

My favorites were the red and the stout, followed by the IPA.  The red had a good hops-malt balance.  It wasn’t something incredibly unique, but it was a very enjoyable beer to drink alongside my stuffed sopapilla.  The stout, as mentioned above, was relatively light bodied, perhaps the opposite of an imperial, but the flavors that were there were pleasantly roasty, without an overly acidic or bitter aftertaste.  The IPA was very citric, especially in the nose, which made it easier to get the non-hops fans to try.  I think they went easy on the bittering hops and high on the aromatics.  Again, nothing incredibly unique, but easy to drink and enjoy. 

Once we had finished the trays, with much trading across platters (I gave away our blonde and honey wheat in exchange for a red and a stout), it was off to SFBC.  But first, we walked by a store in the mall with a sign that said “cleavage jewelry & clothing,” with the “cleavage” covered up by a somewhat transparent piece of tape with “vintage” written on it.  Was that a typo?  And why did they not send the sign back to the printers?  “Cleavage” for “vintage” is a pretty obvious swap. 

Of course, the first half hour of the SFBC trip was a comedy of errors.  No one had looked up the address, but we all knew we had seen it from the highway on the way in from the airport.  Emily had to pee.  Badly.  And we had eight people stuffed with very little elbow room into the SUV.  We navigated back onto I-25, with Melissa at the wheel and about four backseat drivers shouting over her shoulder.  Then one of the multiple BlackBerry owners in the car got service and the BlackBerry informed us that we ought to be heading east from Santa Fe (not true).  Then someone else got service, found the SFBC webpage and informed us that it was now quarter to four, but the brewery closes at two on Saturdays (also not true).  We were about to throw in the towel and pull over at the nearest fast food franchise to give Emily some relief, when all at once we saw the brewery on out left, like a beacon on a hill.  Getting to the brewery required off-roading up a hill through the back entrance (or rather, it wouldn’t have required this if we hadn’t missed our original turn), but we made it.

When we arrived at Santa Fe Brewing Company, we worried that we were crashing a private party, since we still thought the brewery wasn’t officially open past 2pm.  Not that this stopped us, it just meant that I hung at the back of the group while telling everyone else, “Of course this isn’t a private party!” so that if it was, they’d be the ones to take the brunt of the weird looks. 

Things got off to a rocky start when I saw a beer listed on their board as “Viszolay Belgian” and asked the bartender, “What kind of Belgian is it?”  His response was, “It’s brewed with Belgian yeast.”  Yeah, dude, no shit.  I continued to probe, “Oh, ok.  But what style is it? You know, dubbel, tripel…?”  His response, “No, it’s a Belgian.”  Ok, whatever.  This was the point where I gave up and said, “I’ll have the Chicken Killer Barleywine.”  I wish he had been able to articulate what the Belgian was like,  because when I look at their website now, it sounds delicious:

Viszolay is a distinctly continental ale with a hint of the southwest. Belgian malt, Bavarian and Czech hops, and a secret blend of German and Belgian yeast strains provide this beer, inspired by the Trappist’s Dubbel style ale, with a strong traditional base, while a hint of New Mexico wildflower honey infuses it with that ethereal quality that we New Mexicans simply call, “enchanting”. Like the Trappist ales from which it sprung, Viszolay is light and refreshing. The hop’s subtle notes are overpowered by complex fruity flavors derived from the Belgian yeast, leaving Viszolay a very drinkable (yet rather potent) addition to the Santa Fe Brewing Company’s family of beers.

We took our drinks up to the balcony for what unfolded as a nearly perfect late afternoon.  The sun was shining, it was about 80 F degree out, we had some cold pints in our hand that had cost only $2.50 because it was happy hour… and a massive rugby team was sprawled over the grounds below us.  These guys were hilarious, and at one point started playing full cup boat races, after which they were more hilarious.  There was also the point at which Melissa pointed over the rail and said, “Look, Jess.”  Me: “The dog?  It’s really adorable.” Melissa: “No wonder you’re single — I clearly meant the hot guy.”  Me: “Eh.  But I do really love that dog.” 

Though I drank a pint of each of the barleywine and the IPA, I have no lingering thoughts on either.  I’d drink them again, but didn’t come away vowing to import SFBC to California.

Sunday rolled around and with it came the Tent Rocks hike.  We schlepped out there, mildly hung-over at 9:00am, only to spend an extra 45 minutes in the car because we took the wrong exit.  I have a remarkable ability to sleep through any car ride (and a dangerous capacity to slip into this state even when I’m the driver), so I dozed most of the way.  The hike winds through narrow chasms in the rock, carved by now non-existent rivers up to a 360 degree vista at the top.  We all enjoyed the hike, which was only very mildly strenuous, but I felt bad for sweating at all when we passed an 8-month pregnant woman with three little boys under 5 years old making her way down from the top.  The other moment for concern was the boulder incident.  At one point Kevin thought it would a great idea to climb a boulder for a photo op, a move that followed Matt’s equally fantastic (but, luckily, scrapped) idea to crawl into small den in the rock that looked like it might house a pack of sleeping coyotes.  As Kevin scrambled to his boulder of choice, he dislodged a rock larger than my head which started rolling down hill with ever-increasing momentum.  Though it might have taken out downhill hikers, if there had been any near us, there was no danger of it taking out one of us, something everyone in our group realized, except me.  In my panic, I tried to run away and picked the one direction in which I was absolutely blocked, running myself straight into a rock wall, bashing my shins, and breaking a large branch with my head.  Clearly, if we still lived in a “survival of the fittest” type environment, I’d have been weeded out long ago. 

Monday mostly just involved cleaning up the remarkable quantity of trash accumulated of the last few days, and bidding good-bye to sub-sets of the group as they headed off to the airport. 

I originally intended to include a description of the road trip up the coast in this posting, but it is so long already, that I think I need to work on my materials for tonight’s saison tasting and hold off on the second half of this story until tomorrow. 

So, until then,

Cheers!