BEER TRAVELERS

Heading home from the Great American Beer Festival last week I swung through the town of Las Vegas (New Mexico, that is) to look again for the Rough Rider Brewery. It was supposed to open in the spring, and by mid-simmer one local brewer asked me if I’d had the beer.

We drove through Las Vegas in September, but didn’t know the address (and didn’t realize we’d driven past the brewery - despite the sign pictured here you can miss it).

The brewery is located at 400 Grand (in case you get there before I), in a building that previously housed Fred’s Lumber.

I looked in the windows, and beyond a couple of motorcycles couldn’t see much. But the walls of one room are decorated with wallpaper that looks to be barley. I also spotted a bag of grain. Good sign.

The former Taco Mac in Sandy Springs, Ga., has reopened in the hands of new management and been renamed Charlie Mopps.

That Taco Mac was one of America’s first multi-taps, featuring nearly 100 beers.

The first time we visited for all the bartender new we were just customers - rather than undercover beer sleuths asking a variety of questions. He spoke proudly of the cooler set up, with very short lines that could be cleaned easily. “You want to come back and look?” he asked, not unlike a father showing off the latest pictures of his child.

Andy Klubock, then the manager at Taco Mac, still runs two other Atlanta area multi-taps, both called Summits Wayside Tavern.

The New York Times goes brewery hopping around Portland, Maine.

At times an adventure.

The directions Steve Gorrill gave me to Sheepscot Valley Brewing Company, which he runs in Whitefield, 60 miles out of Portland, were the first clue it was a different kind of place. We followed them through Wiscasset, past the Alna Store, over a metal bridge, up a steep hill and onto a dirt road somewhat inaptly named Hollywood Boulevard. A little farther down, in a green barn where until 2003 another company had carved moose meat, is Sheepscot’s one-man operation.

Makes you want to race up there before winter arrives.

Time Out Chicago distributed its beer issue last week.

Some of the stories you’d expect - tips, interviews with breweries, etc. - but overall a surprising amount of fun. Suns Swap profiles drinkers moving from one beer to another, such as from Miller High Life to Stella Artois (got think Andrew might manage another step soon).

The highlight, though, is Barley Legal: “Our undercover suds sleuths had one week to track down their favorite out-of-state brews without leaving Illinois — by any means necessary. Who got the goods?”

Don’t think you can buy New Glarus Spotted Cow in Chicago? Think again.

Lee at I Love Beer report that Austin’s Ginger Man has lost its lease and will be forced to move, although not necessarily for the next couple of years.

He writes:

I’m all for densifying Downtown and encouraging people to live there instead of the sprawling suburbs, but isn’t part of the deal to also have great ground-floor retail? So why can’t some of that ground floor stuff include great brewpubs/beer bars?

Austin’s first brewpub, Waterloo Brewing, used to be next door. It was forced out (and folded) by escalating downtown real estate prices and was replaced by a new building.

Jack Curtin writes that Copa Too! in Philadelphia has closed.

The first draft beer from a Belgian specialty brewer was poured on June 13, 1995 at a beer dinner here. Kwak was soon followed by plenty of others, and by the next April Copa Too! hosted a mini-Belgian festival with 18 Belgian and Dutch specialties. The next year, manager Tom Peters moved on, hooking up with Fergus Carey to open Monk’s Café (also in Philadelphia), which had developed into a force unto itself.

Curtin reports that Jose Pistola’s, a tequila/beer bar, will open in the spot.

The first bars and restaurants offering speciality beers came to Helsinki just 15 years ago, but have quickly become entrenched.

From the Helsinki Sanomat:

Don’t laugh. Yes, Finland does have a quixotic relationship with alcohol, and yes, there are plans to jack up the price of a pint still further, but the plain fact of the matter is that these days Helsinki is one of the world’s most diverse beer cities.

And it looks like things may only get better.