2010 was a great year for craft brewing and there’s every reason to think 2011 will be even better. So let’s toast the new year and look forward to many more craft beer journeys to come. As luck would have it, the Rhino in Missoula tapped a keg of Deschutes Brewery’s The Abyss on new…
For Day 7 we’re staying local again with beer from Blacksmith Brewing Co. in Stevensville, MT. It had been a while since we’d taken the drive down from Missoula and a couple of extra days off to start the New Year’s Eve weekend seemed like the perfect time. As is common for Blacksmith, the place…
Topper and Topper’s Cellar, a fantastic place to get great beer and wine in Helena, MT, are featured in this article in the Helena Independent Record, including a quote from your’s truly. Topper truly has the passion and knowledge for great beer and wine and an amazing ability to communicate that passion to everyone who…
Ahh . . . the holidays. The perfect excuse to overindulge and only feel slightly guilty about it. Though it does tend to make the reality of January suck a little bit more. The Christmas weekend brought meals of crab, steak, country ham, warm apple crisp and lots more. With the new year’s weekend on…
For Day 5 of the Growler Fills 12 Days of Christmas Cheer we’re keeping it local with an awesome sipping beer from Missoula’s Kettlehouse Brewing Co. I stopped in at the Myrtle Street location while running errands to try a couple of new ones on tap. Sadly, I was a day late for Kettlehouse’s Nutt-Cracker…
I’ve been waiting for over a year to try this one I picked up in 2009. With a “best after” date of October 2010, I figured I was just about right on time. Deschutes Brewery calls Black Butte XXI a “masterpiece” and a “tribute to Black Butte Porter, the revolutionary Deschutes Brewery beer that has…
It is most definitely a white Christmas in Missoula, Montana where the temperature is 10 degrees, the house smells like baked goods and more great beer awaits in the fridge. And in the snow banks. A great Christmas Eve dinner of crab legs and crab cakes provided a great reason to break out some bottles…
Sure, I’ll admit it. Sometimes all it takes for me to try a beer is a great name. Not that it is ever a challenge to get me to try something new. One of my favorite beer names is Montana Brewing Company’s Custer’s Last Stout. In addition to being a great name, it is a…
Day two of our 12 Days of Christmas Cheer brings us two brews from Ridgeway Brewing of South Stoke, United Kingdom. For years, Ridgeway has been brewing up some creatively named brews for the holiday season that are fairly widely available. We picked these up at Worden’s Market in Missoula. First up was Reindeer’s Revolt,…
‘Tis the season for big bold beers and plenty of of holiday spices and just about everything in between. One look in the fridge reveals a nice mixture of barleywines, imperial stouts and a few styles I’m not quite sure how to identify. The tough part is figuring out how to enjoy most of them…