I’m in New Mexico this weekend for a “spiritual cleansing” (code for a beer run). It seems that this part of the country has a number of small breweries, and I’m going to find a few of them over the next few days.

Chama River Brewing Company is a quite nicely appointed restaurant a mere mile from my hotel. Of the six beers on tap, I tried Orion’s Ale (a winter warmer in the belgian tradition, long on maple, roast malt and yeasty funkiness) and the Jackalope IPA (a strong, grassy tasting brew that has an interesting combination of 3-C finishing hops).

Foodwise, the fondue is really tasty. The cheese was spiked with green chiles (natch) and slowly added heat (and more desire to drink beer) over time. The supplied dunking materials included chunks of a nice artisan loaf, green apple bits, and broccoli and caulifower florets. If i ordered it again, I’d skip the veggies and go straight for the bread and apples.

Tomorrow — Santa Fe for some art browsing and beer drinking. More later!

After three days in town, I finally managed to drag the family (mom, dad, my aunt and uncle) to a neighborhood brewpub for a beer.

Union Bräu is a smallish restaurant that has a few different settings for your unfiltered beer drinking pleasure: the Bierkeller seats about 300 and also puts you in line of sight with the mash tun; the restaurant upstairs seats around 100 and takes folks who have not made reservations (like us).

The beers are quite drinkable. The dunkles (pictured here) is a malty brew with no discernable hop presence. It goes down like liquid bread. The helles (my follow-up) was slightly yeasty, which added a pleasant note to the fruity brew.

The menu had a lot of Bavarian standards, including Weisswürstchen, Schweinehaxen, and Brezn. I opted for the Käsespätzle (egg noodles/dumplings with cheese melted all over them). Heavy, but seriously yummy.

After 2 years in the bottle, my chocolate imperial stout made a Saturday happy hour appearance today.

All I can say is — Damn. The chocolate artoma is obvious and quite pleasant. The chocolate flavor is reminiscent of the dark (think 70+% cocoa content) and bitter stuff. The 8%+ alcohol content clearly makes this a winter warmer that would kick ass in an ice cream float or in a campfire-side snifter.

With colder weather and the holidays approaching, here’s hoping you surround yourself with family, good tidings (and good beer).

After 50 Euros in the Brussels airport duty free shop, you could say so.

There was a surprisingly good (if pricey) selection, including most of the Trappist abbeys. Part of my stinky bounty is pictured here. Guess you know what will be showing up at my holiday party!

I’ve been on the road for the past couple of days on business in (of all places!) — Belgium!

Those of you who know me understand that being sent to beer Disneyland for 2 days can be a wonderful thing. After my productive, but time consuming meetings (and a few OK tap beers), I was *finally* able to take advantage of being here.

Enter Kulminator.

I was entertaining a client and convinced him to come out for a nightcap and ultimately do a vertical sampling of Chimay Bleu. We chose the most recent vintage (2007) and the year Hermann’s twins were born (1993).

The 07 was quite fresh, but not at all developed. The signature vinousness and dark fruit flavors had not shown themselves. It seemed way too easy to drink, as Hermann commented. By contrast, the ‘93 was quite interesting. It had a notable corked quality, with some horse blanket and figgy notes. The head disappeared almost immediately after the pour, and the body was quite thin.

Hermann was quite surprised by the comparison, and the sibling brews made for a much warmer walk back to the hotel.