Tag Archives: Beer

Take a Beer Vacation – Almost Anywhere

Posted on by LeAnne Notabartolo

I am not saying you should take a vacation FROM beer. I am saying that you should turn your vacation into a Beer Vacation. With the growth of the craft beer scene all across the country, this is much easier than it sounds. Living with a home brewer, as I do, the task takes on even greater ease! He is willing to do all of the research into finding local breweries and craft beer bars in any area we travel! Consequently, each vacation lately has become a beer vacation for at least one of the days we are traveling. Sometimes we take a guided tour of the brew house; sometimes we just enjoy a flight of whatever happens to be on tap.

Beer Vacation – Hitting Up as Many Breweries as Possible

Vibrant craft beer scenes in the Pacific Northwest are a great place to start. We have made Seattle and Bend, Oregon into craft beer vacations, hitting up as many breweries as possible. (For Bend, go to the “Visit Bend” site and get all the info you need to take a great beer hike around town.) Another great option is the San Diego area. There are dozens of microbreweries there and a few really big ones too – like Stone, Green Flash and Lost Abbey off the top of my head.

Northern California is a Treasure Trove

Last year, attending the wedding of a friend, I had the good fortune to take some of my gal pals on a tour of Sierra Nevada in Chico. None of them had ever done a full blown brewery tour and they will forever be ruined for all others! I have been on dozens of tours, and this one is the BEST I’ve ever taken. The building is Lied Certified and they do all sorts of next level shit in there to help the local community, environment and the craft brew scene. All of Northern California is a treasure trove of amazing taprooms and breweries. The San Francisco area boasts a Rogue taproom, 21st Amendment Brewing and  Speakeasy brewing just to get you started.

On our most recent trip (you can read about it in four installments here on the site) we had the great good fortune of making beer vacation days out of Bamberg, Vienna and Frankfurt. But the biggest happy accident of the trip was finding a small local brewery in Amsterdam. After chatting with the barmaid at VOC Café where we enjoyed bitterballen, we asked about a nearby brewery, Brouwerij De Prael. She warned us that it was small, but we weren’t deterred. Size doesn’t always matter. Great beer does! It was close by so we trekked on over to check it out. We weren’t disappointed!

A Rabbit Warren of Small Rooms

After walking down a cobblestone alley where no car could have driven, we walked into a wild scene of “bingo night” where the grand prize was a scooter. Brouwerij De Prael was packed to the rafters with loud contemporary and 80’s pop music blaring and everyone was having a good time. The building itself is a rabbit warren of smaller rooms. A taproom in the front, several small dining rooms, and an American style bar menu featuring burgers, dogs and sandwiches. Because it was so busy, finding a place to park ourselves was a challenge, but we found a couple of seats at a shared high-top table in the front room near the door and tucked in for a good time. Of course John mentioned to the door man, Nelis, (pronounced NAY-liss) that he is a home brewer. Nelis then proceeded to give us a private guided tour of the brew house, complete with meeting the local homebrewing club! What a Happy Accident!

Clockwise from top left – beer aging in Ardbeg casks, the only burger I ate on the entire 2 week trip – cooked perfectly rare, Hubby John (in the red shirt) with the local Amsterdam Home Brewers Club, Nelis and I in the brewhouse, drinking beer in the taproom, Hubby John’s NotaBrau sticker in the brewhouse with other brewers’ stickers.

Resources to Get You Started

Intrigued? Wanna try it out for yourself? There are several great references out there. Of course you can go to the Chamber of Commerce or tourism site for any city you are visiting. Beware, they don’t always have great info on craft beer bars or breweries, unless the area is known for their craft beer scene, like Bend. Online be sure to check out Beer Advocate. Go to the “places” tab and select “directory”. They list breweries, bars, brew pubs with food, home brew supply stores, and stores with great beer selections. While you are there, subscribe to the magazine! Check out Lonely Planet and their collection of Global Beer Guides, available in print and digital formats. I prefer Lonely Planet travel guides over others because there are always quirky little things they find that aren’t in other guidebooks. You can select individual chapters for just the area you are traveling to, but WHY? Get the whole damn book so you are prepared for your next adventure ($20 in hardback)!

Buy Lonely Planet’s Global Beer Tour book  here in digital or print formats (photo from Lonely Planet website)

Another great book is this one by National Geographic. As with all Nat Geo products, the photography and content are first rate. It is a larger format book, a fantastic “coffee table book” for the beer lover on your Holiday gift list. ($40 in hardback.)

Buy Nat Geo’s Atlas of Beer here direct from National Geographic           (photo from Nat Geo website)

Finally, talk to the bartender at your local craft beer bar, beer goddesses at beer festivals or your local home brewers’ club. Those folks know where it’s at when it comes to craft beer and can point you in the direction of fab bars and breweries. Definitely do this AT your destination. Find one great taproom and the kind folks there will lead you to others. And ALWAYS – drink responsibly and don’t drink and drive!

Compare and Contrast – a View of Two Beer Festivals

Posted on by LeAnne Notabartolo

I hope you are quite aware at this stage, we in this household are what I would call “serious beer drinkers”. We know what we are drinking, choose to enjoy craft beer and make tasteful choices on what to drink. You will not find any BMC (Bud, Miller, Coors) in our fridge. We believe in the motto “No Crap on Tap”. When on vacation we venture to “beer bars”, local breweries and fun tap houses. Of course John has his faves (porters and sours) and I have mine (IPAs and APAs). And while John may resemble The Most Interesting Man in the World because he is such a magnificent bastard, we rarely drink Dos Equis (but I love their commercials).

All of that being said, in the past two weeks John and I have been to two distinctly different beer festivals here in Las Vegas. Because we can’t attend Oktoberfest in Munich, we make do with what is available to us. So let us compare the two. Know this, they were both held on a Saturday evening. Both included entertainment, food and beer and we purchased VIP tickets to both. VIP Tickets to each event were roughly the same price.

The Motley Brews Downtown Beer Festival was September 20th at the Las Vegas Government Center. There were three levels of tix available – GA, Early Entry and VIP. All ticket holders had access to water stations, fantastic food booths and an amazing selection of beer, many USA made by craft brewers and all of our local breweries were represented. Early Entry got you in the gate one hour earlier and VIP gave you that extra hour, a real restroom (as opposed to the dreaded Port-a-potty), free snacks (of which I got none) and exclusive pours only available in the VIP pavilion.  All in all a great event. Because the VIP food situation was a cluster fuck, Motley Brews has arranged for all VIP ticket holders to have gift certificates to the restos that provided (or didn’t…) the food so we can check them out on our own. Beer on tap, beer in casks and beer in bottles all were available to try. The music was great and a good time was had by all. An interesting thing about this event is the people who attend it. Almost without exception, the attendees are REAL BEER DRINKERS, not a bunch of posers just hanging out wondering where the Stella is. Beer centric T-shirts and jeans are the uniform of the day (and some of the shirts are amazing) and the beer wear available for purchase is part of the fun.

The Desert Hops Beer Festival was September 27th at the Cosmopolitan Pool. There were two levels of tix available – GA and VIP. The VIP tix should really have been called “early entry”. There were so many things wrong with this event I don’t even know where to begin. There was NOTHING VIP about that experience. No special amenities for VIP ticket holders at all. The only thing you got for the extra cash was entry an hour early. In addition there were no cask beers, no tap beers, everything was in bottles. Oddly it was called Desert HOPS and there were hardly any IPAs or APAs. Even more curious was the fact that none of our local breweries were represented at all (if they were, I didn’t see them among the only 1 dozen USA beers from 3 breweries). Imports abounded at this event, and if you like Belgian beer this was a great event for you as there were about 2o different ones, but the USA made craft beers were sadly lacking. The crowd was a mixture of tourists and locals, with the emphasis on the tourists. The food was a joke, the music a bizarre mix of live musicians playing with a recording behind them, no vendors other than the crappy food and the crowd was mostly a bunch of posers more intent on looking good than enjoying a beer festival. The best thing about this event was the location – I love the Cosmopolitan and the view from the pool is fantastic. Second best thing? Leaving.

So here are my words to the wise – for a great Beer Festival experience, go to any Motley Brews event (next one is in the Spring of 2015). You will be surrounded by locals who know their craft beer. Let the tourists have Desert Hops.

It Left a Sour Taste in My Mouth – That’s Good & Bad

Posted on by LeAnne Notabartolo

I have been trying to write this piece for a few weeks now.  The problem is that generally I try to be more positive than negative and my Triple 7 Restaurant and Brewery experience was more of the latter and less of the former.  I have also decided that July may, in fact, be “Month of the Bitch”.  Maybe it’s because it is very hot, maybe I am just cranky, but I think I will set aside my good girl side for this month and tell it like it really is.  Here you go…

I met the head brewer, Kenjiro Tomita, at the Brews & Blues event at the Springs Preserve at the end of May.  He had one of the most interesting locally produced beers there.  It was a Sour IPA – so take everything you love about sours and hop it up to an IPA and there you have it (it was everything that John loves and everything I love in one beer).  After talking with him and telling him what I do, I was invited to come and sample some food & bev for a piece for LVFB (Moment of Truth – I couldn’t write this piece for LVFB because I didn’t have enough nice things to say). He assured me that the upper management and PR knew and approved the visit – neither management staff nor PR came to speak with me.

Ken sat with us, made suggestions on what to try from the menu and told us a great deal about himself, the set-up, the beer and the resto.  I wanted to talk about how the beer has changed and how the chef is incorporating the brews into the menu.  FYI the chef isn’t working with the brewer to do anything special on the menu.  Only the batter for the fish & chips and one of the BBQ sauces feature any beer at all and it’s only mentioned on the fish. What I have to say about Triple 7 is this – don’t bother eating there.  The food isn’t that good.  The beer is clearly the star of the show. The main problem could be that there is too much corporate interference from the hotel/casino to make this a real contender in the Brewery Resto world of Las Vegas.

We had the Korean Short Ribs (inedible – greasy, and less meat than fat and gristle) and the Smothered Potato Chips to start.  DO get the Chips – they were actually pretty good.  In house made chips dressed up like potato skins and the last one was as crispy and crunchy as the first one.  Then we had a burger and the fish & chips.  The burger was “meh” but the fish of the fish & chips was pretty good as well.  It’s not the best I have ever had, but certainly not the worst (I really need to write a piece on just that dish…it’s one of my faves).

Korean Short RIbs

Korean Short RIbs

Smothered Potato Chips

Smothered Potato Chips

Fish & Chips

Fish & Chips

I would suggest going there for happy hour because the beer is really cheap!  At $2.50 per pint for the house made brews, it’s a steal.  No great bargains on the food, just $1 off the regular menu pricing, but that means you can get those smothered potato chips and save a buck. If you are thinking about getting a growler to go, know this: you have to buy the growler itself in the GIFT SHOP near the registration desk of the hotel and then bring it BACK to the bar to be filled and pay the tap fee there.  A major pain in the ass, and unless you are really motivated, it’s a damper on the sale. The other important thing to know about Triple 7 in my eyes is that they have a “Variable IPA” tap.  I am a hop head of the nth degree.  IPA’s are my favorite style, so this appeals to me.  Their IPA tap changes all the time and you never know what’s going to be on tap.  The lovely Sour IPA is just one of the variants that Ken makes.

If you are downtown, go, eat the potato chips, have a beer and leave.  That’s the best I can tell you.