Some of the assignments I receive from this magazine aren't exactly "plum." I'm like Mikey of Life cereal fame whenever an article requires a sort of outdoors-adventure "Walter Mitty." Not that I don't appreciate the opportunity to meet albino spiders in dark caverns while spelunking with professional cave explorers, nor do I really mind interviewing soggy fisherman to discover some of the ever intricate fascinations of fly-tying. I am a qualified "man-out-of-place," a genuine neophyte at most proficiencies. My editor claims that I tend to illuminate the unknown more effectively because of, rather than in spite of, my bumbling inadequacy. He's too kind.

 

But all of that is about to change. I've been assigned an "eat-your-heart-out" story so plum it would make even Little Jack Horner purple with envy. In the next four issues, I am tasked with an adventure in plumb-line with my meager skill set, to seek out and drink every craft-beer in the Four Corners and report on the people, places, and beers discovered. Thus, I can finally die a happy struggling writer.

 

I'll begin with a few ground rules to guide your expectations and mine a.k.a things about "craft brewing" that don't interest me. First off, the words "craft brewing" will not appear here again. I don't care where the hops come from, nor about any other ingredients. I will not investigate much of the "process" nor the steps in making the beer. You will not need to know the meaning of "wort" or "mash," nor care about them. In fact, much to the dismay of the nouveau beer enthusiasts, I'm going to completely drain all of the pretension out of the beer bottle in favor of a more authentic Norm-like approach. The reporting will be so authentic that sometimes I may "appear" to be drunk right here on the page. Favorites will be noted, and I may have to reluctantly resort to the occasional "mouth-feel" reference, but I am just as likely to report on whether a beer is "gulpable" or "bong-worthy" (the latter may or may not be a gauge of quality). I expect some beers to taste better because of atmosphere, food accompaniment, and quality of the patrons and the attractiveness of those serving them. If at any time I feel compelled to over-intellectualize the beer found, I will remember the words of Jack Handy, a guy who lives in the first town we'll visit: "If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose."

 

And with those thoughts in mind, I slung my leg over my trusted stead Rosanante, bid the sober world adieu, checked my saddle bags for an icy collection of Ska Buster Nut Brown Ale from my hometown of Durango, and imagined myself a modern-day Everett Ruess. And then I thought, Has anyone really looked in the pubs for Everett? Perhaps we'll find him there.

Ah, Santa Fe, the art, the cultural and historical significance, the obsessive propensity to house even mailboxes, gas stations and dogs in adobe, and, as it turns out, a place beer-soaked in Spanish and native history.

 

There is only one brewery in Santa Fe that serves breakfast, so we begin there. The Santa Fe Brewing Company may be the most notorious of the New Mexico breweries as you've probably at least seen their bottles in the stores. Its Pub & Grill sits next to the brewery a good way from the historic Plaza with fantastic views of I-25. The place feels beer-serious and focused on the parties beer engenders rather than being nestled among the mass of Kokopelli and dream-catcher "galleries" in the more genteel parts of town. There's an outdoor stage, an indoor stage, game tables and a thankfully understated pub with a tin roof, fireplace, warm tile floors and casual wait staff. This is the place that almost changed the article from "Beers of the Southwest" to "Breakfast Burritos of the Southwest." The breakfast burrito it served with eggs, potatoes, giant hunks of bacon, red onions, cheddar and spicy green chili was a pantheon among its kind. They charge $3.50 for it, and one could easily feed 10 trail-weary beer guzzlers. I finished an entire one under the auspices of necessity, since a full belly might ameliorate the damage I was about to do.

 

The bartender, Marie, set 'em up, as the love scene from "Out of Sight" played behind her on a flat-screen with the sound off and closed-captioning on (J'Lo's performance made me feel that every bar in the world should be required to play movies like this.). The song "It's Raining Men" played on the house system (which made the silent movie seem less ideal).

Perhaps a note on methodology - A thorough study of all beers brewed in the Four Corners might require days on end of drinking in each locale. We had one day for Santa Fe and three breweries to visit, with about of 32 beers to sample. Though we prefer full pints, four-ounce samples were a concession. We would sample any beer they'd pour and rate it on appearance, aroma, flavor, palate (aka mouth-feel) and burpability (a progressive category not often used by other expert tasters). When I refer to we/our, please know I was accompanied by a professional muse and beer-taster, so as to garner a second opinion, inspire witticisms, and to drive Rosanante as necessary.

 

One of the things we learned from tasting beer was that drinking beer is far superior to tasting beer. Tasting beer sucks Meister Brau. We also found that it was very difficult to a) stay sober enough to rate consistently and come up with interesting non-repetitive commentary and b) not rate our favorite beer style (i.e. brown ale) as the best and our least favorite (i.e. stout, which universally tastes like tree-bark and is a revolting means of alcohol delivery) as the worst. We tried to be unbiased, and just like people trying to be PC, it's going to be damned obvious that we're posers, who'd frankly rather drink ourselves silly making pyramids out of Tecate cans, con limon thank you very much.

 

That said, the Santa Fe Nut Brown was the grand champion and the Santa Fe Stout fell flat, as it should of course. One benefit to tasting vs. guzzling was the discovery of Doppelbock, a beer I would not have ordered among other more customary choices. Santa Fe Brewing's version is an attractive deep amber with a substantial head. It has cherry and spicy aromas, a champagne-like sweetness and flavor, and as clean a finish as the 2007 Red Sox. This beer is equally appealing to men and women with its hefty German-sounding name contrasted with a drinkability that makes some flavors of Kool-Aid seem a little bitter. A sixer of this, some chocolate-covered strawberries, a gift of a Louisa McElwain original landscape from Manitou Galleries, followed by a luxurious suite at the Inn and Spa at Loretto is a sure-fire stratagem to putting your loved-one's inhibitions at bay, though it will set you back about $7,000. Buy a 12-pack and you can probably get by with some strawberry-flavored Jolly Ranchers and the back seat of your Rosanante.

 

We departed the brewery with engorged bellies and a slight buzz and turned in behind an SUV with a license plate that read, "TIGUR." I felt a little Hemingway-esque on a beer-safari chasing TIGUR to the next watering hole, only to write about it later. I wasn't kidding about the Walter Mitty thing. We found the Second Street Brewery by some minor miracle, as it is well-camouflaged from the street, also tucked away from the maddening crowds of Southwest culture vultures. It is non-descript from the outside but turns to a veritable fiesta for the eye on the inside. The place was teeming with people on a Sunday afternoon, pretty and hip people, people who looked like they all belonged to the same avant-garde bohemian yuppie brigade. The place feels wild and eclectic with bold warm colors, a cement floor, a great Martian disk lighting above the bar and a giant mural of the bar itself, which inspired some Sartre-like reflection and introspection. In this general spirit, our server regarded us with almost total and purposeful disregard, annoyed at our obvious incompetence in ordering. He was used to people with notebooks and paid no attention to our purpose, though asking us twice if we were serious about the quantities of beer samples ordered. We lunched on a steamed artichoke with chipotle aioli (how cliché) with luxuriously soft leaves on our tongues and a gently spicy bite from the sauce.

Seriously, this beer-reviewing is a pale idea compared to a Four Corners food review (hint to editor). By 10 beers in, I could barely stand another sip of beer, though I felt at peace with the world and desirous of a little nap on one of the many trampolines in the yet-to-be gentrified neighborhood. All beers benefited from grade-inflation brought on by inebriation and we frankly have no idea how good any of it was. This may account for our choice of the Cream Stout as the winning entry. Its appearance was so dark it was like peering into my very soul and its head was a sturdy raft on the devil's sea until the last sip. Instead of the stout characteristic of distilled tree bark, we were treated to a French-existentialist roast of fine coffee accents, a soft creamy palette, with a finish that would last pleasantly until our next meal. This is a stout for the meek, an enlightening surprise, as was the Second Street Brewery and its lively patronage.

 

Some little kid woke us from our naps crying that there were people on his trampoline, as if his drunk of a father had never transgressed upon the bounder. It was time for dinner and our final stop in Santa Fe, the Blue Corn Café and Brewery. In contrast to our first two stops, this brewery is just off the historic Plaza, scrubbed and polite, polished and tourist-sweetened. The décor is of cozy soothing yellow walls, exposed wood beam ceilings, strategic accent lighting, comfortable adobe-encased booths and undemanding black-and-white photographs. Our server knew all the intricate and previously dismissed details of the brewing process for each beer and suggested a specific order of tasting them. The place felt more like a trendy Mexican food joint than a brewery. The food was notably excellent without the high-grease factor that cuisine sometimes involves, but with fresh juice margaritas (we were sick of beer) and "kick ass" flan (we were sick of metaphor and simile). Where the Second Street Brewery had beers that seemed more organically derived, less filtered, and brewed by some beer-loving poetic freak, the beers at the Blue Corn were like the quarterback at my high school; perfect appearance, balanced, and, on the surface, universally loved. The place reminded me of that line from those 80s Pantene commercials with Kelly LeBrock - "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" (Hate me because I married that jackass Steven Segal). Our favorite was the Broken Spoke Honey Wheat, and it was as drinkable as a certain scene from "Weird Science" was rewindable in my teens. It had the appearance of "I've struck" gold, with the perfume of wildflower honey, a sweet citrus-like chardonnay flavor, a semi-creamy mouth-feel (sorry) and medium body. I drank a full pint even thought I'd had enough.

 

Thanks to that last Honey Wheat, I awoke feeling a little groggy before our drive to Taos and Eske's Brew Pub and Eatery. We arrived at a little after 11 a.m. hoping for nourishment. We found closed doors. Eske's didn't open until dinner. The forlorn look on our faces encouraged the proprietor, Wanda, to let us in anyway. The place was to Santa Fe breweries what Taos is to Santa Fe, understated and authentic. It had picnic tables inside, a couple of patios, wood floors and ceilings and a tiny opening near the kitchen for a bar, all encased in a rustic adobe building right near, you guessed it, the Plaza. Wanda makes a different special every night including sushi, southwestern meatloaf, and the ever-loved blue-plate special. Robert Earl Keen was singing through the speakers and there was a Simpson's clock on the wall.

 

Salomon, who goes by Sal, started out as a home-brewing customer of the place and ended up the brewmaster. He poured us some beers and placed them in a muffin tray holder. The Taos Green Chile Beer was a no-brainer favorite with a lively aroma of indigenous green chile, a taste to match, and the kicker - a spicy finish. I want to drink several with a plate full of tamales next time I'm in town. Once the tasting was over, Sal took us down for the brewery tour, which went against our principles but seemed only polite to participate in given the special treatment. Fortunately, the brewery is in the basement and looks like Sal might have just moved in his home-brew kit to fill in the 40 or so square feet it resides in. We were bummed to go, because Sal and Wanda were not only affable hosts, they were people we wished to drink with in a place we wished to drink in. They won our unanimous "Best Brewery So Far Award" primarily on the strength of authenticity.

 

Eske's owned that award for an entire day, and then lost it to an unexpected winner in Farmington, N.M. We say unexpected because, frankly, and I hope I can be frank, we weren't too psyched about swinging through Farmington for any reason other than as a signpost that we were almost home. I don't mean to offend the fine people of Farmington, but let's just say the Travel and Tourism office there has their work cut out for them. And if it were me, I'd lead with The Three Rivers Brewery. In fact, I would travel to Farmington from places as far-flung as say, Durango, just to go to Three Rivers. We were there on a Sunday at 5 p.m. and the place was already jumping with happy, drunken families. We were in luck to have my son Dylan in tow on the trip, because the Brewery is great with kids, even serving its ample meals up on Frisbee plates the kids can take home, and they can get loaded on six kinds of homemade sodas. The brewery is in an historic building in downtown Farmington with sculpted ceilings and artifacts from the building's history covering the walls.

 

Our server had cool brew-house tats, and treated us with congenial kindness and hospitality. We waited for a table behind a guy with a Snap-On jacket on and sat across from a guy wearing a Ralph Nader T-shirt. The menu was full of tough choices, as the "covered and smothered" chili cheese fries beckoned, and the Drunken Prime Rib Sandwich won out and proved a worthy accompaniment to the 6-ounce beer samples (6 ounces!). They serve more than 50 varieties of beer, so you never know what's on tap. There were 12 the night we visited. Call us softies, and our tougher-than-you server did, but the Orchard Street Raspberry Wheat just beat out its ESB by a nose. Literally, it was one point higher in the aroma category, which a touch of raspberry will really do for just about anything. The appearance reminded me of the sparkling raspberry sun-tea my mom would make in the summers of my youth and the aroma was of huge raspberries, which always hit softly before each sip of semi-sweet, but not overly fruity, flavor and a raspberry finish that brought a little boy's smile to my face. I left with a fully belly, a fizzed-up kid, and a few dollars in my pocket. It made me rethink a few preconceived notions, and I'll go ahead and apologize for the fine people of Farmington for those.

 

I toast to New Mexico and its fine breweries, but there are beers in Arizona, and we're off to drink them.

 

Inside/Outside Southwest magazine assures  its readers that it checks Chris Bettin's pulse before slapping him awake to cover his assignments. Some of the assignments I receive from this magazine aren't exactly "plum." I'm like Mikey of Life cereal fame whenever an article requires a sort of outdoors-adventure "Walter Mitty." Not that I don't appreciate the opportunity to meet albino spiders in dark caverns while spelunking with professional cave explorers, nor do I really mind interviewing soggy fisherman to discover some of the ever intricate fascinations of fly-tying. I am a qualified "man-out-of-place," a genuine neophyte at most proficiencies. My editor claims that I tend to illuminate the unknown more effectively because of, rather than in spite of, my bumbling inadequacy. He's too kind.

 

But all of that is about to change. I've been assigned an "eat-your-heart-out" story so plum it would make even Little Jack Horner purple with envy. In the next four issues, I am tasked with an adventure in plumb-line with my meager skill set, to seek out and drink every craft-beer in the Four Corners and report on the people, places, and beers discovered. Thus, I can finally die a happy struggling writer.

 

I'll begin with a few ground rules to guide your expectations and mine a.k.a things about "craft brewing" that don't interest me. First off, the words "craft brewing" will not appear here again. I don't care where the hops come from, nor about any other ingredients. I will not investigate much of the "process" nor the steps in making the beer. You will not need to know the meaning of "wort" or "mash," nor care about them. In fact, much to the dismay of the nouveau beer enthusiasts, I'm going to completely drain all of the pretension out of the beer bottle in favor of a more authentic Norm-like approach. The reporting will be so authentic that sometimes I may "appear" to be drunk right here on the page. Favorites will be noted, and I may have to reluctantly resort to the occasional "mouth-feel" reference, but I am just as likely to report on whether a beer is "gulpable" or "bong-worthy" (the latter may or may not be a gauge of quality). I expect some beers to taste better because of atmosphere, food accompaniment, and quality of the patrons and the attractiveness of those serving them. If at any time I feel compelled to over-intellectualize the beer found, I will remember the words of Jack Handy, a guy who lives in the first town we'll visit: "If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose."

 

And with those thoughts in mind, I slung my leg over my trusted stead Rosanante, bid the sober world adieu, checked my saddle bags for an icy collection of Ska Buster Nut Brown Ale from my hometown of Durango, and imagined myself a modern-day Everett Ruess. And then I thought, Has anyone really looked in the pubs for Everett? Perhaps we'll find him there.

 

Ah, Santa Fe, the art, the cultural and historical significance, the obsessive propensity to house even mailboxes, gas stations and dogs in adobe, and, as it turns out, a place beer-soaked in Spanish and native history.

 

There is only one brewery in Santa Fe that serves breakfast, so we begin there. The Santa Fe Brewing Company may be the most notorious of the New Mexico breweries as you've probably at least seen their bottles in the stores. Its Pub & Grill sits next to the brewery a good way from the historic Plaza with fantastic views of I-25. The place feels beer-serious and focused on the parties beer engenders rather than being nestled among the mass of Kokopelli and dream-catcher "galleries" in the more genteel parts of town. There's an outdoor stage, an indoor stage, game tables and a thankfully understated pub with a tin roof, fireplace, warm tile floors and casual wait staff. This is the place that almost changed the article from "Beers of the Southwest" to "Breakfast Burritos of the Southwest." The breakfast burrito it served with eggs, potatoes, giant hunks of bacon, red onions, cheddar and spicy green chili was a pantheon among its kind. They charge $3.50 for it, and one could easily feed 10 trail-weary beer guzzlers. I finished an entire one under the auspices of necessity, since a full belly might ameliorate the damage I was about to do.

 

The bartender, Marie, set 'em up, as the love scene from "Out of Sight" played behind her on a flat-screen with the sound off and closed-captioning on (J'Lo's performance made me feel that every bar in the world should be required to play movies like this.). The song "It's Raining Men" played on the house system (which made the silent movie seem less ideal).

Perhaps a note on methodology - A thorough study of all beers brewed in the Four Corners might require days on end of drinking in each locale. We had one day for Santa Fe and three breweries to visit, with about of 32 beers to sample. Though we prefer full pints, four-ounce samples were a concession. We would sample any beer they'd pour and rate it on appearance, aroma, flavor, palate (aka mouth-feel) and burpability (a progressive category not often used by other expert tasters). When I refer to we/our, please know I was accompanied by a professional muse and beer-taster, so as to garner a second opinion, inspire witticisms, and to drive Rosanante as necessary.

 

One of the things we learned from tasting beer was that drinking beer is far superior to tasting beer. Tasting beer sucks Meister Brau. We also found that it was very difficult to a) stay sober enough to rate consistently and come up with interesting non-repetitive commentary and b) not rate our favorite beer style (i.e. brown ale) as the best and our least favorite (i.e. stout, which universally tastes like tree-bark and is a revolting means of alcohol delivery) as the worst. We tried to be unbiased, and just like people trying to be PC, it's going to be damned obvious that we're posers, who'd frankly rather drink ourselves silly making pyramids out of Tecate cans, con limon thank you very much.

That said, the Santa Fe Nut Brown was the grand champion and the Santa Fe Stout fell flat, as it should of course. One benefit to tasting vs. guzzling was the discovery of Doppelbock, a beer I would not have ordered among other more customary choices. Santa Fe Brewing's version is an attractive deep amber with a substantial head. It has cherry and spicy aromas, a champagne-like sweetness and flavor, and as clean a finish as the 2007 Red Sox. This beer is equally appealing to men and women with its hefty German-sounding name contrasted with a drinkability that makes some flavors of Kool-Aid seem a little bitter. A sixer of this, some chocolate-covered strawberries, a gift of a Louisa McElwain original landscape from Manitou Galleries, followed by a luxurious suite at the Inn and Spa at Loretto is a sure-fire stratagem to putting your loved-one's inhibitions at bay, though it will set you back about $7,000. Buy a 12-pack and you can probably get by with some strawberry-flavored Jolly Ranchers and the back seat of your Rosanante.

 

We departed the brewery with engorged bellies and a slight buzz and turned in behind an SUV with a license plate that read, "TIGUR." I felt a little Hemingway-esque on a beer-safari chasing TIGUR to the next watering hole, only to write about it later. I wasn't kidding about the Walter Mitty thing. We found the Second Street Brewery by some minor miracle, as it is well-camouflaged from the street, also tucked away from the maddening crowds of Southwest culture vultures. It is non-descript from the outside but turns to a veritable fiesta for the eye on the inside. The place was teeming with people on a Sunday afternoon, pretty and hip people, people who looked like they all belonged to the same avant-garde bohemian yuppie brigade. The place feels wild and eclectic with bold warm colors, a cement floor, a great Martian disk lighting above the bar and a giant mural of the bar itself, which inspired some Sartre-like reflection and introspection. In this general spirit, our server regarded us with almost total and purposeful disregard, annoyed at our obvious incompetence in ordering. He was used to people with notebooks and paid no attention to our purpose, though asking us twice if we were serious about the quantities of beer samples ordered. We lunched on a steamed artichoke with chipotle aioli (how cliché) with luxuriously soft leaves on our tongues and a gently spicy bite from the sauce. Seriously, this beer-reviewing is a pale idea compared to a Four Corners food review (hint to editor). By 10 beers in, I could barely stand another sip of beer, though I felt at peace with the world and desirous of a little nap on one of the many trampolines in the yet-to-be gentrified neighborhood. All beers benefited from grade-inflation brought on by inebriation and we frankly have no idea how good any of it was. This may account for our choice of the Cream Stout as the winning entry. Its appearance was so dark it was like peering into my very soul and its head was a sturdy raft on the devil's sea until the last sip. Instead of the stout characteristic of distilled tree bark, we were treated to a French-existentialist roast of fine coffee accents, a soft creamy palette, with a finish that would last pleasantly until our next meal. This is a stout for the meek, an enlightening surprise, as was the Second Street Brewery and its lively patronage.

 

Some little kid woke us from our naps crying that there were people on his trampoline, as if his drunk of a father had never transgressed upon the bounder. It was time for dinner and our final stop in Santa Fe, the Blue Corn Café and Brewery. In contrast to our first two stops, this brewery is just off the historic Plaza, scrubbed and polite, polished and tourist-sweetened. The décor is of cozy soothing yellow walls, exposed wood beam ceilings, strategic accent lighting, comfortable adobe-encased booths and undemanding black-and-white photographs. Our server knew all the intricate and previously dismissed details of the brewing process for each beer and suggested a specific order of tasting them. The place felt more like a trendy Mexican food joint than a brewery. The food was notably excellent without the high-grease factor that cuisine sometimes involves, but with fresh juice margaritas (we were sick of beer) and "kick ass" flan (we were sick of metaphor and simile). Where the Second Street Brewery had beers that seemed more organically derived, less filtered, and brewed by some beer-loving poetic freak, the beers at the Blue Corn were like the quarterback at my high school; perfect appearance, balanced, and, on the surface, universally loved. The place reminded me of that line from those 80s Pantene commercials with Kelly LeBrock - "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" (Hate me because I married that jackass Steven Segal). Our favorite was the Broken Spoke Honey Wheat, and it was as drinkable as a certain scene from "Weird Science" was rewindable in my teens. It had the appearance of "I've struck" gold, with the perfume of wildflower honey, a sweet citrus-like chardonnay flavor, a semi-creamy mouth-feel (sorry) and medium body. I drank a full pint even thought I'd had enough.

 

Thanks to that last Honey Wheat, I awoke feeling a little groggy before our drive to Taos and Eske's Brew Pub and Eatery. We arrived at a little after 11 a.m. hoping for nourishment. We found closed doors. Eske's didn't open until dinner. The forlorn look on our faces encouraged the proprietor, Wanda, to let us in anyway. The place was to Santa Fe breweries what Taos is to Santa Fe, understated and authentic. It had picnic tables inside, a couple of patios, wood floors and ceilings and a tiny opening near the kitchen for a bar, all encased in a rustic adobe building right near, you guessed it, the Plaza. Wanda makes a different special every night including sushi, southwestern meatloaf, and the ever-loved blue-plate special. Robert Earl Keen was singing through the speakers and there was a Simpson's clock on the wall.

 

Salomon, who goes by Sal, started out as a home-brewing customer of the place and ended up the brewmaster. He poured us some beers and placed them in a muffin tray holder. The Taos Green Chile Beer was a no-brainer favorite with a lively aroma of indigenous green chile, a taste to match, and the kicker - a spicy finish. I want to drink several with a plate full of tamales next time I'm in town. Once the tasting was over, Sal took us down for the brewery tour, which went against our principles but seemed only polite to participate in given the special treatment. Fortunately, the brewery is in the basement and looks like Sal might have just moved in his home-brew kit to fill in the 40 or so square feet it resides in. We were bummed to go, because Sal and Wanda were not only affable hosts, they were people we wished to drink with in a place we wished to drink in. They won our unanimous "Best Brewery So Far Award" primarily on the strength of authenticity.

 

Eske's owned that award for an entire day, and then lost it to an unexpected winner in Farmington, N.M. We say unexpected because, frankly, and I hope I can be frank, we weren't too psyched about swinging through Farmington for any reason other than as a signpost that we were almost home. I don't mean to offend the fine people of Farmington, but let's just say the Travel and Tourism office there has their work cut out for them. And if it were me, I'd lead with The Three Rivers Brewery. In fact, I would travel to Farmington from places as far-flung as say, Durango, just to go to Three Rivers. We were there on a Sunday at 5 p.m. and the place was already jumping with happy, drunken families. We were in luck to have my son Dylan in tow on the trip, because the Brewery is great with kids, even serving its ample meals up on Frisbee plates the kids can take home, and they can get loaded on six kinds of homemade sodas. The brewery is in an historic building in downtown Farmington with sculpted ceilings and artifacts from the building's history covering the walls.

 

Our server had cool brew-house tats, and treated us with congenial kindness and hospitality. We waited for a table behind a guy with a Snap-On jacket on and sat across from a guy wearing a Ralph Nader T-shirt. The menu was full of tough choices, as the "covered and smothered" chili cheese fries beckoned, and the Drunken Prime Rib Sandwich won out and proved a worthy accompaniment to the 6-ounce beer samples (6 ounces!). They serve more than 50 varieties of beer, so you never know what's on tap. There were 12 the night we visited. Call us softies, and our tougher-than-you server did, but the Orchard Street Raspberry Wheat just beat out its ESB by a nose. Literally, it was one point higher in the aroma category, which a touch of raspberry will really do for just about anything. The appearance reminded me of the sparkling raspberry sun-tea my mom would make in the summers of my youth and the aroma was of huge raspberries, which always hit softly before each sip of semi-sweet, but not overly fruity, flavor and a raspberry finish that brought a little boy's smile to my face. I left with a fully belly, a fizzed-up kid, and a few dollars in my pocket. It made me rethink a few preconceived notions, and I'll go ahead and apologize for the fine people of Farmington for those.

 

I toast to New Mexico and its fine breweries, but there are beers in Arizona, and we're off to drink them.

 

Inside/Outside Southwest magazine assures its readers that it checks Chris Bettin's pulse before slapping him awake to cover his assignments.