Hopped Up is a Youtube show by UA graduates Charles Lynch, Nick Fimbres and Nathan Lee. The web series has previously featured breweries and restaurants like Dragoon Brewery, Borderlands Brewing Company and local bar and art gallery Mr. Head's. The latest episode highlights Old Bisbee Brewing Company. Brewmaster and co-owner Victor Winquist gives Lynch a tour of the bar, faculty and some insight on how they make their authentic green beer.

Don't shotgun a beer like a D.A.B., bro.

Scott Arellanno and  Wyatt Thurston of Raging Mammoth launched a new Kickstarter project that will change the world of shotgunning beer, forever. It's called the Beer Tusk. Arellanno and Thurston are both seniors at the University of Arizona and want to help you party harder than Andrew W.K. on a good day. 

" 'Shotgunning' has been around since the eighties. We noticed that people were cutting their fingers and hurting themselves," Arellano said in a phone interview. The entrepreneurs struggled to settle with a final product after various beer claw designs and beta testing with friends, family, college students and graduates looking to relive the glory days.

A pledge for as little as $10 will get you a Beer Tusk that doubles as a keychain bottle cap opener that creates the perfect square to thrust alcohol in your "party hole." The page says there was some thought and science behind this invention: 

After a year of testing, through maximum exposure at college parties, tailgates, and gatherings... our tusks are still working like the day they were made.

Life According To Jimmy Youtube star Christian Pierce gives his endorsement and demonstrates how to use the best party invention since bottle cap openers embedded to your flip flops:

We've seen a glut of quality craft beer roll through these parts in recent months, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon as Bone Dry Brewery starts landing on tap handles across the city.

Bone Dry is the brainchild of Frank Naughton (yes, of that Naughton company, though he's making an effort to separate his hobby from his livelihood, so don't ask for beer at his store) who got into home brewing 15 years ago. As most homebrewers do, his batches went through fits and starts (a few good batches, a few exploding bottles, a few that tasted like motor oil, etc.) before he hit on a winner.

"I made some decent stuff along the way, but I made some really bad stuff too. Skunk stuff, you know? It's a labor of love, man," he says. Later he tells me that many of his brews were after family members and pets, including a beer named for his son he calls "Tre's Equis," playing off of the famous Mexican brand.

The "Bone Dry" name, he tells me, is just fun: "People just like saying it — Bone Dry!" he said. The brand itself is part of a small project he's had in mind for a while; the LLC was created two years ago, before he came up with the recipe he liked. From there, it was a matter of chatting with Barrio Brewing, who he contracted to do the production, and Golden Eagle to get the distribution set up. 

Now, Naughton is visibly pumped: he's firing off bone-related puns left and right, with ideas for branding his beers ranging from the benign ("Big Boned") to the moderately-unpublishable (dick jokes!), making new connections with every sentence. Talking with him about his pet project, one that's taken more than two years to get going, he reminds me of a Jack Black or an Ed Helms on The Office...but without the manic nature or terrible ties.

Bone Dry Amber Ale itself is fairly simple: It's a good, strong (6.7% ABV) amber ale ("It's got meat on the bones," Naughton quips; seriously, the puns never stop). It's a drinkable beer designed to appeal to most anyone who picks up a pint of it; hoppy, a bit of malt flavoring, with some caramel taste to it. Not too thick, and not bready, it goes down easily. Basically, it's like New Belgium's Fat Tire, but hoppier. 

The party tonight, Oct. 24, is party at Fini's Landing, 5689 N. Swan Road, is the beginning of a roll-out that'll take little more than a week, with launch parties set for bars and restaurants around Tucson. Each bar is donating money from each pint's sale to a different charity of their choosing (Fini's Landing is donating to the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection), and sales from each shirt are going to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona. Fini's will also feature music from classic rock troubadour Scotty P, who'll be joined by Naughton on a few tunes.

This is just a test run for Naughton; if it goes well, he hopes to roll out another batch during the holiday season. "What's fun is it hits all of the above: I get to put my brand out there and try it, see if people like it; it helps charity; and it makes people laugh. It's a grand slam right there." 

The Fini's Landing party starts at 6 p.m., with another party set for tomorrow night at Old Pueblo Grille, 60 N. Alvernon Way. For more on where the Bone Dry tour is set to stop next, head to the Bone Dry Brewing website.

Here's your chance to find out if World Beer Tucson is a trick or treat.


The new franchise is opening it's doors at 9 a.m. Thursday, October 31, Halloween night. World of Beer is located at 350 E. Congress St. on the bottom floor of the Cadence property next door to the Rialto Theatre. The Facebook event page says there will be chicken and Belgian waffles for breakfast and a costume contest in the evening. The chain bar offers up to 500 bottled beers and 50 brews on tap. There's going to be a sneak peek preview night on Monday, but you have to have get a special ticket from Justin. You know Justin, right?

H20 Discotec, located at 61 E. Congress Street and brought to you by the folks behind Zen Rock and Sapphire, has been in the works for awhile and is seemingly opening soon with dazzling neon-light bathrooms, a LED ceiling and very expensive water features. Apparently, if you want to fully experience the bottle-service glamour of H20, you need to be a VIP member? Well, that's not entirely correct...according to the application form, women are set, but the guys need to fill out a form to get a card to get into a Tucson nightclub.

Information you need to give out if you want to apply:

• Basic contact stuff like your name, address, email, phone number.
• A link to your Facebook page
• Your employer
• Your income
• Your martial status
• How often you go out and where?
• What kind of music you like
• Your experience with bottle service

Give over all that data (I was looking for where to put my Social Security number and didn't see that field, so I just put it in the bottle service section) and you might be able to get your hands on a Black Card as a VIP member. No idea what that means, but I'M PRETTY PSYCHED ABOUT IT, BRO.

Attention all female Tucsonans that like to have fun and drink.

The new female social group Girls Night Out is hosting it's first event tonight at Tap & Bottle, 403 North Sixth Avenue.

New Belgium and GPO collaborated a special brew called "Sin & Tonic" for tonight's event.  The Facebook event page says the drink is made with Sorachi Ace hops, juniper & citrus spice-blend and even some quinine were employed in the production of this rarity. 6.2% ABV.

There will be a Q&A session and live twitter discussion with New Belgium co-founder and CEO Kim Jordan and GPO co-founder Jenn Litz. Pints are only $3 and there will be raffles and gives. The party starts at 6 p.m. Click here to RSVP on the Facebook event page. 

Hear that? That's the sound of more microbreweries coming.

Kyle Jefferson announced on Twitter that Pueblo Vida Brewing will be opening its doors in Spring 2014.

We're almost here #Tucson! Cant wait to join the growing #craftbeer scene! Lease signed on 1918 warehouse in @Downtown_Tucson, AZ.— Pueblo Vida Brewing (@PuebloVida) October 14, 2013

Jefferson said in a phone interview that Pueblo Vida will be located at 115 East Broadway Blvd. He's taking over what used to be The Underestimated City clothing shop next to Shot in The Dark. "I want to Pueblo Vida to embody that small town feel that Tucson has," Jefferson said. Before moving back to Tucson a year ago Jefferson was the head brewer at Lazy Boy Brewing Company in Seattle. Jefferson grew up in Seattle but has a lot of family history and relatives here.

It would appear that the Republican Party is unwilling to deal with the mad men prepared to drive the country straight off a cliff, and while an impending credit default, the totally screwed-up inability of the government to pay death benefits to the families of those killed in combat, the closing of the national parks, and all the other totally avoidable stupid bullshit that's been a part of this fiasco are bad enough, it turns out these morons are keeping us from enjoying new and delicious craft beer now as well:

Stores will still offer plenty of suds. But the shutdown has closed an obscure agency that quietly approves new breweries, recipes and labels, which could create huge delays throughout the rapidly growing craft industry, whose customers expect a constant supply of inventive and seasonal beers....

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB, is a little-known arm of the Treasury Department. The agency will continue to process taxes from existing permit holders, but applications for anything new are in limbo.

"One could think of this shutdown as basically stopping business indefinitely for anyone who didn't have certain paperwork in place back in mid-August," said Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association, which represents more than 1,900 U.S. breweries....

The closing isn't expected to have much effect on industry giants such as MillerCoors or Anheuser-Busch. They can continue to produce existing products as usual. But the shutdown poses a huge problem for craft brewers, who build their businesses by producing quirky, offbeat flavors and introducing new seasonal beers, sometimes as often as every quarter.

GET THE PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES READY, PEOPLE. It's time to fix this mess right now, one way or another. I'm definitely not cool with total economic collapse and I get that those Tea Party types aren't generally into drinking or fun or whatever, but if this crap is going to stand in the way of beers I haven't had the chance to enjoy, I'm not going to be able to cope terribly well.

The party band Red Baraat is having a Red Baraat Hype Night at Tap & Bottle, 403 N. Sixth Ave., from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 2. The party comes complete with a DJ spinning Red Baraat tunes, Tap & Bottle's beer and wine selection and vittles from the Twisted Tandoor. You will also have a chance to win tickets to the Red Baraat show on Friday, Oct. 4, at the Rialto. Go out and party with the band described as "a hybrid of Indian bhangra and New Orleans big-band music," enjoy some libations and chow down on some good food. What else could you want?

RSVP on Facebook right now.

Weekly beer geeks, you may remember the As-Yet-Unnamed-Beer collaboration between Tucson's Dragoon Brewing Company and New Belgium Brewing, which we informed you of back in July, and have been awaiting with bated breath ever since.



Well, the beer finally has a name: Westerbrü (and yes, we are confident that the umlaut is the source of its powers) — and more importantly, you can finally taste it this weekend.




New Belgium Brewing Southern Arizona just posted information for a series of events taking place this weekend, where they'll be rolling through our fair city to promote the collaboration with Dragoon, who recently won the Born and Brewed Tucson Beer Cup for the second straight year.



From the poster that you can see at right, there will be events on Friday, Sept. 27 at Dragoon Brewing (1859 W. Grant Rd.) from 4 to 5:30 p.m.; at 1702 (1702 E. Speedway Blvd.) from 6 to 7:30 p.m.; and at Tap and Bottle (403 N. Sixth Ave.) from 8 to 9:30 p.m.



And if you can't make it on Friday, Tap and Bottle (who recently took third place in the Mountain West region of CraftBeer.com's survey of the Great American Beer Bars) will be running a Beer Brunch on Sunday, Sept. 29, from 10:30 a.m. to close, featuring beer mimosas, bloody beers, and food from Chef's Kitchen and Seis Curbside Kitchen throughout the day.