This #Blonde is for you, #Tucson! #BarrioIsTucson #SabinoCanyon #AdventuresOfTheTucsonBlonde #BarrioExplorer #hiking #packitinpackitout #beer #craftbeer

A photo posted by Barrio Brewing Co. (@barriobrewing) on Sep 28, 2016 at 4:43pm PDT

It’s time for the 25th birthday of the longest continuously brewed craft beer in the state of Arizona: the iconic Barrio Blonde. 

Ah, 25—a great age. If the Barrio Blonde were, say, a young, craft-beer-loving University of Arizona co-ed (a blonde, of course), she’d probably celebrate this birthday by gathering friends for a few rounds at her favorite local brewery.

But the Barrio Blonde is a beer, not a person … and in fact, the brewery that brews the Blonde is the very entity that’s celebrating the beer’s birthday. Oh, and the brewery—housed at both Barrio Brewing Company and Gentle Ben’s, both owned by brewmaster Dennis Arnold—is basically celebrating its birthday, too.

Gentle Ben’s—which Arnold purchased in 1991—has long been located in the heart of UA territory, on North Tyndall Avenue, in a building once serving as the Pi Beta Phi sorority house and Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house (not to mention, previously, as the official residence of the university’s presidents. In 1994 Gentle Ben’s moved to its current location on University Boulevard in Main Gate Square—still smack in the middle of UA stomping grounds—with Barrio Brewing Company launching 15 years later (at a not-too-far-away separate location) to increase Arnold’s brewing capacity.

Actually, the birthday party planned for the brewery (and the birthday beer, the Barrio Blonde) isn’t too different from a bar-party gathering ... but it will run for seven straight days.

Starting Sunday, Oct. 2, and continuing through Friday, Oct. 7, Barrio Brewing Company and Gentle Ben’s are both hosting anniversary dinners at the bars. Anyone who shows up to celebrate at either venue will get a special appetizer, a choice of entrée (and beer!) and a gelato dessert, plus a commemorative T-shirt and pint glass, all for $25.

There’s no special seating situation or mandatory times of arrival—just come when you feel like it. (You can still go to the bars between Oct. 2 and Oct. 7 and order anything off their menus, of course—but to officially participate in the party, just pay the 25 bucks and get the special course and souvenirs, OK?)

Whiskey lovers, Good Oak Bar (316 E. Congress St.) is calling your name this Thursday, Sept. 29.

If you want an education experience all about whiskey, get excited because Charlie Garrison of Garrison Brothers Distillery in Texas is hosting a seminar at the bar from 3-4 p.m. You'll want to RSVP for the event and it'll cost you $10.

The party really begins at the 6 p.m. with Garrison and Tucson's Stephen Paul from Hamilton Distillery, both of whom will be hanging out during the event to talk about their original whiskeys.

What more can you ask for? Good Oak promises bourbon-friendly food (including barbecue burgers!) on the menu, plus country and blues vinyl all night long.

If you're into the idea of the desert on your taste buds, then bottoms up!

You may be familiar with Good Oak Bar, 316 E. Congress Street., an alcoholic hangout that prides itself on serving local beer, wine and regional whiskey.

This weekend, the downtown bar will putting Terroir on Tap and serving a collection of beer with ingredients native to the Sonoran desert. Stop by anytime Sept. 2-10 to give it a try.

So, what is terroir? Well, it’s usually used in the wine world, but essentially terroir involves influences from a region's environment and puts it in the alcoholic beverage—in this case the environment of the Sonoran desert and locally grown fruits and veggies.

Here's a little bit about the event from Luke Anable, Good Oak's manager:

Beginning Thursday the 2nd of the September, Good Oak will feature draft beers from five breweries which they feel capture an aspect of the Sonoran desert through the use of native souring yeasts and local ingredients - a ‘terroir tap take over’ for the Labor Day weekend. We are especially excited to have the acclaimed Flagstaff brewery Wanderlust participating in the event as they typically don’t distribute their beer in Tucson due to their small production scale, providing us with a unique opportunity to share these unique high desert brews with the Tucson public.

We will have custom mini growlers for guests who want to enjoy these rare beers at home. Brewers will be stopping in throughout the weekend to pour and discuss their beer.

               

via GIPHY

We've gotten word that The Independent Distillery is gearing up for the big release of it's first batch of locally made liquor. 

Donald Northrup, founder and CEO of the bar and distillery, said last night that the release will take place at the cocktail bar and distillery's big anniversary bash next month. There are many other spirits coming in the future as well, all crafted with the place's handmade "grain-to-grass" philosophy. 

The Weekly will have a full story about The Independent Distillery's first year—which has been awash in fine drink and mirth—and its plans for the future in next week's issue. 

Beer, food and friends. Three things that dissolve worries and leave one warm, hoppy and ready to take on another day.

Now it's one thing to go to the local bar for a drink and a bite and it's another to go to a place where the menu and the people making the food change from night to night. The Tucson Hop Shop at 3230 N. Dodge Boulevard offers such an opportunity. 

The wine and beer bar (they also fill growlers), located within the Metal Arts Village, has a mouthwatering line-up of different food trucks that will be there through the end of the year. Check out the calendar here. 

The bar also encourages patrons to bring their own food, or to order in and dine in the urban beer garden. Get to it!

More on Tucson Hop Shop, including a list of the beers on tap, is over here. 

What do dwarves drink after slaying dragons all day? 

Tucson brewer Benjamin Vernon is pretty sure it would be his Dwarvish Ale, an earthy brew with a hefty oak finish that will be one of the debut beers when his Crooked Tooth Brewing Co. opens Downtown this fall.

Vernon has been working overtime—as in, every spare moment he has—to get the place cranking. First was the renovation of an old auto-service shop at 228 E. Sixth Street, near the corner of Sixth Street and Sixth Avenue. Then brewing tanks came in. Then kegs. 

Vernon has 15 years of brewing experience and beer is kind of elemental to his existence. He and his wife plan vacations around breweries—they visited 16 on a recent trip—and the guy is generally gonzo about beer in a variety of ways.

"I just love beer, man," said Vernon on a recent evening, popping a beer while power tools roared in the background. "Crooked Tooth is going to relish in what makes us different, in what makes a person unique and not a clone. We're going to make good beer and we're doing it our way."

Having talked to many Tucson beer people over the years I must say his approach to beer, and life in general, is equal parts thoughtfulness and intensity. This could get interesting. 

The Tucson Weekly will have a full story on the brewery just before the opening, but for the time being you can keep up with the progress here. 

In the mood for a little nostalgia—and vodka? Plan to go to the '90s Bar Crawl this Saturday, Aug. 6.

The crawl will stop in at a plethora of downtown bars (Elliott's on Congress, Batch Cafe & Bar, Highwire Lounge, R Bar, Playground, O'Malley's, Borderlands Brewing Co., the Surly Wench, Maloney's, Che's Lounge, Mr. Heads, Sky Bar and the Hut), all of which will be blasting '90s tunes and giving out "goodies." 

Registration starts at the Hut (305 N. 4th Avenue) at 6 p.m. The Bar Crawl itself will run fro 8 p.m. to midnight, followed by an afterparty at the Hut from midnight to 2 a.m.

Your $20 registration fee gets you food and drink specials, into the afterparty and goes (in part) to support Pima Paws for Life.

So work on your outfit (there's a costume contest) and dance moves (and a running man contest). Tickets are available online.

Local nanobrewery Public Brewhouse is celebrating its one year anniversary.

It took Mike Gura and Cody Van Haren, the two head brewers and owners at Public, three years to open up their brewery. The two met while working as EMTs on an ambulance together and have been brewing together for five years now. The idea to open a brewery originated in 2012, and was a full-fledged goal a year later. In November 2013 Gura started a Kickstarter, which raised $36,000 for the brewery.

After two years of dealing with zoning codes, licensing and certification the nanobrewery was able to open up in August 2015.

Gura began brewing 13 years ago in Utah, mainly out of necessity.

“The alcohol laws in Utah were such that you couldn’t buy good beer,” Gura said. You had to buy beer from the state liquor store, you had to buy singles, and it was always warm. The selection wasn’t very good and the beer was always gross, because it got skunk from being hot.”

Instead of committing a long drive to Colorado for good beer Gura decided to start brewing his own. The passion he developed for the process is evident to those around them.

“When a new shipment of hops comes in they're like kids in a candy store,” Christa Weidenschilling, a bartender at Public said. “Mike and Cody will talk about beer for hours and hours. They’ll point out the differences in grain and hops. You really learn a lot working here.”

That sense of community isn't an accident.

“Our name, Public, comes from the idea that a pub is a public house. We really wanted to create an environment people feel comfortable coming into," Gura said. "I think we provide a service that people appreciate. We have a lot of regulars from the neighborhood, which is exactly what we wanted. Local people coming in and having conversations, and sharing stories."

The giants of Arizona craft beer are coming together with Edible Baja Arizona to bring the good people of Tucson the mother of all tasting events: the Baja Brews Project.

Twelve local craft breweries are converging on Borderlands Brewing Co. (119 E. Toole Ave.) on Thursday, July 28 from 6 to 8 p.m. to show off their latest creations created for the event using locally originating ingredients. For this first round, beers made with saguaro and prickly pear fruit will take center stage. Your $15 ticket also goes right to Tucson non-profits working to improve food security in the community including Desert Harvesters, Native Seeds/SEARCH Iskashitaa Refugee Network and Trees for Tucson.

If you can't make it to this first event there's no need to fret, the Baja Brews Project is a yearlong collaboration between Edible Baja Arizona and everyone's favorite regional craft breweries. Count on many more tastings and beer exploration in the coming months, where you can sample, schmooze with the brewers and get educated on the ever-expanding local craft brewing scene.

For more information on the event and to check out the entire tasting list with notes, look for the Facebook event page. In the meantime, keep calm and drink local. 

I picked up Henry Fielding's novel, Tom Jones, once again after putting it down in the middle and moving on to other things. Back in April, I noted my surprise at finding that the phrases "ass kicking" and "ass kissing" were alive and well in the 18th century. In the part I'm reading now, our hero and others are on the move and stopping at inns along their way, and they frequently drink "punch" in the evenings. I wondered, is "punch" just a random alcoholic concoction in a punch bowl, or does it refer to something more specific? The answer is, it was a specific type of drink in the same way as, for example, a martini. It's of semi-exotic origins, as is its name.

Here are the basic ingredients, according to an online source, which are similar to ones described elsewhere.

In the beginning, punch was a simple mixture of five canonical ingredients: lemon or lime juice, sugar, water, "spice" (which could have been anything from nutmeg or tea to ambergris, a musky whale secretion now used only in perfume making), and, of course, liquor. Batavia arrack, a fiery but highly aromatic molasses-and-rice distillate imported from the Dutch East Indies, was the preferred spirit, but Caribbean rum and French brandy were right behind it. The earliest known reference to the drink dates from 1632, appearing in a letter to an India-bound merchant from an English colleague, who strongly warned against drinking it (if punch has a fault, it's the ease with which one can absorb too much of it).