As I slowly recover from my hangover, I can at last write that the 2016 Tucson Craft Beer Crawl ruled my world. With absolutely perfect weather, I checked in swiftly (the long line was moved through quickly) and I picked up my 2 Yelp tickets and was handed a map and unleashed. And what fun this was! It's like a scavenger hunt for beers throughout the downtown area. With tickets in my hand, my good friend and drinking buddy and I made our first pit stops at the Club Congress and consuming a Blonde and a Stout from the Huss Brewing in Tempe- so delicious! Absolutely perfect beers. When we wrapped around full circle at around 4 they had run out and this saddened me as I wanted to sample again.
We had some beers at Dragoon Brewing, on top of Playground, in which I had a porter and my friend a "Cortado" which was rich and flavorful.
Hands-down my favorite brewery was SanTan from Chandler- Mr. Pineapple wins my award for best beer of the event. I drank a few of these, despite my best attempts to sample a little of everything, I just wanted to drink this one. The "Devil's Ale" from SanTan was also quite scrumptious.
It was a blast walking the event. We made our way to Thunder Canyon, which is a favorite place of mine but I had some kind of spicy beer that was very disappointing. We had some beers at Pueblo Vida but found those pretty "blah" as well, including a berry beer which my friend could barely stand, and a citrus orange beer that was too much rind and just left my stomach queasy.
We grabbed some beers at Reilly including a flavorful hot Habanero, which was good, but I wouldn't try more than the little pint glass we were given for our beer (which, I must say, I almost dropped at one point and fear of it shattering and ending my day of drinking worried me). I tried some mini samples of Mother Road Brewing from my old town of Flagstaff, but I'm not much into the IPA scene, however, they left no aftertaste and that impressed me.
We hit the Borderlands Brewery area and sampled from a couple of places. Borderlands had some beers including, if I recall correctly (my note taking skills at this point fell apart as I was now quite tipsy) was a horchata-based beer. So good! Some of the beer stands were being a bit more liberal about just giving us a sampler without requiring a ticket, which rocked. We made our way back to Playground to drink more brews from a couple of stands including Sentinel Peak, but mostly consumed more SanTan and gushed about how good their beer was.
I easily sampled over 20 beers and we walked away quite sated and happy, meeting some really nice people, brewers and drinkers. It got busy and full between 3 and 4 and beers started to run low, so my friend and I are glad we got their early and had a chance to sit on tables and soak up the sun and talk beer and savor the delicious flavors. I have a new appreciation for craft beers in general and am eager to head up to Phoenix sometime (though, of course, I love the Tucson craft beer scene most). Thanks to Yelp for making this great day happen! read more