New Horizons

Greetings from Oro Valley, Arizona.

I'm over in America on business with my usual job buying rocks, minerals, crystals and jewellery (yep fairly strange), but since I started myBrewerytap I was looking forward to the trip and an opportunity to visit the US for different reasons.

Due to the direction my life had taken business wise toward the end of last year I decided to re-educate my palate beer-wise, this obviously involved leaving my comfort zone of "session beers" and checking out what was available with the variety of world beers. The starting point for this was visiting the excellent Beer Ritz in Headingley, Leeds; where I instantly gravitated towards the American selection of beers and particularly the IPA's and and Imperial Stouts. 3 or 4 visits, much too much money spent and a very beery Christmas later and my beer perspectives were altered completely.

I was therefore looking forward to my trip to the US for different reasons to previous trips, buoyed not only by the effusive tweets and blogs I was reading (much of which was focusing on the quality of beer emananting from the US) but also as this would be an opportunity to seek out as much, weird, wonderful, extreme, flavoursome beer as I could find.

First impressions were good, a 4 hour stop over in Atlanta spent in the TGI franchise with 3 or 4 pints of very acceptable local Pale Ale (Sweetwater 420). Once arrived in Tucson it wasn't long before my expectations were met fully with a visit to the local beer lovers store "Plaza Liquors". This shop is a real treasure trove, very innocuous on the outside but completely amazing on the inside. A vast selection of big bottles, 6 packs and single bottles to choose from the fridges along with a wide selection of brilliant wines and whiskys meant I was pretty much blown away. This store is well rated because it has a massive range of singles where customers can mix 'sixes', which apparently isn't all that common over here. We bought a fair selection of stuff including a couple of bottles of the excellent Deschutes "The Abyss" a highly sought after beer (not least by Rob from Hopzine) and enjoyed them over the next few days at the hotel.

We've also had chance to visit a couple of the brewpubs in the area, namely "Thunder Canyon Brewery" and "BJ's Brewhouse", the first of which is an idependent brewpub serving a wide range of beers, obviously we tried the lot. The one I remember being the "Good Vibrations DIPA". The BJ's brewhouse was perhaps less authentic being some sort of chain or franchise, but in theIr favour they carried guest beers which meant some wonderful Stone IPA and the SKA brewings massive Decadent DIPA.

To be honest, there has been much more great beer over here than I thought. The popular conception is one of Miller Lite and Budweiser (the crap one), and clearly thats true for the majority but you really don't have to scratch very deep at all over here to find exceptional beer; even the sort of stuff that you'd be overjoyed to find in the UK is not vey far away.

What's mostly surprised me most is not just the availability of great beer, which might be expected in a medium size city like Tuscson, but the sheer variety and spread of what I thought was 'great' craft beer. We are currently staying 40 miles outside of Tucson, in Oro Valley half way to the complete desert of north eastern Arizona but the local bog standard supermarket has 6 packs of Stone Ruination, Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale in 24 pack boxes and most surprisingly of all Samuel Smiths Oatmeal Stout.

I'll blog again about the beer I've bought while over here (providing I can get it home). Even though I've been over here lots before, this trip has been a real eye opener, and I'm feeling pretty spoilt beer wise.

Will a pint of Timmy Taylors ever be the same again?....