114. Give My Regards to Vegas
Thoughts and tips for your CBC travels; plus Canal Champagne, and Tarot for staying strong in the face of your anxiety's scary stories.
[Quick edit / update here at the top: I wrote this here Vegas feature roughly a month ago, but then this issue sat in drafts for a while. Life has really been doing its best to…stay interesting lately, let’s say. And that’s involved losing a long-time, mainstay copywriting client in the midst of a company restructuring. This client required less of my time than my freelance journalism work, but because the media industry is what it is, it paid enough to actually help support that journalism pursuit. I share this because I am very actively seeking new copy clients, and while I know everyone’s watching their budgets quite carefully right now, I would love to take on some work in the beer and beverage space. I’ve got loads of experience, but am still willing to negotiate some really fair and competitive rates, because it would be so great to apply my copy skills to work in this industry. So, if you need anything from social copy to web copy to newsletters or honestly anything with words, let me know!]
Are All Y’All CBC Attendees Ready for Las Vegas?
I recently got to spend what was honestly, thanks to extreme winds canceling our flight options for 24+ hours, too much time (even for me) in my beloved Vegas. And I couldn’t help but view everything craft beer-related through the lens of CBC coming to town in April. (I won’t be attending, btw.) For as much as I have shouted about the city’s Brewery Row initiative, in which the city council waived charges in order to entice new breweries to open up in the downtown Arts District, there’s another side to consider, which there always is, of course. And that’s that almost every time I have visited Vegas over the past few years, another brewery is gone.
There was Sin City Brewing, which provided reliably good options for strolling the strip with a local craft beer in hand (even if I absolutely hated their logo). More recently was the closure of Banger Brewing, a great little spot to seek refuge in from the chaos of the Fremont Street area and enjoy better-than-they-had-to-be beers like kölsch with coffee and hefeweizen with jalapeno. (Still confused about this one, too, because looks like they closed in March of 2023, but a few bars nearly a year later still had Banger beers on, so they’re either brewing sans taproom somewhere, or…yikes, those beers are OLD.) Trustworthy Brewing, another craft beer oasis on the Strip, closed just before our visit. And I just found out through that last linked article there that Vegas’s Tenaya Creek Brewery was recently bought by local beer bar Beer Zombies, though it’s still operating under the Tenaya Creek name.
What’s happening in Vegas—a noticeable uptick in closures alongside a still-steady community of crowd-drawing taprooms—is playing out in cities across the US, making Vegas as relevant a CBC destination as any. The small number of breweries there to begin with, though, adds an interesting microcosm sort of scope. It’s an easy case study, I guess—if you have, say, 12 breweries, and three or four close, what’s going on there? It’s a small enough pool to easily investigate.
Of course, with Vegas, there are indeed other factors at play that don’t exist anywhere else. I think of cities like Vegas and New Orleans and even New York, to a lesser extent, as tourist destinations that, if anything when it comes to alcohol-driven tourism, attract with their cocktail scenes. As opposed to your Denvers and Portlands, the idea of visiting these places for craft beer is still niche, relatively new, and, in the case of Vegas, maybe even still virtually nonexistent. Many people don’t even venture off the Strip to the area where these breweries are. And yet still, people come to Vegas to gamble and see shows and party, all things that tend to involve alcohol. I’d wager craft beer isn’t a go-to choice in those situations for most, but plenty of others do still want those options, and would expect them in a sophisticated drinking destination like Vegas. Breweries do make sense there, especially because maybe most important to consider is the people that actually live there. They’re not going out on the Strip. A taproom culture, and a third place culture, is as necessary in Vegas as it is anywhere.
Essentially, you can’t write off brewery closures in Vegas because they don’t seem like an obvious fit for the culture. But, considering the closures so far have affected breweries on the Strip, there are unique circumstances at hand. I think it all makes for an interesting think, and an interesting place for the industry to touch down in come April. And speaking of which…
If you’re headed to CBC and this will be your first time in Vegas, I’ve got some thoughts, tips, etc. I rounded up beer spots back in march of 2022 here. Checking that link, I spotted another closure: the beer bar Three Sheets. And Neon Desert, which was in the Arts District, is now in Henderson, Nevada, where they took over the space of Bad Beat Brewing. So, where should you try to make time to check out? In that Arts district area, there’s Able Baker Brewing, Craft Haus Brewery, Hop Nuts Brewing, HUDL Brewing Company, and Nevada Brew Works. (My personal favorites are Able Baker, Craft Haus, and HUDL.) For beer bars, Servehzah is excellent and Silver Stamp is the best, a true entire vibe.
If you can’t get off the Strip but want a craft beer, your best bet is honestly to grab a tall boy from a convenience store. You won’t find much selection at casinos and you’ll pay stadium prices, predictably. Not too far of a walk (more on this in a sec) is Ellis Island. This hotel + casino is one of the most depressing I’ve been to, but! Stay with me and persevere through the casino part to The Front Yard, a bar and restaurant nice enough to feel completely disjointed from the rest of the hotel. Ellis Island brews its own beer, and it’s pretty great, based on the lager and Berliner weisse (for which they have a few different syrups) we had. If you want lunch and good, affordable, local craft beer, you could do a lot worse. Up near the Fremont Street area, Atomic Liquors is one of the coolest bars in the world and has quite a decent craft beer selection.
Should you want a break from beer, three great cocktail options are the Downtown Cocktail Room in that Fremont area, Velveteen Rabbit in the Arts District, and Ghost Donkey, for mezcal, in the Cosmopolitan. If you want to have a bonkers, once-in-a-lifetime martini (which it should be, because it’s $40), head to the Petrossian Bar at the Bellagio. And as for restaurants, my favorite splurges are Mott 32 in the Venetian and China Poblano and Jaleo, both at the Cosmopolitan. Newest to add there is Superfrico, which is maybe the most memorable dining experience I’ve ever had. It is the pinnacle of our current maximalist dining trend, with indulgent food and inspired cocktails and wild, irreverent performers and impersonators strolling the variously themed dining rooms like you’re on an opulent acid trip.
For more affordable / on-the-go fare, the Cosmopolitan has a solid food hall on its second floor, where you can get good stuff that’s outside of the typical fast-food chain choices, like the poorly-named-but-admittedly-delicious Egg Slut. There are indeed, fast food options truly everywhere you look, and a few other casinos have “elevated” food courts, too, like Caesar’s Palace. In the middle of nice restaurant and fast food on the move, there’s a chain so bad it’s good, and I don’t care what you think of me, I’ll love it always: Nacho Daddy’s. It’s chain-restaurant cheeze at its finest, with loud-ish music and servers pushing margarita up-sells, but it also has an entire menu of different kinds of nachos, and it’s cheap-ish and genuinely good.
Something I think is a crucial part of navigating free time in Vegas is, what casinos are worth walking around? Especially if you, like me, don’t really gamble—what hotel-casinos are fun enough that just taking in the sights, having a drink, maybe throwing $20 on blackjack is an evening well spent? Now that I have traipsed through nearly every major casino, I have some thoughts. What you want is either something so over the top, so fabulously tacky that it’s just eye candy, something to fill your brain with over-stimulation everywhere you look and actually provide a few non-gambling things to do, or, you want something so bad it’s good, where you can get a feel for the Vegas of yore, if you’re like me and are into the whole decaying glamour, 70-year-old Elvis impersonator, dazzling neon sign from the ‘60s next to a 7-Eleven type of thing. In the former category: the Venetian, the Paris, Caesar’s, and the Bellagio. In the latter: the Golden Nugget, and maybe Excalibur. Special shout-outs to the Flamingo, which somehow straddles both categories with its very old-school Vegas history plus the fact it hosts the best show to see in Vegas, “Drag Race Live”; and Treasure Island, a pirate-themed abomination that bizarrely has a fun line-dancing joint and hosts a good drag brunch (as in, the drag is great, but the food is very much not) at, of all places, Senor Frog’s.
Finally, I said I’d get back to the walking thing and what’s considered far there…wear your most comfortable walking shoes. I would imagine you are going to do this anyway, going to a convention, where you’ll be walking and standing all day. But if you were entertaining ideas of changing into something a little more jazzy at night, just forget it. My major complaint about Vegas, for the Strip, anyway, is that for an area that seems like it should be completely geared toward pedestrians, it’s a nightmare to walk. You’ve got to go up and down escalators and stairs and over bridges to cross streets, or wait absolute eternities at certain intersections. Because of the way casinos are built and their parking lots and various entrances, you may get involuntarily detoured, and things that are maddeningly right in front of you actually take 25 minutes to reach on foot. Sneakers, planning, and patience, friends.
The Best Way to Drink a Miller High Life, Ever
I’m late in covering this because I’m late in sending out this newsletter, but one of my favorite little bits of recent-ish beer news is the Canal Champagne at Queue Beer here in Brooklyn. These wild and crazy kids are pouring the champagne of beers on a LUKR. Hladinka pours are $8, and portions of sales go to the Gowanus Canal Conservancy. There’s also a special off-menu pour based on the mlíko, which they’re calling “The Canal Cortado.” Now, what’s fun about this is that it’s fired up some measure of debate among beer geeks. Is it blasphemy, to serve a macro beer in this revered manner, using a faucet that is reserved to bring even more nuance to the finest of beers? Or is it brilliance, a way to elevate what really does seem to be the craft beer industry’s favorite macro beer—does it actually show just what a LUKR can do, and is it just absolutely fun? I’m team “it’s brilliance,” personally, especially considering it’s for a good cause. Go check it out!
What I’ve Been Working On
I dug into how aquavit is made for Craft Spirits & Distilling.
Also for Craft Spirits & Distilling, I dove into soju and shochu.
I looked into how different vocational and educational programs, as well as internships, within craft beer get formed and run for Brewing Industry Guide.
Also for Brewing Industry Guide, I got into nontraditional distribution methods for smaller breweries.
I wrote about the influence of cafe culture in bars, in the form of coffee and tea cocktails, for Inside Hook.
Also for Inside Hook, I got to write about the obviously objectively best topic ever, smoked beer.
Also-also for Inside Hook, I dared venture into “is craft beer cringe right now?” territory.
A passion piece I’d worked on, tracking the growth of inclusivity and access in influential cocktail destinations in the form of education and NA cocktails, ran in Full Pour’s (gorgeous) Spring 2024 issue, which you can get here.
For PUNCH, I checked in on the current state of the everlasting beer flight debate, looking at why many breweries won’t do them versus their persistent value and consumer interest.
We also updated the list of breweries to know, for 2024, over at PUNCH.
And, as always, my Beer Tarot Zine is available and ready to jazz up your spring reset, over at Bean to Barstool.
Beer Tarot!
For this issue, I pulled the Nine of Swords.
Swords is the suit of intellect and decisions, and the Nine of Swords specifically speaks to anxiety, depression, and fear. The major takeaway of this card is that you might be experiencing some anxiety at the moment or worrying about something—honestly, hot take, Nine of Swords, who isn’t?—but that you can’t let that anxiety spiral. We can start to feel anxiety about having anxiety. We can fall down a rabbit hole of worrying about something to the extent that we are hard on ourselves about what we’re feeling. Alternatively—or maybe additionally, because the fuckery of the human mind knows no bounds—we can also worry our worries into a self-fulfilling prophecy. We can feel so anxious about, say, bombing a big presentation at work that we are actually totally prepared for and likely to ace until we spiral and convince ourselves we’re doomed, and so we’re so nervous and lacking in confidence in the room that we stutter and sputter.
All of this comes down to: stop telling yourself scary stories. You may indeed struggle with anxiety and would greatly benefit from getting help on that, but you’re not abnormal or wrong or bad for that—it’s the most human experience in the world. And you can believe in yourself and the things you’re working on, don’t let the evil worrying voices in your head talk you into failure.
Don’t go down a rabbit hole, drink Rabbit Hole. This French-style saison from Alaro Craft Brewery sounds like a much nicer journey to take.