Sometimes you pick up and move to Colorado

What have you done in the last 30 days? I packed up the majority of my belongings and moved. To Colorado. 

What does that mean for the blog? Different regional awesome microbrews. Many more, and much more often. On my way out here I stopped in the middle of nowhere Kansas, I believe, to make a quick exchange with a friend driving back from the Grand Canyon. I gave him back his book on JAVA programming, and he  passed me a very, very warm american pilsner from the Grand Canyon Brewing company and a souvenir magnet from his trip. At least he knows me and knew that beer is my souvenir of choice. I packed it with me and drank it one evening while i was staying at the Amazing hostel in Durango, Co. It wasn't anything too special, but not bad for a light pilsner. 

Later on in the week when I had gotten a bit more settled, i picked up a 6 pack of the locally brewed Steam Engine Steam Ale, an amber lager. While nothing truly exceptional i thought it had a decent amount of flavor for an amber lager. I also like that it comes in cans, however, they are somewhat pressurized and I didn't manage to open even one out of the 6 without getting beer everywhere....

Finally, I picked up a bottle of wine this week. Unfortunately i haven't found any good cheap wine stores yet, but I haven't been doing much looking either. Anyways, This RACHA wine, imported from argentina was pretty good. This malbec while not super complex or fancy pant, wasn't too bad for about 10 dollars where i purchased it. I'd rate it 3.5/5 for flavor, and 3/5 for value. I've got to get bargain hunting.

Well cheers! And if you make it to the area, lets grab a local beer!

When stuck inside, why not enjoy a little red wine?

While I might not have stocked up as much booze to weather the Northeast's "Blizzard of 2013", I did have a new bottle of red wine on the ready. Just one. Last week with a little forethought i weathered (no pun intended) the traffic at the local Whole foods for some hipster goods. While there i picked up a nice 8 dollar bottle of Malbec from Argentina made by Callia Alta.

 Generally I like a Malbec. They aren't usually too sweet, and even on the cheap side, they may provide a nice bite. Sometimes. This impressed me by being more than one dimensional for 8 bucks. In snobby talk: the nose fell a little flat so I wasn't expecting much. But midway into the sip you get nice spicy bite of malbec. Good buy. I'll give it a 4.5/5 for flavor (nothing fancy, but i really liked it) and a 4/5 for value. If you are a wholefoods try it out for yourself. Its especially good when the world outside looks something like this:

Cheers!