May Beer Events
Beer & Tequila Experience — May 17
The Lee’s Helping Hand’s 17th Annual Beer & Tequila Experience will take place at the Lee’s Family Forum from 4 to 8 p.m.
There will be more than 800 beers and tequilas available for unlimited tasting. Tickets are two for $100 (plus fees) and a VIP food option add-on is available for $45. To purchase tickets, click here.
Pub 365 Las Vegas Brewing Company Beer Dinner — May 23
Pub 365 at Tuscany Casino will host a five-course beer dinner featuring Las Vegas Brewing Company beginning at 6 p.m.
The pairings are Fried Green Tomatoes with Cajun dill dressing, blue crab salad and pickled onion paired with Electric Blonde Golden Ale; Yellow Watermelon Salad with pickled shrimp, candied Fresno chili, currant tomato, cucumber and mint matched with Hibiscus Key Lime Sour; Roasted Poblano Mac & Cheese with confit chicken thighs, charred corn and Jarlsberg Cheddar paired with West Coast Junkie IPA; Truffled Grilled Cheese with truffle aioli, truffle cheese, raclette cheese, black pepper bacon and peach chutney matched with Pilsner; and Bananas Fosters Crepe with vanilla caramel, banana, hazelnut filled crepe and cacao nib paired with 1677 Stout.
Tickets are $45 per person (plus tax, tip and fees). To purchase tickets, click here.
Vegas Beer School—Irish Beers — May 31
Vegas Beer School will educate us on Irish beers with a class at The Silver Stamp held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Attendees will learn about the history, flavors and brewing techniques that make Irish beers unique. Included are a flight of 6 Irish beers with a tasting template, snacks and a Q&A.
Tickets are $50 (plus fee). To purchase tickets, click here.
Local Brewer Spotlight: Cameron Fisher
In this monthly feature, we spotlight one of our local head brewers. This month we learn all about Cameron Fisher, head brewer at CraftHaus Brewery.
Cameron was born in Texas and grew up in Littleton, CO near Denver. He attended UNLV majoring in food and beverage management and after a fellow student shared a beer magazine with him (likely Celebrator Beer News with the Nevada column written by yours truly) and invited him to a homebrew demo by Jon Griffin at UNLV, his interest was piqued. To his surprise he was the only one to show up for the demo and had a personalized lesson and proceeded to purchase homebrew equipment, began brewing and was hooked. After graduating in 2009 during the peak of the recession when jobs were hard to come by, Cameron moved back to Colorado and took a good-paying job at a call center and later was promoted to a job in finance. During this time, he brewed profusely pretty much all styles and won lots of competition medals including a Best of Show with the prize being able to brew his winning recipe (a Belgian IPA) at Dry Dock, a brewery in Aurora, CO. He was bored with his job and quit, taking a much lower paying job as a beertender at the newly opened Odyssey Beerwerks in Arvada, CO, and after just two months was hired as an assistant brewer, a job he held for 2.5 years and helped earn a World Beer Cup gold. He landed his first head brewer job at 13 Virtues in Portland, OR where he learned all aspects of the brewing business before returning to Odyssey to take the job of “Beer Conjurer” and doing most of the brewing and recipe development. In July of 2018 he returned to Las Vegas, taking the job of Head Brewer at CraftHaus.
Cameron’s favorite beers to drink are those 8% ABV or higher like Scotch Ale, Doppelbock and Barleywine because: “the higher alcohol content adds more body and complexity.” As for styles he likes to brew, he singles out lagers because: “they offer more nuance, don’t need a lot of specialty ingredients, are easier to make and require less physical output.” He also likes making cold IPA (using a house lager yeast), which are crispier than regular IPAs and he is the current holder of the Aces & Ales IPA Smackdown Belt, a blind tasting competition crowning it as the best locally-made IPA.
Beers he will be releasing in the coming months include Sumo Stomp, a 5% easy drinking Japanese Rice Lager with tangerine, a Comrade Imperial Stout barrel aged variant with peanut butter and white chocolate, a reprise of the 2024 Great American Beer Festival gold medal winner Czech Plz Pilsner and later this summer will be brewing a collaboration beer with Pizza Port in Carlsbad, CA—a West Coast IPA with five hops: Citra, Loral, Chinook Dynaboost, Sabro and Krush which will be offered at both breweries.
One last interesting tidbit is that Cameron and CraftHaus Owners Dave and Wyndee Forrest are all UNLV graduates.
Eureka! Opens New Location in Henderson
Eureka! has opened a second Southern Nevada location on St. Rose in Henderson just east of Maryland Pkwy, joining its other on Fremont Street.
Eureka! is known for scratch kitchen signature dishes like Mac N’ Cheese Balls and a slew of decadent gourmet burgers such as my favorite: Jalapeño Egg fully loaded with fried egg, cheddar, bacon, chipotle sauce and pickled jalapeños. It has made a name for itself for supporting our local breweries, and in fact was the Local Brewery Champion of the Month in this column last month. This location supports local by devoting 17 of its 20 taps to Vegas breweries. The opening tap list includes favorites like Able Baker Atomic Duck, Beer Zombies Rotating Hazy IPA, CraftHaus Tropical Forrest Hazy IPA, Lovelady Paleo Porter, Mojave Ruby Soho Cider, and Tenaya Creek Bonanza Brown.
Local Brewery Champion of the Month: Cottonwood Station
In this recurring feature we spotlight establishments that appreciate our local breweries enough to devote the majority of their beer lists to beer made in Nevada.
Consider taking a drive out to the historic and quaint little town of Blue Diamond, only a 30-minute drive from the Strip. At Cottonwood Station, the only eatery in the small town, the six-tap rotating draft beer list is 100% Nevada brewed beer, which when I stopped in last month included Able Baker NV Amber, Beer Zombies Zombie Duck Hunter IPA, CraftHaus Silver State Blonde, Revision Vegas AF Hazy and Tenaya Creek Bonanza Brown Ale. There’s more local beer available in cans, such as Able Baker Mango Hefe, CraftHaus Hop Vegas and Pigeon Head Silver Sage Pale Ale. Owner Brian Fisher says he focuses on local beer because, “we’re trying to do something different here, the local breweries’ beers are really good and our customers love it.”
While you’re there be sure to indulge in some of the excellent creations of Chef Richard Tapia with a range of pizzas, paninis and appetizers such as Pretzel Sticks served with beer cheese and air fried Cauliflower Bites.
What’s Pouring
Beer Zombies Brewing has a few more exclusive beers that it’s brewing for some of our local venues. For Fontainebleau Las Vegas, available exclusively at the casino resort, there’s Bleau Haze, a smooth, juicy hazy double IPA with tropical notes. The brewery has also unleashed its Evel IPA, a 7.2% hop-forward West Coast IPA that pays tribute to the spirit of Evel Knievel and will nicely complement the award-winning NY-style pizzas at Evel Pie on Fremont Street.
Cin-Cin Brewhouse Brewmaster Cisco Talley has Ghosts in the River, an 8% New Zealand Hazy IPA collaboration with a local homebrewer known as Atomic Hops made with all New Zealand hops. He also has another Hazy IPA, the 8.6% Double Strata hopped with, you guessed it, Strata hops; and Boricha Pils, a 5% pilsner made with a barley tea made from boiling toasted barley.
Brewer Josh Kunzli at Evolve Brewing has been busy since getting the green light to brew. He has gifted us with Coconut Ghosts in the River, an 8.8% Imperial Stout with rich cacao, smooth vanilla and toasted coconut vibes; Bar Down Hazy, a 7.4% Hazy IPA hop-packed with Citra and HBC 630 & HBC 630 Cryo; and Tailgater, a 5.3% Fruited American Wheat with cherry.
You can enjoy a large variety of Deadwood Meadery meads at its production facility taproom in the Booze District and on tap around town at various restaurants and bars such as Esther’s Kitchen. New releases include the 6.2% Day Dream with lavender and lemonade; and Wild Child, a 5.6% passionfruit sour. You can also now get bottles to take home at Top Shelf and Beer Zombies Brewery. Available meads include Umbra Black Currant and Rage Against Florence with black currant, pomegranate and vanilla.
- Hero image © Adobe Stock – licensed for editorial and edited by A.D. Cook
- All other pics supplied by their respective venues. Used by permission.
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Bob Barnes began his food and beverage writing career in 1998 as Regional Correspondent for Celebrator Beer News and wrote the Nevada Beer Nuggets column from 1998-2019. He was Editorial Director of The Las Vegas Food & Beverage Professional from 2012-2021 and has covered Las Vegas for Gayot since 2010. He continues to contribute to Gayot, writing the Gayot Las Vegas Restaurant News, features on new restaurants, and beer and spirit reviews. He also writes regularly for Off The Strip, The Vegas Voice, Neon Feast, and Las Vegas Magazine.
