Beer Events
Crab Corner Brews & Blues Food & Beer Festival — September 6
The Crab Corner Brews & Blues Food & Beer Festival will again be held at the Crab Corner Maryland Seafood House at 6485 S Rainbow Blvd from 1-4:30 p.m.
The event will feature unlimited beer sampling of beers from Big Dog’s, CraftHaus, HUDL, Neon Desert, Lagunitas, New Belgium, Sapporo, Stone, Firestone Walker, Sam Adams, Dogfish Head, Cigar City, Squatters, Wasatch, Modelo, Blue Moon and El Christiano tequila; and all-you-can-eat Maryland-style pit beef, steamed shrimp, corn-on-the-cob, potato salad, coleslaw, hushpuppies, Caesar salad, chicken tenders, pasta Alfredo and each ticket includes six hardshell blue crabs. There will also be live music, and the TVs will be tuned to college football games.
A two-for-one deal is $94.38 (includes $9.38 fee) for two people and single tickets are $71.21 (includes $6.21 fee). To purchase tickets, click here.
CraftHaus Brewery HausFest 11 — September 18-21
CraftHaus Brewery will commemorate its 11-year anniversary with a four-day Oktoberfest celebration.
The free pay-as-you-go event is family friendly and both the Henderson Booze District brewery and Arts District taproom locations will have Oktoberfest decor, live music from Lisa and the HausBand, nightly stein holding contests (with prizes), Oktoberfest games, Bavarian food and new beer releases.
The new beer releases include the HausFest Festbier conditioned on Spanish Cedar, Clockwork German Hefeweizen, Stratacaster Wet Hop IPA and Camaraderie Russian Imperial Stout Barrel Aged on The Las Vegas Distillery Coffee Liqueur.
A limited supply of logoed .5 liter Das Boot glasses are available at a pre-sale discounted price of $20 and includes a fill on the day of your choice at either CraftHaus location. For more info, the entertainment schedule and to purchase Das Boot, visit HausFest11.eventbrite.com.
Pub 365 Meet the Brewer: Samuel Smith — September 18
Pub 365 at Tuscany Suites & Casino will provide an opportunity to meet Samuel Smith III, sixth generation heir of Yorkshire’s oldest brewery known for its distinctive bottled beers such as Pale Ale, Brown Ale, Taddy Porter and Imperial Stout.
During the free event from 6-8 p.m. Smith will speak about the history of the brewery founded in 1758, the brewing process and how it’s done at his family’s iconic English brewery. For more info and to view a short video on Samuel Smith, click here.
Beer Zombies Flannels & Beer — October 18
Held at The Usual Place at Maryland Pkwy and Fremont, Beer Zombies will host this beerfest with unlimited sampling of beers from 25 breweries from across the US being poured by the respective brewers. More an experience than just a beerfest, three bands featuring 90s grunge music will be performing and the 25 breweries (three of which are local) are all handpicked by Beer Zombies Owner Chris Jacobs.
Early Bird VIP for entry at 7 p.m. are $67.86 (includes $7.86 fee) and general admission tickets for entry at 8 p.m. are $46.76 (includes $6.76 fee). Prices will be higher the day of the event.
Click here to purchase tickets, and check back periodically as participating breweries and beer lists are dropping weekly.
Bad Beat Reopens in Arts District
After a wait of more than two years, Bad Beat Brewing has opened at 1421 S Main Street, completing its move from the Henderson Booze District to the Downtown Las Vegas Arts District. The extended wait time was due to permitting and construction delays, as the new building required quite a bit of renovation, and the space had to be completely gutted to accommodate the brewhouse equipment and reconfigure it to house a taproom and bar.
A soft opening began on August 8 with guest beers being poured and a tentative grand opening will take place on First Friday on Sept. 5, or whenever Bad Beat beers are ready to be poured.
The new Bad Beat houses a 10-barrel brewing system, quite a bit smaller than its former production brewery in the Booze District. Owner/Founder Nathan Hall related the reasons for the move and major shift in his business plan: “I wanted to focus and rely more on on-premise beer sales rather than distribution and saw an opportunity here in the Arts District when we saw this place become available. And, I like having other breweries all in the same area because it brings more people and more business.” The new location is situated on the east side of Main St. between Utah and Imperial placing it just blocks away and an easy stroll from Able Baker, Nevada Brew Works, HUDL, Hop Nuts, CraftHaus taproom, Las Vegas Brewing taproom and The Silver Stamp craft beer bar, placing it right in the thick of the city’s main brewing hub.
Another shift is towards cocktails. Unlike the Booze District brewery, a full bar will pour the housemade beers as well as wine, traditional and craft cocktails and possibly beer cocktails.
Also new is the brewer. Hall was able to bring in award-winning longtime local brewer Anthony Gibson, one of Southern Nevada’s most veteran brewers who has excelled over the past three decades at Monte Carlo Brewpub, Tenaya Creek, Beer Zombies and Able Baker. The Bad Beat core beers he’ll be brewing first are I Heart Nevada Amber Ale, Hoppy Times IPA, Bluffing Isn’t Weisse Hefeweizen and Dreamy Life Japanese Rice Lager.
The taproom’s décor features comfortable seating, faux olive trees and greenery throughout and the original sign from its Booze District brewery’s former location.
Neon Desert Recreates Local Beer Writer’s 25-Year-Old Homebrew Recipe
I’ll give you one guess who the local beer writer is. When interviewing Neon Desert Brewing Owner/Brewer Jimmy Doyle for the Brewer Spotlight feature in this column (which ran in the June installment), I discovered that Jimmy and I share a love for the English Barleywine style, a malty sweet ale so named because its alcohol content approaches that of wine (as opposed to American Barleywines which are more hoppy/bitter). And, after sharing the beer style was my favorite to brew back in my homebrewing days and that I had won some competition awards with my now 25-year-old recipe, Jimmy and Brewery Manager/GM Glenn Nelson invited me to join them in recreating a commercial version of my homebrewed Barleywine.
My first task was to locate the right homebrew recipe book and after scouring all the likely hiding places for quite some time I finally found it; it was literally the last place I looked. Jimmy’s task was to ramp up my recipe to a larger version and find ingredients comparable to those I used more than two decades ago. The version we brewed (and by we, I mean Jimmy and Glenn, I mainly just watched and offered moral support and praise for their manual labor), contains 2-row barley, honey malt, crystal 120, dark crystal malt and carastan for the grains; English Kent Goldings, Chinook and Magnum hops; and Wyeast 1099 English Style yeast. It compared closely with mine, with the same hops except for Jimmy’s addition of Kent Goldings to give it more English character, honey malt instead of actual honey I had used and slightly different grains, necessary because mine was an extract version. It is expected to weigh in at 9% alcohol, which is a normal range for English style Barleywines.
Fortunately, Jimmy still has the 1-barrel pilot brewing system (20-30 gallons compared to my 5-gallon setup) he brewed with in his homebrewing days, which he still uses for test batches of new recipes or like in this case, for beer styles like Barleywine that are not huge sellers (most go for IPAs or lighter, easier drinking beers).
Jimmy has a tradition/superstition to drink a particular beer while brewing, something he has always done. “The beer turns out better if you’re drinking the style you’re making, that’s just science, and this is something I’ve always done,” said Jimmy. “And making a good beer is like cooking. The food or beer is only as good as the love you put into it.” I was quite happy to see that Glenn had chosen one of my all-time favorites to do the honors: a barrel-aged Tenaya Creek Jackalope.
The Barleywine was brewed on August 11 and Jimmy expects it to take about three weeks to ferment before serving. GM Glenn Nelson is planning a special release event at the brewery on Sept. 2 beginning at 4 p.m. with possibly food and entertainment and for sure a chance to enjoy the beer with that local beer writer.
Nevada Brew Works Opens Second Location
Nevada Brew Works, which has been open in the Arts District since 2020, now has a second location.
Set in a former Vons grocery store at 820 S Rampart #110 in Boca Park, Co-Owner Jason Taylor tells me they’ve installed a 7-barrel brewhouse and their brewer is David Castro, who previously brewed at Hop Nuts. Like the Arts District location, it will have a kitchen and a similar but expanded menu with the addition of dinner items such as steaks and salmon.
A tentative opening date is October 1. I promise to provide more details once it’s open.
Local Brewer Spotlight: Weston Barkley
In this monthly feature, we spotlight one of our local head brewers. This month we learn all about Weston Barkley, Head Brewer at Beer Zombies/Tenaya Creek Brewing.
Weston was nearly a Las Vegas native, arriving at just four months of age. In high school he was an athlete and played basketball for the Durango High freshman JV team, but he says unfortunately he had a zero vertical leap and realized athletics would not be a thing for him, so he also studied automotive repair. During his senior year a recruiter from a tech school in Farmington, New Mexico convinced him to go to a co-op 20-month program. Weston graduated with an associate’s degree in automotive in 2005, a profession he would work in Las Vegas for seven years and one that would come in handy in his future role as a brewer since mechanics are good at diagnosing and fixing things when they break down (something that is known to happen in breweries).
During this time Weston got into homebrewing, won competition awards and was SNAFU homebrew club president for three years when his longtime friend Kayla Callahan (now Operations Manager at Able Baker Brewing) introduced him to Matt Lisowski who was opening Joseph James Brewing. Matt hired Weston as a shift brewer and he worked with and was mentored by Matt Marino and Kyle Weniger. After a year and a half, he applied to brew at the new Bad Beat Brewing and in 2014 wound up being hired as the brewery’s first Head Brewer.
In 2021 Weston’s wife Amber expressed an interest to move to Portland, Oregon where they had family and friends, and Weston was hired as Head Brewer at Great Notion in Portland. The brewery is five times the size of Bad Beat, and Weston had always wanted to work at a large brewery and felt like he had been drafted to the big leagues. But in 2023 after they both missed living in Las Vegas Amber showed him an ad for the Head Outpost Brewer position at the new BrewDog on the Vegas Strip, which he managed to land. His latest move came about after he saw an ad on Facebook for the head brewer position at Beer Zombies/Tenaya Creek. Owner Chris Jacobs shared that he had more than 100 applications from all over the world but had good repertoire and connection when interviewing Weston, was impressed that he had worked at Great Notion and decided to hire him to run his brewing operations. The move is quite recent, with Weston’s first day of work being August 4.
When asked which beer styles he likes to drink and brew, Weston says, “There’s not a lot I don’t care for, but especially like Stouts, big hoppy Red Ales, Smoked Beer and Sticke Alt (a bigger, hoppier, higher alcohol and malty German Brown Ale style).
Be on the lookout for a collaboration brew Weston will be brewing at Beer Zombies with Brujos Brewing (Portland, OR) Co-owner/Founder Sam Zermeno (Weston was his boss at Great Notion). It will be a Cold IPA double dry hopped with Citra and HBC1019, a hop that adds tropical flavors of banana and passion fruit. He’s also brewing the first ever Beer Zombies traditional style Oktoberfest lager, which is targeted for a late September release.
One interesting note, as Weston is 6’6” and Chris is 6’4”, they just may be the tallest brewing combo in Nevada.
Local Brewery Champion of the Month: The Spot
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.
The Spot is situated in the former space of Scenic Brewing (and Old School Brewing before that). As this was a former brewery, there’s plenty of equipment visible from the bar waiting to be utilized and plans are in the works to obtain required licensing to make that happen soon. In the meantime, 20 drafts pour a quality beer list featuring several locals, which during my recent visit included Able Baker Atomic Duck IPA, Big Dog’s Red Hydrant Ale, HUDL Big Wheel Blonde, Las Vegas Brewing Vegas Light, Mojave Punk Lemonade, North 5th Pilsner and Tenaya Creek Trailhead Canyon Pils. To keep beer fresh, drafts are rotated monthly, and an especially good deal is the Kick the Keg: a selection of four to five beers priced at $5 to empty the keg to make room for more.
BBQ appears to be a major food group here, with several menu items featuring smoked meats: Brisket Cheesesteak Sandwich, Brisket Mac and Cheese Eggrolls, BBQ Bahn Mi (with choice of smoked pork belly or brisket), Cuban Sandwich (a BBQ version with smoked pork loin), Pork Belly Burnt Ends and Pulled Pork Grilled Cheese. All are excellent companions to good beer and are quite tasty.
The Spot is located at Desert Inn just east of Durango and is open Monday-Friday 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. For more info, to book catering or a party, and to view the complete food and drink menu, visit thespotlv.com.
What’s on Tap
Jimmy Doyle at Neon Desert has 96 Problems But Yeast Ain’t One of Them. It’s a Blonde Ale base and is named for the White Labs yeast strain that is a blend of 96 of the company’s yeasts. Sounds like a very interesting and fun brew.
This month Beer Zombies has Vault of Haze, a 7.3% Hazy Single IPA brewed with Nelson Sauvin and Citra hops that delivers a juicy explosion of tropical fruit and citrus; the dessert-inspired Zombie hWhip: Wildberry, White Chocolate, Ice Cream, a 4.3% Fruited Sour combining wildberry tartness with the silky sweetness of white chocolate and a smooth ice cream finish; and brewed in honor of the deathcore band Lorna Shore song I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me, a 7.5% double dry hopped West Coast IPA with bright citrus zest, resinous pine and a crisp, clean bitterness.
Evolve Brewing has released New Loudness, a 4.9% collab with Stone Brewing legends Kris Ketcham, Jeremy Moynier and Steve “Gonzo” Gonzalez. It’s brewed with pilsner malt, hopped with tropical New Zealand Peacharine, Riwaka and Nelson hops and fermented with classic Sapporo Lager yeast and is described as bright, juicy and LOUD.
- Hero image © Adobe Stock – licensed for editorial and edited by A.D. Cook
- Bad Beat Brewing Owner Nathan Hall and Brewer Anthony Gibson pic by David Canela
- Bad Beat Brewing outdoor sign pic by David Canela
- Beer Zombies Head Brewer Weston Barkley and Owner Chris Jacobs pic by David Canela
- Beer Zombies Owner Chris Jacobs and Head Brewer Weston Barkley pic by David Canela
- All other photos and graphics are the copyright of their respective owners. Provided and used for editorial.
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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 to 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.
