Come to the dark side: Stout Invitational 2025 features 16 New Mexico breweries competing for best brew

Sixteen New Mexico breweries will compete to see who has the best dark brew in the state during the Stout Invitational 2025.

The competition will take place from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday, March 1, at Bathtub Row Brewing Co-Op in Los Alamos. Eventgoers can choose to attend one of three sessions taking place from noon to 1:30 p.m., 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Guests will be able to taste 16 sample pours of each of the competing stouts and cast their vote for their favorite. It will be a blind tasting where the sample pours will be identified by number. The breweries related to each number will be revealed at the end of the event when the winner of New Mexico’s 2025 Best Stout is revealed.

“Closer to like 6-6:30 (p.m.) really is when we announce the winner,” said Ebbie Edmonston, executive director of the New Mexico Brewers Guild. “Between every session, we’re behind the scenes counting all of those ballots, all of those tickets, to see who or which number is pulling ahead, and then at the very end, we open the envelope and we figure out who was on which number.”

General admission ticketholders will receive a commemorative Stout Invitational 2025 pint glass and be able to fill it with their favorite stout. Designated driver ticketholders will receive entry into the event and a complimentary bottle of water.

This year’s participating breweries are Three Rivers Brewery, Bathtub Row Brewing Co-Op, Beer Creek Brewing Company, Canteen Brewhouse, Cloudcroft Brewing Co., Flix Brewhouse, Milton’s Brewing, Nexus Brewery, Nuckolls Brewing Co., Piedra Blanca Brewing, Ponderosa Brewing Co., Quarter Celtic Brewpub, Red River Brewing Co., Rio Bravo Brewing Co., Thirsty Eye Brewing Co. and Tractor Brewing Co.

“This year, one of the things that we have kind of changed up is that we allowed Tractor to get in automatically because they won last year,” Edmonston said. “So that’s just going to be something we’re going to do moving forward. We also asked Tractor if they wanted to design the logo, which they have, and we are still finalizing, but yeah, that’s pretty cool.”

Bathtub Row Brewing Co-Op was also a shoo-in for the competition because it hosts the event. This will be the first Stout Invitational appearance for Cloudcroft Brewing Co., according to Edmonston.

“Stouts have a pretty wide variety, there’s your oatmeal stout, milk stout, there’s a bunch out there,” Edmonston said. “If you want to do a dessert stout or pastry stout, is what they call it, you can do any of those things.”

However, there is a restriction this year on alcohol by volume (ABV) for the stout entries.

“We’ve noticed that when we have a beer of higher alcohol, it tends to be more rather than not, that the attendees drink all of that and nothing else,” Edmonston explained. “And we’re like, alright, that’s not really fair. So, no beer with an ABV of 9.6 or higher (can be part of the event). The max cutoff for the alcohol by volume is 9.5.”

Another criteria is that entries cannot be white stouts.

“Obviously, if it’s a lighter beer, when you’re looking at a plate of all dark beers, you’re going to be able to pull it out of a lineup,” Edmonston said. “So the whole point, similar to the IPA challenge, is that it’s a double-blind tasting competition, and just the best tasting style will win.”

Come to the dark side: Stout Invitational 2025 features 16 New Mexico breweries competing for best brew