The Great Vegas Festival of Beer is back again this year at Tivoli Village on April 21st!

This was one of the better Las Vegas beer fests I attended last year. A lot of great beers from some great breweries.

The things I didn’t like about last year was the length of time it took to get into the festival, and how small and crowded the festival area was. It looks like Motley Brews learned from last year by adding an express lane for online ticket holders and three times more space than last year! Also exciting are some of the breweries that will be present this year that are new to the festival: Brewery Ommegang, Ballast Point, Uinta, and Green Flash, to name a few. Expect to see the local breweries on hand as well: Tenaya Creek, Joseph James, Chicago Brewing Company, and Big Dog’s Brewing Company.

More details, and pictures, can be found at Motley Brew’s website.

In keeping with the recent Joseph James articles, here’s another review.

When Joseph James had their brand relaunch at Khoury’s earlier this month, I was able to snag a bottle of their Roasted Coconut Pumpkin Porter. This is part of their “Rough Draft” series. These beers are in progress and are not available for sale.

This beer had an incredible smell. Neither the coconut or pumpkin overwhelmed the other. This was also evident in the taste as well. The two main ingredients went together incredibly well. This was more of a brown porter style, so the sweetness in the malts also brought out the sweetness in the pumpkin flavors.

The aspects that were lacking in this beer were body and carbonation. It was a bit thin and flat for a porter. It is important to remember that this is a rough draft beer, and as such is a work in progress. These are very easy issues to fix and the fact that these are the only issues in an in-progress beer is nothing to hold against it.

I really hope they make this beer again and release it as a seasonal. This would be a great fall/winter beer to drink by the fire. Or even better, as an ice cream float!

Joseph James Brewing Company has always made decent beer. However, I generally thought that their beers were missing something.
Recently, Joseph James altered their recipes and completely blew my expectations out of the water!
Hop Box went from being an average, bitter IPA to a “go out of your way for” beer! The hoppiness hits you right away and lingers on well after your last sip! Pair this beer with a cheese plate from Whole Foods Market, and I guarantee that you will not be disappointed!

Local Las Vegas brewery, Joseph James, has not only a gluten-free beer, but the first gluten free beer to be canned!

Also notable, this is one of the few gluten free beers that doesn’t use sorghum, the typical barley replacement. Instead, Joseph James says it uses “organic rices and nectars.” The taste of this pale ale is very light, dry, and crisp. This light flavor profile, along with the low alcohol content, hides the fact that there is no barley in this beer. The American hops give Fox Tail a light grapefruit citrus taste.

The beer paired well with the sausage, mushroom, onion pizza I was eating. The lightness in the beer allowed the vegetables on the pizza to still be present with each bite. This is an ideal beer for any sort of meal involving primarily vegetables with little seasoning.

Since Joseph James is a local brewery, you can find their beers at  nearly every beer retailer in town.

UPDATE: Joseph James commented on Twitter regarding how to find the new recipes:

Red Fox 4-packs, Lager cans, Gluten Free (Fox Tail) cans, and Weize Guy bottles that do not have the word ‘light,’ are new. As for Tahoe and Hop Box, look for Tahoe 22oz and Hop Box 4-pack bottles. In about a month all beer in the market should be the new recipes regardless of package. These recipes have been evolving over a year so there are newer versions on the shelf.

This past Wednesday, Joseph James re-launched their brand at Khoury’s Fine Wine.

Earlier this year, the brewery hired Alex Graham as the new head brewer. They then began the process of seeking honest feedback about their beers and rewriting all the recipes to match what they wanted to represent their brand. From what I understand, every recipe of theirs was changed. Some beers were completely rewritten from scratch, others were slightly modified.

At Khoury’s, the brewery staff was on hand giving free samples of all of their beers. I didn’t try all of them, but here’s a recap of what I did try:

Tahoe Blue Pale Ale: I had never tried this beer before, so I can’t compare it to the old recipe. I can say though that this is a very solid pale ale. Very crisp, bright and refreshing. On the hoppier side for a pale ale, so it’s got a nice bitterness up front before the dry, citrusy finish.

Hop Box Imperial IPA: Previously, I always had mixed results with this beer. I’ve always thought it was a decent beer, but it was never bitter enough, or had enough hop aroma. The new recipe takes care of all of that. Very strong upfront bitterness with a wave of grapefruit aroma. Less sweet malts are used to keep the focus on the hops. Overall, this is a great IPA.

Red Fox Imperial Stout: The old version was a good stout, but had a bit of thin mouthfeel. This new version feels like a stout should. It has a dark roasted espresso taste and it’s also a bit smokier too, with an almost ashy, vanilla finish.

Joseph James is also experimenting with new beers as well. The first 48 customers at Khoury’s had received one of Joseph James’ “rough draft” beers. I was able to snag a bottle of Toasted Coconut Pumpkin Porter. The other rough draft beer available was S’mores Porter.

I picked up all of their beers so I’ll get to try the rest that I didn’t try that night and write about them here.

Wednesday, February the 1st, Joseph James Brewing Company of Henderson is set to relaunch their brand at Khoury’s Fine Wine.

The brewery recently hired Alex Graham as a new head brewer and have been reevaluating and rewriting the recipes to all of their beers based off of the feedback given to them by consumers. Graham will be at Khoury’s at 6pm introducing the new Lager, Weize Guy, Tahoe Blue, Hop Box and Red Fox.

The first 48 customers to buy a six pack of Joseph James also gets one of two limited release beers for free. There will be 24 bottles of Roasted Coconut Pumpkin Porter and 24 bottles of S’more Porter available.

Hope to see you all there! Several of us from Hooked on Hops will definitely be there as well.

I started using Untappd about 5 months ago and last night I reached the milestone of having had 100 different beers. I looked through the list and saw that I have had beers from 42 different breweries from 6 different countries.
The 100th was not as eventful as I was originally planning on it being, but I am glad that it was from a Las Vegas brewery that I had not tried before, Joseph James. I tried their Hop Box IPA, it was super hoppy but not at all bitter, much more of a hop aroma. I had seen it around town before and was very excited to give it a try. I was first introduced to this brewery when I tried their root beer at Ho Foods (Whole Foods). Just from that root beer alone, I could tell that this brewery knows what they are doing. I look forward to trying more beers from this brewery.