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APRIL IV 2009
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Issue: # 15
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We're on the Eve of Construction!
Well, after last weeks marathon issue (don't lie to me you finally got through it 45 minutes ago), I decided to keep this issue considerably  shorter. That's right, I have found it in your best interest to keep it to a few bullet points, mildly humorous quips and some random pics of our wall of cans (also I am still a little burned out from my weekend at Coachella and three days of outstanding music!). As you can see, our cans have arrived and we are looking forward to getting the canning line up and running my the middle of next month, we'll keep you posted! So without further ado, lets get on with the weekly events update!
This Friday, the 24th, stop by the Phoenix Zoo for ZooBrew. According to the website: "ZooBrew
is one of the largest fundraisers for the Phoenix Zoo and continues to
be a favorite event for 3,000 Valley residents each year. This unique
event features live music from a nationally-recorded band, specialty
food, beverage sampling and a variety of fun event activities. Join us
and "get your wild on"! All proceeds from the event support the non
profit Phoenix Zoo." Tickets are $75 for members, $85 for non-members and lasts from 7 until 11 pm. Four Peaks will be one of more than 30 beverage suppliers so stop by! Oh yeah, and the Go-Go's will be performing. Info and tickets can be found HERE.
Stop by the Kierland Commons this Sunday for Taste 2009. The event features culinary tastings and live music with proceeds
benefiting the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metropolitan Phoenix. Come and explore the  individual tastes of many different regions of the U.S. and around the world. For tickets and more information, please click HERE.
We would also like to thank all of you for bearing with us throughout Tempe's road construction season. I know the combination of the wafting hot tar smell and 90 degree weather while you are feasting on a delicious Four Peaks BBQ Chicken Beer Bread Sandwich can be distracting, but we thank you for enduring it! Anyway, how about our brand new road? Pretty snazzy, eh?
Well, this week we check in on completing Pat's Run (someone forgot to tell a certain manager that it was held Saturday and not last night at 2:30 am!) and the upcoming McDowell Music Festival with Mike from Scottsdale. Our Brewers give us their take on last week's showing of Beer Wars, and we unveil the new Mother's Day Buffet (it's never too early to think of mom!) and we check in on server extraordinaire, Lauren Reeves for this weeks 5 Questions. Yup, some weeks we just don't have too much going on and finding entertaining tidbits can be a bit hard. I think Quint from the movie JAWS summed up weeks like this in quite an appropriate way when he said...
I'm not talkin' 'bout pleasure boatin' or day sailin'. I'm talkin' 'bout workin' for a livin'. I'm talkin' 'bout sharkin'!
Your Friends at The Four Peaks Brewery and Four Peaks Grill & Tap |
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1340 East 8th Street #104
Tempe, Arizona 85281
480.303.9967
480.303.9964 fax
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15730 North Pima Road
Suite D5-7
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
480.991.1795
480.991.1796 fax
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Ahhh, the wonderful smell of blooming desert flowers, the increasingly warmer daily temperatures and the upcoming end to another school  season can mean only one thing... the return of the Legendary Mother's Day Breakfast Buffet!
Yes, it is almost time for the greatest holiday a mom could ever ask for and we're planning on celebrating it in style! Show mom how much you care by stopping by either Four Peaks location and treating her to a special meal that only our talented cooking staff could concoct! We will also be offering delicious Mimosa and Bloody Mary specials in case the maternal unit would like to get her drink on! I know you've been eagerly waiting so here it is:
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Entrees
15 Item (m)Omelette Station
Prime Rib Carving Station
Peel & Eat Shrimp
Belgian Waffles
Penne Primavera
Chicken Enchiladas
Eggs Benedict
Country Baked Ham
Scrambled Eggs
Country Potatoes
Hickory Smoked Bacon
Sausage Links
Assorted Fruit Platter
Danish & Bagel Station
Dessert Station
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As always, our breakfast will be going on from 10 am until 2 pm, so make sure you don't oversleep! Your price of admission is $28 and we look forward to seeing you and your mother here...or there!
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CASK-CONDITIONED AND SEASONALS
IN SCOTTSDALE AND TEMPE THIS WEEK:
RAJ I.P.A: The true English style original now on tap at our Scottsdale location!
IN TEMPE:
HOPKNOT I.P.A.: The taste that is sure to satisfy, it always goes fast so come in soon! We will have the RAJ I.P.A. as our contingency plan
SEASONAL DU JOUR:
Currently In Development!
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5 questions with Lauren Reeves... Today we spend a little bit of time with Lauren Reeves. Lauren's upbeat and chipper demeanor is always a joy to see when coming in on a  Monday morning. She has (like sooo many others before her) left here only to come back after a time of long introspection by staring into the dark abyss that is life after Four Peaks. Well, we welcomed her back a few months ago and thought it was only fair to give her the trial by fire I call The 5 Questions! What do you have to offer us today Ms. Reeves?
1) What is your
favorite Four Peaks
beer? Please explain.
It really depends on my mood, but my ultimate fav is the Hop Knot. But since 2 Hop Knots can get me drunk, I tend to drink Sunbru or 8th Street more often! 
2) It is 9 o'clock on a Friday night, you just got done
serving your last table, you haven't eaten anything all day and management has
green lighted you to order something from the kitchen...what will it be??
Well, thanks to Kasey, I am a big fan of the chicken beer bread on sourdough. No oil, no butter, no onions and a side salad or a cup of soup. However, anyone who knows me knows i lived off the chicken rolls for the first year I worked here. 3) You've been away
and have since returned to the Four
Peaks family; how
has your time here shaped you into the person you are today? Please feel free to name drop!
I guess I never realized it until I left, but Four Peaks has really impacted who I am today. Being here has taught me patience (with customers, co-workers and myself!) how to work hard but still have fun, but most of all the Peaks has taught me appreciation! I appreciate the lifelong friends I've made, my co-workers, all of my managers and that I was welcomed back with open arms. There really is no better family to be a part of than the Four Peaks Family and I'm grateful to be included. I am also thankful for Randy on Monday mornings when he refills my soft drinks. He is quite the hands on owner! 
4) With temperatures
already getting close to the century mark, what part of the summer at Four
Peaks are you
most looking forward to?
I look forward to the end of summer...or at least the end of each shift so I can sit down and have a Sunbru!
5) If there was one
thing you could add or subtract from the Four
Peaks menu (food
or beverage), what would that thing be?
The Fish And Chips! Nothing against fried food, but I can't stand the smell of malt vinegar and those items seem to go hand in hand!
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UPCOMING EVENTS
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Sunday, April 26th: Taste of Kierland at The Kierland Commons
Tuesday, April 28th: Four Peaks Beer Dinner in Tempe. SOLD OUT!
Sunday, May 10th: Mother's Day
Monday, May 25th: Memorial Day
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The Brewers Blog
It's probably not a big deal to most of you, our dear
readers, and especially to those of you who didn't see it, but we'd like to
give our take on Beer Wars, the movie. Oh,
goodie! Our first movie review.
Anat Baron, the producer, director, narrator and driving
force of the movie, did an admirable job in, we're assuming, her first motion
picture, although her background for pursuing such a project detracts from some
credibility. She was formerly the
Manager of Mike's Hard Lemonade, which she claims makes her a brewer (!?). Oh, and she happens to be allergic to
alcohol. Those two things aside she
attacked her subject with sufficient verve and a dash of sleight-of-hand.
First, the sleight-of-hand part; for a great portion of the
movie she pits the popular, thriving (some would say over-exposed) Dogfish Head
Brewery with the small struggling contract brewer Moonshot Beer (never heard of
it? Don't worry, it probably won't
last). Baron chronicles these two
brewer's ups and downs (which are many, and at times border on the sappy, and
overplayed woe-is-me-but-I'm-a-fighter formula). The stories were interesting but they were,
we feel, only a smoke screen to get to Baron's main premise; Big Guys=Bad Guys.
It's this premise we have a problem with. That is, that the big brewers, specifically
Anheuser-Busch, are somehow limiting the little guy's access to market through
either, buying shelf space, or by offering up odd brands to take shelf space
(one could say Mike's Hard Lemonade falls into this category), or by
legislative bullying, and/or other general shenanigans via the mass distributor
networks that they control. We're not
alone in  saying that this has a little taint of truth to it, especially if
we're talking, oh, 1997. But these
things have changed.
As beer market analyst Harry Schumacher points out; it can
be argued that without the big guys there would be no little guys. He points out two huge omissions made by
Baron. 1) It was the Big Guys who got
the small brewers tax break passed and it was the Big Guys who have kept it
there since. Without this tax break many
Little Guys would never have bothered.
2) As Mr. Schumacher deftly puts
it, "Were it not for a mandated independent distributor tier, there would be no
craft beer industry to speak of. Go to any tied-house country overseas or in Latin
America and see how their craft beer scene is doing. What, there
aren't any craft brewers? Exactly." And
who mandated this? Well, the government
ostensibly but it was at the urging of the Big Guys.
Now, is the three-tier system perfect? HA!
Far from it. Does it limit access
to market for the little guy? Well, it's
not so much the system but the nasty little state-by-state laws that can
prevent access; of which there are way to many to list here.
Overall, it was great to see our industry on the big-screen,
it's just that the message of the movie was maybe 10 years too late.
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The Grill & Tap Dispatch
with Mike Kruchko
Well, I know how everyone missed me last week, but when the
road calls to get in a little field research (get it, baseball -field) who am I
to deny it. I do want to give a big
thumbs up to one David Tanzi for filling in last week. His literary stylings were quite refreshing.
Ok, enough with the nonsense, down to brass tacks.
To paraphrase from the Movie "Step Brothers" and one Annie
Ford....So Many Activities! Pat's Run was
an enormous success with a turn out of more than 20,000 participants
celebrating the life of former ASU football star and Army Ranger, Pat Tillman.
Proceeds from the race went to the Pat Tillman Foundation and its Leadership
 through Action initiatives. The
team put together from North Scottsdale was expected to
roll through the competition and take the top few spots on the podium. Unfortunately things don't always go quite as
planned and that didn't exactly happen.
Although our times were quite impressive and we had an amazing time
being a part of it. So on behalf of the
team, I would like to thank Four Peaks for entering us all in the
race. We really appreciate it and look
forward to next year! Oh, almost
forgot...we did bump into one Sarah Kelly (our long time, favorite bartender at
the Brewery for those of you who may not know her) before the race started, so
it was nice to see a face from Tempe; but what I didn't realize was that
apparently Sarah has been training with the Kenyans for the last year or
so. She put up an amazing time, so make
sure to give her congratulations on a race well run! (And between you and me Sarah...next year I'm
taking you down!)
Once we changed from our running shoes to our flip flops it
was off to "Eat, Drink and be Pretty" an now that I've gotten a proper head
count and scoured the grounds of the Scottsdale Civic Center, I can say for
sure that everyone has been accounted and no stray employees were found, which
 makes for yet another successful Culinary Festival! No seriously, thank you to everyone that came
out this year, we really do have a blast seeing each of you and making a bunch
of new friends in the process!
Where
does that leave us for the upcoming weekend?
Well up here in North
Scottsdale the McDowell Mountain
Music Festival is without a doubt the event of the weekend! The non-profit event, which donated
$130,000 to charity last year, is one of the Valley's most laid-back music
fests and with acts such as the Flaming Lips, Matisyahu, Hot Tuna and
Michael Franti & Spearhead performing over the two day event, it's bound to
be the place to be. Since the whole
shindig takes place at WestWorld of Sacottsdale it's basically walking distance
from us. So if your in the  neighborhood and don't plan on camping out make sure
to make the Grill & Tap tour pre and post musical festival location. How about this, if you plan on attending
either Friday or Saturday, make sure to come in to Four Peaks Grill & Tap,
bring in your ticket stub and receive 20% off your entire bill (Scottsdale
location only, not in Tempe)! Wow, how
'bout that for a hook-up? Just a few
caveats...the discount will not pertain to any "to go" beer purchased and the
deal is only good for this weekend. Sorry,
but if you come in two weeks from now with a ticket stub looking to get
hooked-up you're S.O.L.
Alright, I don't want to over work myself my
first week back, so I'm going to call it a day.
I'll be back next week with some more stuff and maybe pull out a sweet
joke or two. Heck, I've got to start
working on my material if I'm going to replace Leno when he retires!
You can contact us in
Scottsdale at 480-991-1795 or at Scottsdale@fourpeaks.com
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A Few Parting Words...
Scene: It is 3 days
before graduation and you have been put in charge of getting a keg of quality Four
Peaks Beer. You've
called the Brewery and were informed that due to the very busy Graduating
Season, they just don't have a keg of anything to spare. What do you do?
The solution is very simple my dear readers and beer
drinking enthusiasts contact our good friends at BevMo! With locations now throughout the Valley, they
will end up providing you with all your beverage needs! If we're out of it they will probably have
it! Kilt Lifter, 8th Street Ale, whatever you want, they're your next best option after us! Find your closest location by
clicking HERE!
Customer Comment Of The Week...Last week we introduced the latest segment of the Brewsletter called "The Customer Comment Of The Week" or TCCOTW. This week we would love to throw a little bit of love to our compatriots in Scottsdale from Mr.Bruce Schmitz, take it away Bruce: "We were in Phoenix 3/26 - 4/1 and ate at the Scottsdale location three
times. The food, service and beer were awesome. You were 3 for 3 on
perfect service. We love coming in every time we are in Phoenix. Thanks to
all the staff and the cooks for the great dining." Way to represent Grill & Tap! I'm sure I speak for all of our friends in Scottsdale when I say thank you for stopping in so many times during your stay out here! That's all for this weeks edition, get out and enjoy the weather while you can, it's going to be hot soon... Cheers!
"There can't be good living where there is not good drinking."
- Benjamin Franklin
Scouring the Internet, I Came Across A New Play Pal For Trevor's New Puppy!
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