SIN CITY

Happy New Year from Vegas. According to CNN it’s now 1958 in America, which may be generous.

We spent last night queuing for the world’s best tacos,

Tacos el Gordo
A taco master

and trying to cobble together enough nickels and dimes for our midnight feast of Hersheys and Reeces. We are the high rollers Vegas dreams of.

Looks like Cleethorpes to me

Earlier we did the “walking along the Strip” with a $9 plastic glass of beer thing that reminds you how great England is.

Sin City

Sin City Brewing operate a number of bars along the strip, including this little stand-up joint outside Bally’s, which gives you a decent view of the Celine sign.

“Near, far, wherever you are”

Now, this isn’t as flash a bar as you’ll get in Dulwich or Didsbury.

Sin City

But I liked the simplicity of the beer range (here I go again), and the way the staff encouraged me to upgrade from their standard IPA to a seasonal DIPA.

It was sensational. “Tell us it tastes like BrewDog, Mrs RM“, I urged.

But it didn’t. It tasted like Beavertown’s Lupuloid.

If you’re going to steal, steal with pride.

Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

29 thoughts on “SIN CITY”

      2. Vegas is counting on very drunk people with expense accounts. A huge percentage of the visitors are not spending their own money.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. Sure you’re right. We only popped in casinos a couple of times to use their “restrooms” so got little sense of the gambling side of it, and saw no actual drunkenness, even on 31 Dec !

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      4. It was hard to work out whether beer was really expensive on a short trip, as there’s no direct pint comparator and we never found a really basic pub. Is there heavy tax on beer ?

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      5. Liquor tax will vary by state. I don’t think the tax is nearly as high as what you see in the UK. Location and venue will affect the price of the drink more. A single craft beer at a baseball game will be between $8-12. A price so ridiculous that I will not drink at a game anymore. It simply is not worth it. I can literally buy a six pack for the price of a single ballpark beer.

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  4. $9 and a flimsy, single-use plastic glass to boot? No thanks, even if it was a Double IPA. Is there really such a beast?

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    1. Paul, the $9 plastic was for walking along the strip. It’s legal to drink on the streets in Vegas, and in the limos and party buses and anything else I’d imagine. But the plastic is for “safety” (heh); kinda like large venues in the UK (or sports venues over here).

      Mind you, I doubt it was much cheaper (if at all) in the Sin City bar.

      If by such a beast you mean Double IPA, then yes. I liken it to Imperial Stout (heck, over here some brewers use Imperial IPA vice Double). Basically it’s an IPA that starts off at 9% ABV and goes up from there.

      https://www.beeradvocate.com/search/?q=double+ipa&qt=beer

      Cheers

      Russ

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  5. “reminds you how great England is.” –Ha! I fear half the stuff you’ve seen on your vacation thusfar has provided a similar reminder. A possible exception for the Grand Canyon. 😉

    Were the tacos worth the wait? You’ve got me thinking I missed out on a good thing when I was in Vegas a couple years back.

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  6. “Tacos el Gordo”

    That photo has an ad for the Australian Bee Gees. They were playing when I was there four years ago. 😉

    As for cheap beer, when I was there you could still get it (in a way) by playing the slots (or blackjack, roulette etc.) in the casinos. Bottled beer was free (but if you did not tip the waitress who delivered it at least $1 she’d never check on you again). You could get Guinness (bottled in Dublin at least) or Heineken or some other imports. But in actual bars and the like you’d be paying for the privilege of being a tourist in Vegas. 🙂

    Cheers

    Russ

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  7. Why is Russ posting under an Anonymous moniker but then signing himself off as Russ ?
    And who the hell is Monica anyway ?
    More disconcertingly after less than a week over there Martin now considers himself an expert on tacos.
    He’s come a long way from Black Country pork scratchings.
    In such a short time.

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    1. For some strange reason* anything I post to Martin’s blog with my name/email details filled in either goes missing or doesn’t show up for me (it may show up later, not sure). This is both for postings from my computer or phone (sigh). So I’ve resorted to using Monica’s friend Anonymous as my handle, then signing off to show it’s me (as if my debonair wit in my writing wouldn’t confirm that). 🙂

      Cheers

      * – It’s like the X-files! (LOL)

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  8. Strange things are happening in North America, beware world.

    RM, right about now, I bet you are even missing dimpled mugs with handles.

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  9. You hit the brewing style bang on the head here. USA nick the idea of our English IPA’s, move them forward with their more flavourful hops thus producing a US style IPA, then we nick it back and call it IPA, even though we already had our own English IPA style to start with. As an aside I had a North Riding Brewery UK IPA in North Riding Brewpub earlier this week and it was tremendous, all powerful, brassy English hops. There is a theory that it was Sam Smith’s importing their bottles that started the US IPA trend. Personally I think that is fanciful, unless someone can provide me with verifiable evidence to the contrary?

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      1. Temporary bridge! Smith’s can get many things right, but all too often, where local (Tadcaster) people are concerned and particularly his pub managers (strangely never the brewery staff), Humphrey demonstrates that he is a proper ‘C U Next Tuesday’!

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