Who hasn't wanted to spend a few minutes chatting up the guys who make their favorite brews? The Chow Bella team, lucky dogs that we are, recently got the opportunity to do just that. The catch? We only got about three minutes with each one. These guys are busy!

Watch the short video below for an insight into the mind of an Arizona beer-maker -- this time we're chatting up Ron Kloth, Brewing President of Papago Brewing Company -- and stay tuned for more brewer interviews in the days ahead, in the days leading up to Arizona Beer Week.

For today's vid, we go behind the scenes (literally -- we were inside the beer fridge) with Papago Brewing owner Ron Kloth.

Arizona Beer Week 2012 runs from Feb 18-25. The celebration of the craft beer boasts more than 150 buzz-worthy events in every corner of the state including Flagstaff, Sedona, Prescott, Tucson, Phoenix, Bisbee and every brew-loving burg in between.

Chow Bella partnered with Up Agency, Arizona Beer Week's communications team, to produce this video.

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sierranevada.com

​Beer: Bigfoot
Brewery: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Style: American Barleywine
ABV: 9.6 percent

They called me crazy. You're wasting your time, they said. You'll never find it, they said. But I always believed, and my desperate search finally paid off.

I found Bigfoot.

Though, to be honest, it wasn't really all that hard. Sierra Nevada produces quite a bit of their popular barleywine every winter, as well they should -- the brew's taken home gold at the Great American Beer Festival in 2005, 1995, 1992, 1988 and 1987. Bittered with Chinook hops, finished with Cascade and Centennial varietals, then dry-hopped with a blend of all three, Bigfoot's a 90-IBU beast with a flavor as big as the gentle wood ape for which it's named.

beernews.org

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Do you feel that? The building giddiness in the soul of every local beer lover. The faint smell of hops and sweet wort in the air. My beer sense is tingling.

Arizona Beer Week is almost here.

The most beloved eight days of the year, Beer Week is a time for celebrating Arizona's craft beers and trying out the ones we don't always see on tap in the Valley. (Full disclosure: Chow Bella is teaming up on a project with the Beer Week folks -- keep your eyes peeled.)

One of the visiting brews we'll see during Beer Week is Fireside Ale, and you'd do well to search it out while it's in town.

untappd.com

​Beer: Elsie's Irish Coffee Milk Stout
Brewery: Papago Brewing
Style: Milk Stout
ABV: 5.5 percent

A few days before each holiday visit to my parents' house, my dad will call me up under the guise of checking in before I visit. We'll chat about the trip, what we have planned, how packing is going. But the real reason for his call emerges soon enough: "You think you could bring a growler of Elsie's with you?"

Coffee and beer are two favorites at the Fowle house, and Elsie's Irish Coffee Milk Stout combines both in a way that makes us go through growlers at an alarming pace. Named after Papago owner Ron Kloth's dog, Elsie's is a stout brewed with lactose (hence the "milk" in its name) for body and sweetness. A pound of Irish cream-flavored coffee beans is also added to each barrel, giving the brew the flavor of an Irish car bomb.

Zach Fowle

​Beer: Old Rasputin XIV Anniversary
Brewery: North Coast Brewing Co.
Style: Russian Imperial Stout
ABV: 11.5 percent

About 95 years ago, Grigori Yefomovitch Rasputin was killed. Though he was purportedly a mystical healer and held some influence over the tsar of Russia, Rasputin's remembered mostly for his murder, for which it took enough cyanide to kill five men, four gunshots in the back, a brutal beating, AND being tied up tossed into an icy river before the man finally went down.

About 14 years ago, Rasputin was reborn when his name and never-say-die attitude were lent to a beer, Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout -- a rich, roasty, flavorful brew that's as solid a stout as you'll ever find. Since 2007, North Coast has celebrated the celebrated the anniversary of Rasputin's first bottling by releasing a version of the brew aged in bourbon barrels. Old Rasputin XIV Anniversary marks the fourteenth year of Rasputin's continued existence.

mybeerpix.com

​Hypothetical situation: A friend of yours, who recently decided to buy a kit to brew his own beer at home, has presented you with a bottle of his first batch and asked for your honest opinion. 

This beer is flat, sour and looks like it was brewed with 51 percent spittle. What do you tell him? Do you tell him it's the best beer ever, and he should quit his current job to become a full-time brewer so he can distribute this ambrosia among the masses? Or do you maybe give him some constructive criticism in the hopes that his next attempt improves upon this one?

beerpaintings.blogspot.com

​Beer: Hopslam
Brewery: Bell's Brewery, Inc.
Style: Imperial IPA
ABV: 10 percent

Several times a year, a brew is released that sets the beer-buying public in a frenzy. Like a locust swarm, they'll race from store to store to pick up as much as they can, leaving barren, empty shelves in their wake. Deschutes Abyss causes this phenomenon among stout lovers, but for hopheads there's no bigger thrill than the hunt for Hopslam.

Released every year during a too-short period in the middle of winter, Hopslam comes to Arizona from Bell's, the Kalamazoo, Mich.-based brewery best known for Oberon, a refreshing wheat ale, and Two Hearted, a snappy IPA. Hopslam starts with six different hop varietals added to the brew kettle tempered with dollop of honey. A massive dry-hop addition of Simcoe hops gives the brew an aroma that's one of the most pungent of any imperial IPA in the land.

Zach Fowle

​Beer: Jubelale
Brewery: Deschutes Brewery
Style: Winter Warmer
ABV: 6.7 percent

At my last check, the temperature outside was in the 70s. But the calendar still says it's winter, dammit, which means it's still a great time of year to crack open a dark, malty winter warmer. Deschutes Jubelale is one of the most available -- and tasty -- iterations of the style around.

Now, for a long time I've been an unapologetic fan of extreme beers. Massively roasty stouts; tongue-rippingly bitter IPAs; boozy barleywines aged in every type of liquor barrel imaginable. Rarely will I try the same beer twice -- there's just too much out there to enjoy. But there's a short list of brews I'll buy a six-pack of every season they appear on the shelves, and Deschutes Jubelale is unquestionably on it.

Zach Fowle

​Beer: Sam Adams Infinium
Brewery: Boston Brewing Co.
Style: Biere de Champagne
ABV: 10.3 percent

Boston Brewing Co. comes under a lot of fire from the beer community. It's to be expected as the largest craft brewery providing for a fickle community of geeks -- people will get upset and write you off for becoming too "mainstream" or selling out. The makers of Sam Adams are lambasted for many a move, and the criticism is usually undeserved.

Any scorn brought about by Sam Adams Infinium, however, is completely warranted.

We flash back to 2010, when, after much buildup, Infinium was first released. Sam Adams touted it as a "groundbreaking brew," created in collaboration with the world's oldest brewery (Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan, founded in 1040). Infinium was to be a completely new beer style created using only the four ingredients allowed by the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot: water, malt, hops an yeast. Working together, Sam Adams and Weihenstephaner beer-makers designed a process of reintroducing the mash process into the brew kettle and the fermenter that's so unused they actually applied for a patent. The brew was then then bottle-conditioned with a traditional Belgian yeast and fermented using champagne methods to add complexity, clarity and carbonation.

Zach Fowle

​Beer: The Nut Before Christmas
Brewery: SunUp Brewing (322 E Camelback Road, 602-279-8909)
Style: English Brown Ale
ABV: 4.2 percent

'Twas the Nut Before Christmas, and all through the bar,
People were coming, from near and from far,
For a delicious nut brown ale and some holiday cheer,
Nothing quite warms the spirit like this English-style beer.

In December '09 the Nut made its debut,
And made its way into glasses for me and for you.
'Twas named by a staffer, inspiring this rhyme,
And brewed with ingredients from Greenwich Mean Time.