Thirsty Thursday Beer Painting #141. Grand Opening of King Street Brewing Company 2.0

King Street Brewing Company’s amazing pop top IPA tastes even better when you are on top of Bird Ridge, where you can chill your beer in the snow.  Bird Ridge is a grueling 4.6 mile (each way) hike with several false summits, so nothing is better than a tasty craft beer once you get to the top!  Oh, and the view is pretty good too.

King Street opened its doors in 2010, and I remember the two home-brewers, Shane and Dana, standing up at our local home-brew club meeting and proudly stating,  “We are going to open a brewery!”  They have been doing a bang up job, and their 10 barrel brewhouse just hasn’t been big enough due to popular demand.  They are going big and built a new KING sized brewery!  Other good news is that it is now much closer to Anchorage Brewing Company, so if you feel like a Brett-forward saison after a traditional King Street West Coast Style IPA, you can simply walk on over!  Unfortunately, still too far to walk to both Cynosure Brewing, or Midnight Sun Brewing, but totally an easy bike ride.  I love the Anchorage tetrahedron of breweries!

I didn’t know when the new King Street brewery was going to open, but I knew it had to be soon.  Luckily, I have Shane Kingry’s phone number, so I gave him a call this morning.  He told me that the new facility opens up at noon this Saturday, June 2nd!  Shane said the new place will be open, clean, and they will have tables and beer.  They also plan to have a food truck.

The month of June is starting out beertastic with my First Firkin Friday art opening at Midnight Sun Brewing.  I will be tapping the firkin at 5pm this Friday, June 1st.  Then on Saturday I will definitely be going to King Street Brewing’s grand opening.  I can’t wait to check out the new three-story building!

Cheers to growth and success!  Way to be King Street!  You are doing it the right way!

The original oil painting sold.  Limited-edition prints are available at our Etsy shop RealArtIsBetter.

Thirsty Thursday Beer Painting #141. King Street Brewing Company IPA. 8″x10″, oil on panel. By Scott Clendaniel.

First Firkin Friday Art Show at Midnight Sun Brewing Co.

Twice a year I get to have art shows at Midnight Sun Brewing Company in Anchorage.  Once in January, and also in June.  There are a couple perks to showing my oil paintings at this venue.  First, I get to tap a firkin (a small keg) at 5pm of opening day to kick off the month-long show.  Usually the firkin is filled with one of MSBC’s delicious brews cask-conditioned with special ingredients.  For example, at my upcoming art opening this Friday, June 1st, the firkin will be Panty Peeler Belgian-style ale cask-conditioned with tequila-soaked oak spirals and lime!  That sounds festive and refreshing!  Another benefit of having an art show at a brewery is that every time I go there to check on the show, I order a beer, which is tax deductible!

I’ve been working on several new pieces for this show, including paintings of the Homer Harbor, a K2 plane flying by Broken Tooth Mountain, a tandem bicycle, and a 5ft x 4ft piece of birch trees that is for people who have big empty walls.  I’ll be posting pictures of these paintings each day for the rest of the week on my Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter feeds.

Click here for details about the event, and please invite your friends!  I hope you can be there at 5pm on June 1st to watch me tap the firkin, but if not, we’ll be there until 8pm on Friday, and my art will be on display and available for sale until July 5th.

I hope that when I tap the firkin, this happens, because a beer shower is always fun, although I don’t want to waste too much beer.

Thirsty Thursday Beer Painting #140. Schnickelfritz Weissbier by Urban Chestnut Brewing Co.

Ist das nicht ein Schnickelfritz! Ja das ist ein Schnickelfritz, oh du schöne Schnickelfritz!

“Is this not a Schnickelfritz, yes this is a Schnickelfritz, oh you pretty Schnickelfritz!”

The Schnickelfritz is so German you just might find yourself singing this ditty auf Deutsch (in German) after drinking this tasty heffe.  Schnickelfritz is slang for a German misbehaving child, but is also a weissbier, a beer brewed with wheat in St. Louis, MO, at the Urban Chestnut Brewing Co.   This beer is becoming very popular in the area, so popular that guys like me in Alaska are getting to try it!  Thanks John Rice for driving this one all the way to McCarthy!  I was thinking I could put a Schnitzelbank (a traditional German tool for log peeling) in the background, but I told Maria about it and she said that was way too obscure of a reference.  So I did more research and found out that this beer, as well as many other Urban Chestnut beers, are served at Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.  I think the reason it would be so good at the stadium is the 360 pop top that lets you really smell the aromatics of the beer.  No plastic cup, thank you!

Florian Kuplent, brewer and startup founder of Urban Chestnut, started the brewery with David Wolfe in 2011.  Florian was born in Germany and spent many years brewing traditional german beers before coming to America where he worked at an East coast brewery and spent some time honing his skills making craft beer for the giant Anheuser Busch.  Basically, Kuplent worked all over the world with some experience in Germany, England, Belgium, and America!  No wonder the Schnickelfritz Weissbier is so world class!  It was brewed with world renowned experience!  Prost (cheers) to Schnickelfritz, a truly German-American beer!

The original oil painting sold. Limited-edition prints are available at our Etsy shop RealArtIsBetter.

Thirsty Thursday #140. Schnickelfritz Weissbier by Urban Chestnut Brewing Co. 8″x10″, oil on panel. By Scott Clendaniel.

Thirsty Thursday Beer Painting #139. Corvus Double IPA by Anchorage Brewing Co.

Which bike is the coolest, most drool-worthy, Alaska-designed, full carbon fat bike?  Anybody in the cycling community will tell you it is a Fatback Corvus.  Perfectly designed for Alaskan expeditions by Greg Matyas, owner of Speedway Cycles, this fat bike is getting rave reviews all over the country.

Basically this is the lightest, strongest, and best fat bike you can buy!  It is such a great bike that Gabe Fletcher of Anchorage Brewing Company made a beer in honor of it — the Corvus Imperial IPA.  This NE DIPA is no joke at 8.4% ABV and teeming with Mosaic hops.  Getting a beer made by Gabe is an honor and you know that the Corvus is the real deal.

Corvus refers to a crow, or a raven in Latin.  The label of the beer has a crow with a crow skull, so I decided to paint one in the composition, grabbing hold of the grips of this bad boy.

Cheers to bikes and beers, and two guys who make great examples of both, Gabe and Greg.  I hope you get to ride and drink beers for a really long time!

This original oil painting, and 52 limited-edition prints are available at our Etsy shop RealArtIsBetter.

Thirsty Thursday Beer Painting #139. Corvus IPA by Anchorage Brewing Co. 14″x11″, oil on panel. By Scott Clendaniel.

Oil Paintings for People Who Have BIG Empty Walls

~ by Maria Benner

We are looking for people who have big empty walls.  If that’s you, or if you know someone who fits that description, let us know.  We can help them fill that space with large oil paintings by Alaskan artist Scott Clendaniel.  Art for your office space is tax deductible!

Here are four large oil paintings currently available.  The edges are finished with oak, so they are already framed, and ready to hang.  Shipping cost will depend on location.

1. Susitna Pops. Oil on panel, 5ft x 2.5ft, 2016. Click here to purchase, or contact us to view this painting in person at our studio.

2. Bluebird Day at Alyeska. Oil on panel, 5ft x 2.5ft, 2017.  Click here to purchase, or contact us to view this painting in person at our studio.

3. Athena’s Owl. Oil on panel, 8ft x 4ft, 2015.  Click here to purchase, or contact us to view this painting in person at our studio.

4. Birch on Birch. Oil on birch panel, 4ft x 5ft, 2018.  Contact us to view this painting in person at our studio.

Thirsty Thursday Beer Painting #138. Bruin Brewing, inspired by Fred Machetanz.

Thirsty Thursday is here again, and this week I painted this comical painting inspired by the late great Alaskan artist Fred Machetanz’s painting End of the Hunt.  It seemed fitting considering that Monday was National Homebrew Day.  The polar ice is melting and this polar bear is not helping the problem by brewing and making a bunch of steam, causing a colossal meltdown.  This bruin might be floating out to sea on an iceberg, but the good news is that he will have plenty of beer assuming his wort ferments correctly despite the cold weather.  This must be an iced lager, I am imagining an eisbock.  This painting also references my local homebrew shop Arctic Brewing Supply.  The Logo for ABS is a polar bear stirring a big kettle.  The name of this piece is Bruin Brewing.  The fun just doesn’t stop around here at the Real Art is Better painting studio.  Cheers to this Arctic Bruin!  I hope the ice holds out until his lager is done fermenting, it would be a shame if this guy’s wort were to slip into the Arctic Ocean!

This original oil painting, and limited-edition prints are available at our Etsy shop RealArtIsBetter.

Thirsty Thursday Beer Painting #138. Bruin Brewing. 14″x11″, oil on panel. By Scott Clendaniel.

Thirsty Thursday Beer Painting #137. Live painting at Odd Man Rush Brewing.

Hello beer art lovers!  It’s Thirsty Thursday yet again!  How did the last week go by so fast?  There is a sweet brewery in Eagle River, not far from Anchorage, called Odd Man Rush Brewing.  The brewers there are making some pretty great beers like the coffee-infused red IPA, a new hazy IPA, as well as many other great new beers.  You might ask what the name Odd Man Rush means.  It is a hockey term referring to when one player is in the penalty box, which creates an odd number of players on the ice and the team with the “power play” (another hockey term referring to the team that has more players on the ice) has an opportunity to rush the goal.  So there is a serious hockey theme going on at OMR Brewing.  Combined with 80’s and 90’s nostalgia as well.  Hockey sticks and cassette tapes along the walls create an ambiance that brings me right back to my youth.  The huge scoreboard on the wall is very iconic to this brewery and sums up the aesthetic of the establishment.  I painted their popular flagship brew the Enforcer IPA.  I was amazed how the head on this American IPA held until I nearly finished the painting.  That’s well over an hour!  I would also like to mention how refreshing it was to not be drinking a NEIPA (New England IPA) for a change.  There is nothing wrong with the NEIPA style, but a great West Coast IPA will always have its place in my heart.  Enforcer is another hockey term, meaning a defenseman who dishes out the punishment, aggressively slamming the offense into the boards, and maybe even getting put in the penalty box for roughing.  In my humble opinion, that’s a great name for this particular beer!  If hockey is your game, you’ll feel right at home at this taproom.  Put on the foil, these goons are making some great brews!  Cheers to your victory on the ice and in the brewery!

The original oil painting sold.  Limited-edition prints are available at our Etsy shop RealArtIsBetter.

Thirsty Thursday #137. Enforcer IPA by Odd Man Rush Brewing. Painted live at the brewery’s taproom. 8″x10″, oil on panel. By Scott Clendaniel