Monday, November 16, 2020
5 Colorado Beers and Beer Trends that Have Made Fall Tastier
The time between pumpkin-beer season and Christmas-beer season has been anything but boring in Colorado this year. And while one beer in particular has stood out, there are several brews that are worth discussing while they remain available.
1) Verboten Brewing Not a Speck of Light
Just the second imperial stout offering from one of Loveland's most exciting breweries, this is, quite frankly, one of the best new beers of 2020 so far in Colorado. Aged for more than a year in a combination of whiskey barrels from Peach Street Distillers of Palisade and The Axe & The Oak Distillery in Colorado Springs, the three variants of this beauty each weigh in around 13.5% ABV.
Quite frankly, you would never know Not a Speck of Light carries that kind of strength - and that is one of the reasons why this monster is so impressive. Brewer Josh Grenz used enzymes in the mash to calm the taste of alcohol, leaving you to taste the sweet, chocolate-malt body in all its accessibility.
Of the three versions of the beer that Verboten has made, the German Chocolate Cake is the most impressive, with its combination of cocoa husks, heavy chocolate, coconut and pecans providing a sweetness that makes this dangerously smooth, the chocolate proving to be a taste that envelops the alcohol and makes it a surprising non-entity in the flavor profile. But the basic barrel-aged version of this triumph is one of those imperial stouts that stands on its chocolatey and also sweet-whiskey feel and lets you enjoy everything it is and everything it isn't.
2) Oskar Blues Death by Coconut
Oskar Blues has been making this seasonal chocolate- and coconut-infused Irish-style porter for a number of years, but never has it felt as dialed-in as it does this year. An inviting aroma with substantial coconut sweetness segues into a a body that tastes cake-like but is very smooth. The underlying body here is one of the keys - a solid effort that allows the sweet and solid flavoring to take center stage but gives it something to rest on that is classically excellent.
3) 4 Noses Lotus Rising
Released in September as the first beer the Broomfield brewery has made using Lotus hops, this New England IPA is simultaneously rich with citrus and tropical notes and yet very easy to drink. Just a lick of bitterness jumps up as the beer slides across the back of your tongue and gives this a memorable zing. Comes on juicy, leaves with enough bitterness to remind you it's all IPA.
4) Sanitas Dry-Hopped Sour
Sabro hops, as popular as they are, mar most otherwise impressive hop-focused beers by dulling a sharp impact with their coconut-oil overtones. But in this beer, they're put to good use cutting into the sharp tartness and giving the beer a more absorbing cushion that also makes it feel more laid-back in a still-exotic way. Don't kid yourselves, the hops are the backup singer here. But they act as contrasting flavors around the edges, and this all works very well together.
5) Packaging mixing multiple kinds of beers
When you're doing more of your drinking inside your home rather than trying to run the full menu at your local brewery via 14 tasters, you still need a way to get more variety in what you're imbibing. And over the past few months, breweries have stepped up to provide this, both through the packaging they are putting into stores and the way they are letting people bring their beer home from the tasting room.
Oskar Blues provided the perfect retail example with its mixed IPA pack late this summer, allowing you everything from the Pinner session IPA to a nice Double IPA in the Can-O-Bliss series. Other breweries have been offering these mixed packs for a while, but OB seemed the first to get that the same drinker wants variety in somewhat similar offerings, rather than reaching for a stout and a seltzer in the same pack.
Meanwhile, more breweries seem to allow the mix-it-yourself pack from their coolers, particularly by putting together a quartet of 16-ounce cans that allows the buyer to really dig into different flavors or different styles - but upon their choosing. Just in the examples below, I was able to get everything from an Oktoberfest to a Nelson Sauvin-hopped hazy IPA at Resolute Brewing in Centennial and everything from a Belgian red ale to a tropical sour at Barquentine Brewing of Edgewater - and learn a lot about the breweries in the process.
Labels: 4 Noses Brewing, Barquentine Brewing, Oskar Blues, Resolute Brewing, Sanitas Brewing, Verboten Brewing
