Beer Run Blog

Reviving a dormant Czech hop, Denver style

A great experiment is underway at two Denver Czech-style breweries, and it testifies to the quality of Old-World-style beer that is being made here in this community.

Sugar Creek Malt Co. — a craft malthouse from Lebanon, Indiana — came across a historically dormant Czech malt, Edelweiss, harvested it and replanted it until there was enough to make some serious beer. It then got it into the hands of just three U.S. breweries  — Seedstock Brewery and Cohesion Brewing of Denver, as well as another brewery in North Carolina, according to Seedstock co-owner Jerry McIlvenna (pictured at top) —and gave them a chance to use it.

What came from the offering, in the case of Seedstock, was its Heritage Pilsner, a lager that is similar in every way to its crisp and tasty Czech Pilsner, except for the substitution of this once-forgotten malt. And trying the two pilsners side by side is a fascinating experience.

The Czech Pilsner (on the right in the above photo) is golden and clean, tinged with Saaz hops — smooth, malt-forward and simple in a classical way. But the Heritage Pilsner pops with hop freshness and bitterness in a manner that makes you take notice. The body is a bit murkier, but this is no hazy. It's straightforward in its approach to letting traditional ingredients shine, and it ranks with the crispest Colorado beers made in the past year.

McIlvenna, who bought Seedstock in early September from its original, successful owners, said he thinks the hop zing came forward in the way the brewery chose to use the under-modified malt, which made for a slower and more deliberate brew day. It undertook a quadruple concoction, stepping the temperature up each time to bring more character to the malt. And it worked — very well.

"We love brewing lagers, and it's actually a challenge," McIlvenna said last week as he guided a tasting of the two beers.

Either beer is a joy to sip, though trying the Heritage Pilsner and Czech Pilsner side-by-side and contrasting them borders on an art form in enjoying Czech-style beer. And it's a reminder just how fresh and new a beer can taste, even if its recipe comes largely down from centuries of tradition. 

Labels: Cohesion Brewing, Czech-style beer, Seedstock Brewing

Top 10 Colorado Beers of 2021

Maybe it was something that Covid did to the tastebuds, or maybe to the collective thinking of Colorado's brewers. But as the world started to segue back to some sense of normalcy this year, the craft-brewing community provided what seemed a soft landing for the state's beer connoisseurs, offering simple pleasures from well-made pale ales to hazies that concentrated on the hops to the best single-year collection of pilsners in memory.

Oh, for sure, there were bulked-up imperial stouts and the occasional multi-fruit sour that were worthy of adulation. But as 2021 passes into memory, what is clearest about the year is that the beers that are most memorable aren't the ones that challenged you so much as those you enjoyed after the long hikes or when gathering with small groups in backyards and talking about each other as much as you discussed the beers. And in many ways, nothing could have been more needed than the gems of this year's class.

So, once again, here is one beer writer's takes on the best new or newly relevant beers of this year, served with a toast to those folks who just kept working while the world worried - and gave us all one more thing about which we could be unequivocally thankful.

10) The Earl — Woods Boss Brewing/Fermly

Of all the beers lost in recent years to brewery closings, few if any had as unique a place in the beer ecosystem as the dearly departed Caution Brewing's The Earl, an English mild ale made with Earl Grey tea that was smooth and eye-opening and as good a session beer as one could imagine. So, when Denver's Woods Boss announced it was bringing it back in collaboration with Caution founder Danny Wang's beer-testing lab Fermly, true fans sounded at least a mild note of trepidation, wondering if the remake could possibly be in the same class as the original. But the multi-faceted brewery nailed the recipe and added a dash of sweet orange peel that kicked up the flavor in a new way. And a true pioneer was reborn, reimagined and enjoyed again in a new atmosphere.

9) Synthetic Substitution - Casey Brewing & Blending/Weldwerks

Ask yourself what kind of beer two of Colorado's best breweries might make, and the "no shit" answer would be: Something very good. And that answer was right. Synthetic Substitution, an 11.5% ABV imperial stout made with coconut and cacao was both as simple as its ingredients suggested and a masterfully smooth big beer, one that was perfectly aligned for sipping on Casey's Glenwood Springs patio. Casey may be known best for its fruited sours, but its showed once again that when it goes big with a handful of ingredients — and in this case, works with another master — it can transform what might just be a "big beer" in some hands into an explosion of flavors.

8) Curator's Kolsch - Coda Brewing

The year's biggest beer surprise came at the Golden History Museum's Autumn Fest, when the simple act of taking a break to grab a beer turned into an eye-popping introduction into one of the crispest yet smoothest kolsches made in Colorado, courtesy of a Golden brewery that is off the beaten track and too often overlooked. It greets you with a snap on the front of your palate that hints at sweetness but quickly envelops your tongue in almost sparkling traditional hops and malts. This is refreshing and simultaneously full of flavor. And it's great year-round.

7) Maple Pecan Yeti - Great Divide Brewing

The variations of one of Colorado's best imperial stouts have been coming at a ramped-up rate in recent years, some memorable and some that one politely might call "experimental." But this year's Maple Pecan Yeti stood out because it took flavors that both blended effortlessly with the big beer and seemed to give it a bit of a new personality. The addition of Vermont maple syrup and candied pecans — ingredients that can crash a beer if used poorly — were welcoming and comforting and made this 9.5% ABV beer possibly a little dangerously approachable. There was no burn at all here, leaving it almost like an aperitif in its personality. Let's hope this makes it into regular rotation.

6) I Just Ryed in Your Arms Tonight — Cannonball Creek Brewing

Revived after a several-year absence, this beer was the embodiment in many ways of the best that 2021 offered in Colorado: A beer that was subtle in its nature — a 5.7% rye pale ale — but packed so full of flavor in that body that it clings to memory nearly a year after it was first consumed. The rye is incorporated perfectly, sweetening the beer just slightly but really backing off and letting the pale hops work their magic. Both tasty and approachable, it serves as another example of why the Golden brewery has the longest-running streak of Great American Beer Festival medals among all Colorado breweries, a streak that isn't likely to die any time soon.

5) Anniversary 9 — River North Brewery

River North has continued to push boundaries as it has aged, even as it also has pushed out a variety of even more approachable beers. But it celebrated the last birthday of its first decade with one of its best experiments, a whiskey-barrel-aged coconut imperial stout that tasted nothing like its foreboding 12.5% ABV label might suggest and picked up in its flavor between its March release and the six-month point of its cellaring. River North often pushes boozier, usually with good results, but rarely does it pull out this much complexity. Hell, the brewery also made a Birthday Cake-flavored beer that showed how talented it is at drawing out flavors. But this beer truly something special.

4)  Redwood Grand - Bruz Beers/Cuvée des Jacobins

Bruz truly burst out of its shell in 2019 when it opened its second location on East Colfax Avenue, growing out from its well-attended home in unincorporated Adams County. But for those who hadn't noticed its maturity before, it sent a huge shot this year with a multi-part collaboration series with Belgium's Cuvée des Jacobins, capped by its jaw-dropping blend of sour beer and its barrel-aged quadrupel. Tart yet fully packed with a deep body enhanced by the huge beer and barrel, this was an eye-opener at its successful Belgian Brew Festival this summer and a reminder of how much the brewery has grown every year. Belgian history courses through the veins of this beer, but its extra bite is a signal that American artistry can blend impressively with centuries-old tradition.

3) In the Steep DDH with Nelson — Outer Range Brewing

This is not the first time that the Frisco auteur has double-dry-hopped Colorado's best hazy IPA with Nelson hops. But something felt more perfectly assimilated, more natural, more ... simply drinkable and admirable about this year's version than maybe anything the brewery has done before. Bursting with tropical flavors tempered enough by the hopping to pull this back into an IPA form lovable by all fans of the style, then tinged with enough hints of white wine to remind you how complex even the most quaffable hoppy beers can be. To sit in Outer Range's taproom and choose beers off the menu to pick up the subtle variations in them is an art. This, however, is maybe the brewery's most artistic work yet.

2) German-Style Pilsner — Upslope Brewing

This limited-edition release was an absolute triumph of beer-making, showcasing the increasingly impressive Boulder brewery's ability to take a subtle style and excite in ways that even barrel-aged beers can't do by combining Old World crispness with new-world crush-ability. The Loral and Tettnanger hops emerge slowly as the spring-runoff-like smoothness runs over your tongue. But when they do emerge, they do so with a boldness that lets you know they truly are the star of this show, maybe more than expected. This is crisp, surprisingly bitter and quite stealthy with its translucent body. It's the product of a mature brewery that knows it doesn't have to shock to be memorable.

1) Double-Dry-Hopped East Coast Transplant with Idaho 7 — New Image Brewing

In a year in which bold flavor burst forth from pale ales and hazy IPAs alike, what stood out about this version of the Arvada brewery's signature beer, double-dry-hopped with Idaho 7, was how much you wanted to drink it, plain and simple. Taking arguably the best hop right now to juice up a beer with, New Image made this all about the tropical richness of the flavor, letting hops gather 100% of the love and creating something that flowed across your taste buds while exciting them in every step of the journey. It absolutely didn't seem like a double IPA so much as a reachable IPA packed with melon and occasional pineapple bursts, yet neither thick or fruity. Describing this version of East Coast Transplant, in fact, takes a back seat to sitting on the brewery's back patio on a summer night, sharing conversation with friend and occasionally stopping to say "Wow, this is good." This is where beer is now: It is refreshing, it is comforting, it is not subtle but not tearing at your taste buds. And the next time you have a chance to order this beer, you won't hesitate for even a second.

Labels: Bruz Beers, Cannonball Creek Brewing, Casey Brewing, Coda Brewing, Great Divide, New Image Brewing, Outer Range Brewing, River North Brewery, Top Beers of Year, Upslope Brewing, Woods Boss Brewing