Beer Run Blog

2012-01-22T20:24:00.000-08:00

The Smoky Side of Ale

It started with Liquid Bacon, the mouth-watering, mesquite chewy smoked copper ale from Hunter Beer Co. at the edge of Australia's Hunter Valley wine region that lived up to its name when I first tried it in 2009. Then it moved to the smoked bock that the SandLot Brewery served the next summer, not as full of barbecuey goodness but still packed with smoke in a lighter-bodied beer.

Now, the welcoming club of smoked beers that aren't porters has a new member in the William Wallace Scotch Ale being poured down at Denver Beer Co. And it is every bit as chew-worthy - and, according to its brewer, as polarizing - as the other beers that have come from this style.

The smoked porter, popularized by Alaskan Brewing, is, at this point, a semi-common option for most breweries. The dark malt cloaks the smoke and makes it perceptible only as an add-on rather than a main flavoring, giving just a hint of spiciness to the common murky character of the style.

But lighter-bodies beers that have a flavor of smoke to them are riskier, as the smoke stands out far more prominently. And there you walk a think line between brews that taste like the liquid equivalent of a sumptuous rack of ribs and beers that taste like a fire fighter's uniform was substituted for hops as a late-boil addition.
William Wallace (think: "Follow me ... to the BBQ pit!") comes at you with a giant mesquite smoked flavor from the first sip, swaddling it in sweet Scottish malts but clearly letting it be the star of the show. As the beer warms, the sweet and the charred intermingle more, giving you a mouth-filling taste of such magnitude that even the brewery's GABF-award-winning Graham Cracker Porter can't match.

Brewer Charlie Berger stopped by the table to take my compliment on the beer but then mention that it might be the most polarizing beer that the 5-month-old brewery has concocted. (The comment seemed especially appropriate as The Beer Geekette, a Scotch ale fan, passed it off to me to drink because she couldn't take the smoke.) Yet, Charlie should take that as a compliment.

When you make a beer this heavy in flavor, some people are naturally going to turn away, asking for something that is plainly easier. Yet, I hope more breweries get the gumption to infuse mesquite smoke - or other flavors we as a beer community haven't yet thought of - to continually challenge our taste buds.

2012-01-08T13:10:00.000-08:00

What I Learned from Big Beers 2012

All six members of the Fearless Tasting Crew noticed it and agreed: There was a feeling that something was different, and better, about the 2012 Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines festival this weekend.

Maybe dividing the high-alcoholfest over two rooms on separate floors opened the space up enough to make it feel more pleasant. Maybe the educational seminars, which felt directed to brewers and beer geeks rather than casual drinkers, were a little better. Or maybe there was this: The first time I tasted a beer that I didn't like, I looked down at my watch and realized it was 4:07 p.m. - one hour and 37 minutes into the show.

A festival that can bring out the best experiments in the brewing community - but also some concoctions that shouldn't see the light of day again - this year featured things both daring and shockingly drinkable. Even Avery's Coffeestopheles Stout, the 16.4 percent coffee/alcohol bomb formerly known as Meph Addict, felt just a little easier on the palate without losing any of its gusto.

With that said, here's a few things I learned at the festival:

* The Bruery is quickly evolving into one of the top breweries in America. If there was a beer of the fest, it was Partridge in a Pear Tree, the 3-year-old Belgian-style dark strong ale that presented itself as spicy on the nose, black and sweet on the palate and slightly sour with aged dried fruit. The Orange County beermaker also created the best beer of this Christmas season, Four Calling Birds, and continues to dazzle.

* Brettanomyces and hops really do make a great combination. Crooked Stave's Wild Wild Brett Green combined the magical yeast strain with three pounds of hops per barrel of beer and created a layered and unique hop bomb that stood out among a host of grassy beers.

* Brettanomyces and red wine barrels also make a wonderful partnership, as Surly Brewing showed quite ably with Five, a brett-fermented dark ale that walloped you with tart cherries. It jolted your taste bud at every sip. If only it was sold in Colorado ...

* Coffee and big beers are a combination of which we should see more. Between Coffeestopheles Stout (worth a trip to Avery's taproom if you have a designated driver), Ballast Point's Victory at Sea Imperial Porter (the most drinkable 10% porter ever) and Great Divide's Espresso Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout (a known entity, but one that proved its heft against the others in the room), there was a series of tastebud-rocking efforts adding a new twist to the known big and dark beers.

2012-01-06T06:02:00.000-08:00

Good Cheers and Big Beers

It's the wonderful weekend of the Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival in Vail, one of the finest brewfests in Colorado each year. And while there will be more to discuss afterward - after deciding which of the multiple seminars to attend and which of the 200 or so strong beers to sample - there's at least two pieces of good news at the start.

First, from the festival website, all attendees get a $5 food ticket with their admission this year. I would say this is an added bonus all festivals should consider. Too many people - the Fearless Tasting Crew included - get too wrapped up in the beer selection and simply forget to put anything in their stomach to cushion the impact of drinking. This will provide an incentive to do that, at the least.

Second, a source - we'll just call him "Gary from Colorado Craft Beer Radio" - tells that the tasting portion of the the event will be spread out between two rooms this year. This is an even better move for the festival. No one has ever complained about the worldwide, rare selection of beers available at this gathering. But occasionally, the central tasting area has become so crowded that you have to ping-pong your way from table to table. Spreading it out will ensure everyone has a more pleasant good time, and festival organizers should be lauded for it.

If you don't have tickets yet, they are still available. And - shameless plug alert - if you're going up today but don't have plans for tonight - feel free to stop by Crazy Mountain Brewing in Edwards for a "Mountain Brew" book-signing.

Cheers.

2011-12-31T13:25:00.000-08:00

Top 10 Colorado Beers of 2011

The past year has been an exciting and experimental year for Colorado beers, even by its lofty standards. And so, to try to categorize the best offerings from 2011 is no easy task.

This list is not necessarily a list of the best beers you could buy at any moment in the state - don't worry, Avery Maharaja, I haven't forgotten about you - but a list of the most exciting beers of the past 12 months. These are the brews that inspired conversation in just the past year, excited taste buds and made you appreciate the brewing craft of this state so much that you wanted to share it with everyone.

10) Cherry Bomb Belgian Stout - Strange Brewing

This fascinating combination of roasted malt and tart cherries is not a new brew. But in the past year, the evolution of the beer to a happy medium between the stout and Belgian fruit styles, as well as the decision to keep it smoothly on nitro, has continued to make it one of Denver's most fascinating brews.

9) Steamworks Berliner Weisse - Steamworks Brewing

Many breweries experimented ) - and did very well - with this previously little-produced German sour wheat beer in the past year. But none made anything quite as tasty as the Durango brewery that is continuously experimenting and coming up with options like this that strike the interest of the palate without beating it to death with tartness.

8) Belgian Yeti - Great Divide Brewing

Great Divide has made a small amount of beers better than Belgian Yeti. But it's been a while since the last time it made something so provocative to combine Belgian yeast with its already bold and flavorful imperial stout recipe. And the fact that Great Divide was ballsy enough to release this in the summer lets you know how countercultural a good beer can be.

7) Summer Cab Ride - Breckenridge Brewery

Breckenridge's SummerBright Ale was a run-of-the-mill light offering - right up until the brewery decided to age it in cabernet sauvignon barrels and turned it into a fascinating and complex lighter beer with wine skin and slightly sour overtones. Now it's one of the most approachable and enjoyable barrel experiments in this state.

6) Mexican Chocolate Stout - Copper Kettle Brewing

Copper Kettle opened in late April and won a Great American Beer Festival medal in late September - a gap that brewery owners believe to be the shortest in history. But it was well-deserved for a beer that so artfully combined spice, cinnamon and dark malt that it felt like you were drinking dinner, not an aperitif.

5) Le Terroir - New Belgium Brewing

New Belgium had displayed Le Terroir in its taproom and at the GABF before. But it wasn't until this year that the dry hopped sour ale became a part of its Lips of Faith series that received general distribution. Tart like a cherry and yet grassy in its hops, it combines the best of Belgian and American brewing and gives you a beer that warms your cockles.

4) Brain of the Turtle - Trinity Brewing

Colorado complexity reached its peak in this sour ale aged with cherries, coffee and almonds - Jason Yester's latest freak show of a beer that conforms to no style but just turns heads and makes experimental beer fans smile. Nothing was talked about more among Colorado beer geeks at the Great American Beer Festival. And no other new beer deserves a statewide release so much in 2012.

3) Myrcenary Double IPA - Odell Brewing

Colorado has become the king state of double IPAs, which makes it particularly hard for a newcomer to break into its market. But Myrcenary, released at the end of 2010, ranks with its best products as a sharply hoppy offering with enough of a malt backbone to make it grassy without being overbearing. It's a four-pack worth picking up.

2) Nitro Milk Stout - Left Hand Brewing

No Colorado beer has been more hyped in its release than this one - which makes it incredibly impressive that the Longmont brewery not only met but exceeded expectations with a magically carbonated and sweet stout that may well the most drinkable beer in Colorado right now. I have turned IPA drinkers into stout drinkers with this selection, and Left Hand's influence is likely to turn a lot of typical dark beer producers into auteurs who put their beer on nitrogen to make it more interesting.

1) Buddha Nuvo - 14 breweries, led by Rockyard Brewing

Collaboration beers are, by their nature, complex and full of flavors that everyone wants to contribute. But no beer pushed the taste envelope so much to the edge - without sailing over it - as this collaboration saison from 14 breweries that presented drinkers with the combined tastes of grape skin, plum, pumpkin and a perfume-like overtaste that fades into simple fascination at the realization of what is in here. One of the highlights of my year as a writer was the opportunity to participate in a multiple-blog collaboration review of this masterpiece. But nothing we said could equal the melange of flavors cavorting in your mouth and making you realize that Colorado beer is producing experiments that will push it further up the charts as the state that should attract national attention both this year and in the future.

2011-12-24T15:08:00.000-08:00

Holiday Beer Week, Part Five: The New Champion of Christmas

For the past two years, no holiday beer has brought more to the season than Port Brewing's Santa's Little Helper, a fiercely dark imperial stout that could keep you warm if you were sitting outside in the snow. It just seemed that nothing would dethrone it as the Christmas beer king.

Then came Four Calling Birds, this year's addition to The Bruery's now-4-year-old collection of rotating holiday specialties. And it just yanked that title away.

Four Calling Birds (the one on the left with less head in the photo) brings its own inky darkness to the table, a trait that leaves even more of an impression in your mouth with the resounding hint of high alcohol in its backtaste. But it adds both the smoothness that defines Belgian-style strong ales and a spice presence - largely, gingerbread - that floats through your mouth. Thus, it becomes the rare beer that will both pound your taste buds with its flavor and soothe you with a cookie-like flavor profile, leaving you thinking this is the beer you really want to leave out for Santa.

Don't get me wrong: Santa's Little Helper (on the right in the photo, with the thick head) remains a rare highly drinkable imperial stout in which you can literally chew on the roastiness of the malt and be wowed. But, at least this year, it's only second on my list of the beers that I want to keep drinking throughout the winter.

And if you need to decide yourself, head down to Freshcraft, which should have both of the offerings on tap throughout most of next week.

This is the last of a five-part series examining the beers of this holiday season. Merry Christmas and happy new beer!

2011-12-23T22:46:00.000-08:00

Holiday Beer Week, Part Four: Nowhere Near Style

There isn't an official style for "Christmas Ale." But if there was, there are several beers that it would not include - some of which should feel very proud to be outside the lines.

First among them is Jolly Pumpkin's Noel de Calabaza Special Ale, a beer that combines so many different flavors that trying to tie any description to it would do it injustice. But know this: This might be the most appealing beer yet produce by the Michigan brewer of barrel-aged ales.

Noel, like most Jolly Pumpkin beers, has a wild-yeast sour flavor to it. But this version backs it with a malt body that lays down such a solid cushion to the tart character that it evens out the bite and spreads it across the entire palate. This really is an extraordinary beer, one that defies any expectations of a Christmas beer - like most of what comes out of the brewery - but manages to be extremely pleasing despite the complex body.

Gift of the Magi, Lost Abbey's Christmas offering, serves up Brettanomyces, but not in as palatable an offering. This one is equally style-breaking, but more sharply alcoholic. And its fairly translucent amber body gives way to a sharp ale that presents itself more as a melange of flavors than as a coherent taste profile, leaving it too open to interpretation to make it an easily enjoyable package.

Then there's Breckenridge Christmas Ale, a beer that very well could have gone into the first part of this series as a dark, wonderful ale. But it has such a cult following that you feel it really ought to stand out somewhere else. This is a beer that blends malt darkness with just a touch of hops to make one of the most balanced beers of the year. It is dark, yet it is special. And that's how a beer goes beyond any particular labels.

This is day four of a five-part series examining the beers of this holiday season. Merry Christmas and happy new beer!

2011-12-22T22:25:00.000-08:00

Holiday Beer Week, Part Three: A Belgian Christmas

No one knows quite how to do the holiday season quite like the Belgians, do they? A cold country that's used to serving complex, warm beers, saving up what they have for one big month. Americans shouldn't even compete, right?

With the kinds of lush offerings that Belgium offers, that was once a rational mindset. But this year, at least one U.S. brewery produced an extraordinary Belgian-style offering. And so, it seemed worth a little comparison shopping to test its merit.

The American beer of note is Grand Teton Brewing's Coming Home 2011 Holiday Ale. A medium-bodied but thick-tasting golden ale reeking of cotton candy and orange, it is one of the most accessible and yet enjoyable European-style holiday offerings to come out of a U.S. brewery in recent memory. It has a soft feel, and its 9% ABV weight warms you considerably. And it is infinitely drinkable.

Paired against two notable Belgian holiday offerings, it stands the test.

Affligem's Noel Christmas Ale (pictured above) went over less well with the Fearless Tasting Crew. An amber-brown offering that sits somewhere between a Belgian double and triple, it presents a licorice-heavy front taste that sweetens with warming but still leaves an anise presence in your mouth after it's gone. It's interesting and, in some ways more simplistic than the multi-layered Coming Home, but it doesn't make you refreshed and warmed in quite the same way.

St. Bernardus Christmas Ale, a Belgian abbey ale with a sweet, rich amber body was far more enticing. With candied sugar and tastes of dark fruit such as plum and blackberry, it almost seemed to be made for a holiday associated with sugar-plum ferries dancing in your head. The mouthfeel is not overwhelming, but it carries a deep, burgeoning richness.

Still, Grand Teton's effort just struck one note more original, more pleasing, more for a holiday celebration. And both the Idaho-based brewery and American beer drinkers should rejoice in that.

2011-12-21T22:52:00.000-08:00

Holiday Beer Week, Part 2: Hoppy New Year

The concept of a hoppy holiday beer - as fun and alliterative as it may sound - is still a relatively untouched idea in the American beer spectrum. But why should it be?

The idea behind most holiday beers is adding a little something extra to the standard recipe or brewing with spices that you use only once a year. So, why not take hops that are normally outside of a brewery's line of ingredients, pair them with a typical malty backbone and create something new? It can be done without making the Christmas season an excuse to rev up the IBUs on a recipe just for the heck of it.

Maybe nothing demonstrates that better this season than Full Sail Brewing's Wreck the Halls, a 2011 brewmaster reserve that doesn't hold back on the hops. Rather than trying to do anything too dazzling, this creation simply layers Centennial hops onto a deep amber body, giving you a mouth full of grass but also a pleasant malty backtaste to minimize the sting. And thus, it proves you don't have to use cinnamon to designate that you make make a special beer in the winter.

Odell Brewing's Isolation Ale approaches the concept of a hoppingly refreshing beer from a different angle - that of a beer that presents its caramel characteristics first and foremost but surprises you with a sharp hop backtaste. In that way, the hop is the special flavor of the season, bursting into what otherwise would be a more standard medium-colored ale and warming your palate beyond what the malts can do.

Newcastle seemed to be going for a similar taste this year in its first-time Winter IPA, a take on the style that is decidedly light on bittering hops and that comes with just a hint of holiday caramel in the body. It's about as far from Wreck the Halls as you get in terms of intensity. But, more than being a hophead's delight, this is the kind of hoppy beer that you can serve to the whole family gathering and use it to ween people onto the idea that holiday beers with a different taste don't have to mean an overpowering malt or spice base.

This is day two of a five-part series examining the beers of this holiday season. Merry Christmas and happy new beer!

2011-12-20T22:36:00.000-08:00

Holiday Beer Week, Part 1: Dark and Daring

Holiday beers come in many styles, from the hopped to the heavy, but none seems as prominent as the dark beer that just reeks of warming on a cold winter night.

The bad news is that a number of the holiday darks push, like summer light ales, adventurouslessly toward a color rather than a unique flavor. But there are those that can pull of the label "dark and daring," and for them we should all be grateful.

*Bristol Brewing's Winter Warlock has long been a favorite of mine for its chewy roasted oat flavor, and this year the Colorado Springs brewery just cranks up the goodness by putting it on nitro (at least at the brewery). This smooths it out and lets the softly burned chocolate flavor stand out above the carbonation. Try it if you can find it this way.

*Great Divide's Hibernation Ale is another old standby - at 8.7% ABV it was the first big beer sold throughout Colorado. But this beer feels fresh every year. It's a big hit of both malt (on the aroma) and hops on the back of the tongue. And the high alcohol really does leave you warmed.

*If you're looking for something of the sweeter variety, Tommyknocker's Cocoa Porter seems to be picking up that characteristic more every year. It has just a hint of a vanilla cream taste and a medium-sized body, making this a perfect post-ski beer if you're stopping at the brewery on the way back down I-70.

*Left Hand's latest iteration of Paint It Black should only be drunk when not exhausted, as it's a jolt to the system. Ink black and thick as soup, the 2011 version outstrips the daring 2010 Baltic porter version because this adds just a hint of chili fire on the backtaste that lights up an otherwise fully dark mouthfeel.

*Finally, for those who like their Christmas beers like the ones that would have been drank in the 19th Century, there is Lump of Coal Dark Holiday Stout (pictured above) from Ridgeway Brewing of England. While British porters often tend to leave you with a mouthfeel of wet rope, this provides you with a dusty, even musky chocolate taste that feels it's blending old-world and new-world beer sensibilities.

This is day one of a five-part series examining the beers of this holiday season. Merry Christmas and happy new beer!

2011-11-13T21:10:00.000-08:00

Breck's Barreled Gem

Breckenridge Brewery wasn't always an envelope pusher. As brewmaster Todd Usry told me for "Mountain Brew," it went through a period of complacency before realizing that the industry was making strides that it was not making in 2005. From there, it started producing gems like its 471 IPA and its Vanilla Porter that gained it its well-earned current reputation for excellence.

But in Summer Cab Ride, which the brewery served on tap this summer and released in limited-edition bottles Saturday, Breck has come up with the most unique beer its put out since it started bottling Vanilla Porter in 2007. And Colorado beer drinkers can only hope that it pushes the now-21-year-old brewery toward more barrel-aging experiments in the future.

Summer Cab Ride is the brewery's seasonal SummerBright Ale aged in Cabernet wine barrels. SummerBright, the brewery's lightest offering, arguably is also its least head-turning. But the wine barrel-aging does something truly special to it.

The golden-colored ale takes on a slightly sour, almost pungently Belgian quality, with a grape-skin taste jutting into the beer's qualities at every sip. This is not a strong barrel edge but more one that presents itself around the edges and then seeps gently into every pore of the ale.

In doing so, Summer Cab Ride doesn't leave summer ale style so much as it infuses it with a hell of a lot of personality. There's just enough acidic fruit on here to let you know you've found something special without crossing the line into making this an actual fruit beer.

During Saturday's sale of bombers, the brewery was also pouring a Vanilla Porter and an Oatmeal Stout that it had aged in whiskey barrels; the Vanilla Porter in particular created a new, mellower taste to the beer. Now that such aging has begun, we can only encourage Breck to continue to do more of it, as the results are eye-opening and continue to redefine one of the state's oldest breweries as one that is willing - and very able - to perfect new tricks.

2011-10-25T06:35:00.000-07:00

What's Cooking at Odell

Every once in a while, you can get a peak inside a great brewery's mind not by watching its bomber release schedule but by visiting its taproom. And a trip to Odell Brewing this weekend showed that the brewing legend continues to push the envelope with taste but also is adding a new dimension in subtlety.

Yes, there was the Hiverrano New American Wild Ale, the wild-yeast-fermented alcohol bomb that comes on with a low-profile sour sting but leaves you with a root-y, earthy feel of experimentation in your mouth. And there was the Bourbon Barrel Stout, complete with a whiskey mouthfeel that complimented the dark malt.

But the gem of the day was the Fall Harvest Ale, a citrus-and-coriander-laden concoction with a very smooth malt backbone that resembled a summer ale with actual heft to it. And there was the Nacho Cuppa Joe, a nitro-infused coffee porter that didn't scrimp on the java taste but smoothed it out with nitrogen to make it more accessible. The taproom also featured a Raspberry Stout that was neither fruity enough nor dark enough to match up to the other experiments on tap.

What does this all say? Well, it means that the brewery that dedicated 50 percent of the space in its 2010 expansion to barrel-aged and experimental beers isn't looking just to go over the top. And while one might wish it was when you taste something sublime like the multidimensional sour Friek - set for release Saturday - it also means Odell can broaden its appeal to a lot of different drinkers.

And it can surprise you with tastes like a Fall Harvest Ale, which, much like the superbly crisp Kolsch it rolled out at select beer festivals this summer, could hit shelves one day and serve as a fantastically easy-drinking alternative to other seasonals on the market. And, subtle as that may be, it is an experiment to redefine the styles that everyone - not just us hard-core beer geeks - are drinking.

2011-10-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

Mexican Chocolate Stout: En Fuego!

As a fan of chili beers, you grow to think that nothing could be better than that singe of multiple peppers coming just before a well-balanced ale puts out the fire with refreshing malt and hops.

Then you try Copper Kettle Brewing's Mexican Chocolate Stout - this year's Great American Beer Festival gold-medal winner among herb and spice beers - and realize that a chili beer really can offer so much more.

This gem - and I rarely write blogs about just one beer unless it's a superlative creation - presents an up-front cocoa taste, deep and rich and sweet. Before that has time to fully settle, though, you're hit by the rare taste of cinnamon, which makes you feel you've gone from a dark beer to some kind of mole sauce that you weren't expecting.

Then comes the piece de resistance, the Mexican guajillo chili peppers, that greet you with just a flare of a burn on your tongue that accentuates both of the previous tastes. The cinnamon/fire combo leaves you with a slight scorch on the back of your throat, but one easily soothed by the swirling combination of the three flavors.

This isn't a beer you think you can drink several 10-ounce glasses of, but it is shockingly soothing, like the aroma of a spicy potpourri setting in. And it truly is a uniquely pleasing taste that offers something for spiced and dark beer drinkers without letting them feel comfortable enough to assume they've ever tasted a flavor quite like this before.

2011-10-11T21:15:00.001-07:00

A Walk through Colorado Breweries, Radio-Style

I had the great please of talking with Ariana Brocious of KVNF radio in Paonia not long ago about my new book on Colorado breweries. But while the conversation centered around "Mountain Brew," I found that we ended up hitting more Colorado breweries in one interview than any I've done yet.

If you're interested in taking a 15-minute walk through the Colorado brewing industry, here is the link. Enjoy.

2011-10-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

GABF Wrap: Colorado Shines

By now, you've probably heard the stats on Colorado's props from the Great American Beer Festival, and they are impressive. Thirty-nine medals go to 29 breweries, including 15 gold medals. The state places second in overall medals and golds only to California. Pandemonium ensues.

But before we shut the door on the recaps of this year's magnificent gathering of American brewers, it's worth delving a little deeper on some of the honors that were garnered - and a few that weren't.

*Great Divide, Avery, Left Hand and Trinity make make most of the short lists for the best breweries in Colorado. It is worth noting, however, that none took home a medal this year. That is partly due to the fact that these four breweries simply don't make beers that fit easily into any of the 83 categories in which beers are judged. ("And the medal for best imperial stout infused with Belgian yeast is ... Belgian Yeti, the only one made in America.") But is it shocking all the same. And it tells you something about the state when it can garner 39 medals without any tallies from these big four.

*Two other omissions worth noting are the lack of medals for Bristol's Laughing Lab Scottish Ale and Steamworks' Steam Engine Lager, the two most honored beers in state history, with 15 combined medals. Without rifling through my notes, I can't remember the last time neither medaled. Both are still great beers; sometimes it's just not your year.

*Colorado's big winners, meanwhile, were Dry Dock and Oskar Blues, which took home three medals each. Dry Dock, which scored with its Hefeweizen, Coffee Milk Stout and Pro-Am Kriek, is making a habit of this, tying or leading the state in medals for the third year in a row. Oskar Blues, honored for its Old Chub, Mama's Little Yella Pils and Deviant Dale's (which needs to be canned) is certainly worthy as well.

*Copper Kettle Brewing opened in April and Denver Beer Co. cut its ribbon just in August. Yet, both walked away with medals in their first half-years of existence. Copper Kettle scored gold among herb and spice beers with its Mexican Chocolate Stout and Denver Beer a bronze in specialty beers with its Graham Cracker Porter. Grimm Brothers Brewhouse in Loveland, which opened last fall, also was a medal winner at its first GABF, taking gold among altbiers for its Little Red Cap.

*Colorado breweries took the gold and bronze in the pro-am category. C.B. & Potts Westminster had the best collaboration brew with its Before Capone pre-Prohibition pilsner and Dry Dock nabbed bronze for the aforementioned Kriek. This is no coincidence. No other state in the country fosters such an atmosphere of amateurs working with pros, and it's beginning to show.

*Bash Coors all you want, but four of its breweries - Blue Moon, SandLot, AC Golden and the main house all won medals for various creations. And none went to anything in the American lager or light lager categories.

*All of the medals were well earned, but several were exceptionally good choices. New Belgium's Le Terroir snagged the gold in American-style sour ale, as it should - no beer out there combines Belgian technique and American hopping quite as well. Odell's Friek, which mixes sour beers from three differently aged barrels, walked away with a richly deserved gold among wood- and barrel-aged sour beers. And the Funkwerks Saison that took silver for French- and Belgian-style saisons is delicious without being overwhelming.

*Best name out of all the winners: The SandLot's Move Back, the gold-medal recipient among dortmunder or German-style Oktoberfest beers. As brewer Tom Hall told me for my book, it's dedicated to all the Chicago Cubs fans who moved to Denver but complain that Chicago is a much better city.

2011-10-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

GABF Wrapup: Best of the Fest

After three days of attempted recovery from the Great American Beer Festival, I can still taste some of the beers I sampled - and in a good way. Sours took on more nuanced and fresher flavors, IPAs seemed to have a more uniform grassy backbone and it seemed you could find a surprise beer around every corner, especially at the pro-am booth.

So, per annual tradition, here is one beer connoisseur's opinion on the very best that America had to offer this year.

Beer of the Festival: Never in 11 years of attendance have I tapped a Colorado brewery for this honor. But Trinity Brewing's Brain of the Turtle - a sour ale aged with cherries, coffee and almonds - defied every known category and blended terrific flavors into a masterpiece. While I was in line at the booth, two separate people told brewer Jason Yester that other brewers recommended they try his beer. The reputation is well earned.

Close Runner-Up: Tiny Captain Lawrence Brewing of New York state opened a lot of eyes with its Rosso e Marrone, an ale fermented in grapes and aged in oak barrels. In a world of increasingly complex beers, this went beyond pucker-worthy and was smooth and almost exotic on the tongue.

Best Lager: It isn't to style in any way, but Danny Wang's Lao Wang Lager, from Denver start-up Caution Brewing, should inspire admirers and copycats with its proprietary blend of Asian spices.

Best Wheat: Tumblewheat, from perpetual festival attention-getter Altitude Chophouse and Brewery of Wyoming, came across like a vanilla cream wheat with an exceptional blend of smoothness and sweetness.

Best Hop Monster: Coloradans got a gift earlier this year when Firestone Walker Brewing of California finally began distributing out here. Anyone IPA fan who doesn't demand their local liquor stores bring in Double Jack, an imperial IPA that blends flowery earth tastes and sweetness artfully, is missing out.

Best Malt Monster: Sun King Brewing of Indianapolis took home a festival-best eight medals, but none were more deserving than the one earned by Pappy Van Muckle, a barrel-aged Scottish ale that is big, sweet and ignites the taste buds with a lightly whiskey-sodden flavor.

Most Interesting Beer: Anyone who failed to wander over to the pro-am booth Saturday missed out on the Indra Kenindra Curry Export Stout submitted by Ballast Point Brewing of San Diego, which had the nose of a south Asian rice bowl and backed it with a dark undertaste that helped it settle smoothly. It makes you excited about the next generation of beers to come in the years ahead.

2011-10-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

GABF, Day 2: Small Breweries' Triumph

The Fearless Tasting Crew waited through the endless line at Cigar City Brewing last night, grabbed some Guava Grove saison and collectively shrugged as the less exciting version of the beer it found last year. Then we wandered over to Captain Lawrence Brewing (of New York state), strolled up to the lineless booth and went back again and again. Everything - but particularly the Rosso e Marrone grape-fermented, barrel-aged ale - was that good.

It's a growing adage that is proving particularly true this year: A crafty brewery, no matter how small, can make products on par with the greatest beers in the world. And those wares are on display at this year's Great American Beer Festival.

Nobody seemed to be talking about McKenzie Brew House in Malvern, Pa., before the start of the show. But one sip of its Saison Vautour, a bitingly sharp barrel-fermented citrus explosion, and the conversations should turn to that brewpub quickly.

Ditto with Freetail Brewing of San Antonio, whose Bandito - a double honey red wheat ale aged in barrels from a local winery - provides a rich apple-like taste that jumps out as one of the most unique at the GABF.

More than one person has now fawned over Angry Birds, the American Belgo Rye IPA trucked out to the festival by Haymarket Pub & Brewery of Chicago. It really is as complex as it sounds.

And the too-often-overlooked Six Rivers Brewery of McKinleyville, Calif. may have the best combination of completely opposite styles of beer. Try the Chili Pepper Spicy Ale to see how a company makes a hot beer drinkable, and then wash it down with a Raspberry Lambic Style Ale to see how a brewery makes an ancient beer style relevant.

It isn't that the big guys didn't bring great stuff. Odell's Myrcenary IPA may earn its true place on the landscape if it rightfully captures a gold medal in the double IPA category today.

But the lesson is this: Don't spend all your time in the big lines at the biggest booths, as you'll miss some incredible finds at the smaller ones.

2011-09-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

GABF, Day One: The Colorado Breweries

When a company selling a retail product tells you that it's about to release a "game changer," you should be skeptical. Yet, just a couple of sips into Left Hand's bottled Nitro Milk Stout last night, and I knew they were not exaggerating the importance of this beer.

The Longmont brewery has found a way to smooth out the best milk stout in America without the gadgetry that is normally required to be in a nitrogen-aided can. It brings out the subtle sweetness of the dark brew without pushing that attribute too hard for people who might not like it. As odd as this may sound, it makes a great beer better.

So, why is this important? Because an American product, which the brewery ships to stores today, is about to give Guinness a run for its money. I confess I've never been a Guinness drinker because I find it a little dull. This beer offers the smoothness that stout drinkers with less envelope-pushing palates than mine will appreciate, as well as the added kick of flavor that will grab the attention of someone who might normally go for a big IPA. It has the chance, I believe, to be the biggest thing to emanate from Colorado since Fat Tire.

Yet, Left Hand's big announcement was just one of the things that jumped out at the first night of the Great American Beer Festival, which I spend mostly talking with Colorado brewers and trying to find the next great thing coming out of the state. Here's what is there:

*If you haven't been to Lao Wang Noodle House in Denver, you haven't tried anything from the three-month-old Caution: Brewing Company, as that is the location of its only account. Go. Brewer Danny Wang's Lao Wang Lager, brought to life with a proprietary mix of Asian spices in the brewing, jumps across your taste buds more noticeably than many of the finest ginger beers in the country. You'll want to pair this with food.

*In the discussion of the state's best IPA, Avery's Dugana IPA is often overlooked. It shouldn't be. It has a larger pop of ass-kicking grassy hops than many, and it may be the best thing the Boulder beermeisters are serving at their booth this year.

*Want to play a fun game? Go to Shamrock Brewing's booth, try the Poacher's Pale Ale and try to identify what kind of hops are in there. Brewer Jason Buehler picks them from his favorite mountain biking trail - hence, the name - and the mystery hops give an interesting but slightly indiscernible taste to this subtle but enjoyable beer.

*In a world of wheat experimentation, Dostal Alley Brewpub & Casino has found a good niche. Buddy Schmalz's Summer Ale is sopped in chamomile with an orange backtaste. It's worth a try.

2011-09-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

A Coloradan's Guide to the Essential GABF Breweries

With 466 breweries pouring 2,375 beers at Great American Beer Festival, it can be a bit intimidating trying to figure out where to go. So, here is one GABF veteran's thoughts on 18 booths you have to stop by, even if you are going for just one session.

While I normally fawn over Colorado breweries, I've shied away from listing most of the state's best beer makers here - with a few exceptions - because you can find the brilliant beers from Great Divide or Avery or Odell largely in liquor stores or on tap. Instead, this is meant to serve as a quick-hit guide to what you can't get easily in Colorado and, therefore, should be prioritized in your tasting hunting this weekend.

1) Altitude Chophouse and Brewery - Booth N5
This Wyoming brewpub is one of the quiet stars of every festival it attends, showing off complex beers with an edge. And because so few people know about it, lines are fairly short at its booths
Required tasting: Mexican Chili Ale: If this is half as good as the brewery's 2010 chili porter, it will be memorable.

2) Bell's Brewery - C3
People haul this beer cross-country from Michigan, ala Smokey and the Bandit. It's easy to drink at the festival.
Required tasting: Any of them

3) Boston Beer Company - M1/M2
You may think you know Sam Adams. But its booth will also be serving a kriek, a tripel, five beers made by winners of an amateur brewing contest and Utopias, a $100-a-bottle, 25% ABV creation.
Required tasting: Utopias. It's divisive, but worth trying.

4) The Bruery - F5
Nothing made by this Orange County brewery fits a style, and everything is eyebrow-raising.
Required tasting: Oude Tart. Good sour stuff.

5) Cambridge Brewing - D36
Sold only in the Boston area, Cambridge makes experimental sours and tosses in ingredients to more normal styles that other breweries won't.
Required tasting: CBC Heather Ale, the only beer I know that literally uses heather as an ingredient.

6) Captain Lawrence Brewing - H32
Often overlooked because of its small size, this brewery consistently medals for its sours and Belgian ales.
Required tasting: Pretty much anything

7) Cigar City Brewing - G20
The best thing ever to come out of Florida, this brewery experiments with many styles and ages its beers in cedar barrels, giving them a cigar-like aroma.
Required tasting: Guave Grove, a guava saison that may have been the best beer at the 2010 GABF.

8) Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery - G23
Here's a great debate: Does the best milk stout in America come from Left Hand Brewing or this North Carolina brewery? This is your chance to find out.
Required tasting: Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout

9) Elysian Brewing - B16/B17
Some of this Seattle breweries more mainstream beers are circulating through Colorado, but not the ones that make your eyes bulge.
Required tasting: The Great Pumpkin, the closest thing you'll find to sticking a straw into a pumpkin pie.

10) Grand Teton Brewing - O14
Quite simply, the Howling Wolf Weizenbock is one of the most complex beers made in America. The others ain't bad, either.
Required tasting: Howling Wolf

11) New Belgium Brewing - H1
Why on earth would I include the state's largest and most accessible craft brewery on this list? Because, aside from Fat Tire and Ranger IPA, nothing it will be serving is easy to find or available year round - except La Folie, which might be the best beer in Colorado.
Required tasting: It's not on the serving list, but ask them if they brought any La Terroir - one of the most sour beers you'll find.

12) New Glarus Brewing - D18
I once counted a 93-person line at this Wisconsin brewery that doesn't distribute very far. It's worth it.
Required tasting: Raspberry Tart. Nothing like it in the fruit beer world.

13) Papago Brewing - M36
An Arizona brewery with a penchant for sweet, creamy and easy drinkers, this shouldn't be skipped.
Required tasting: Orange Blossom, a wheat beer that tastes like a Creamsicle.

14) Rocky Mountain Brewery - P14
The king of Colorado's flavor experimenters, Rocky Mountain doesn't stray far outside of its Colorado Springs brewery.
Required tasting: Tatonka Blueberry Cobbler, which tastes exactly like a blueberry pie.

15) Russian River Brewing - F36
This California brewmaster sends its wares to Colorado these days, but it's bringing some beers that are rare or not out here at all.
Required tasting: Supplication, the sour ale against which all others should be measured.

16) Six Rivers Brewery - F35
Small and quiet, this California brewery doesn't get nearly the attention it should for its multiplicity of American, Belgian and spiced beers.
Required tasting: Chili Pepper Spicy Ale, made with four kinds of chilis that set off a party in your mouth.

17) Trinity Brewing - P29
Jason Yester may not be well-known to the general world outside of Colorado Springs, but brewers from across the country call on him to talk about how he pushes the envelope.
Required tasting: Slap Your Mammy, a double IPA oozing with hops.

18) Weyerbacher Brewing - M4
One of the quiet hop kings of the festival, this uses simple ingredients very well.
Required tasting: Double Simcoe, which takes a trendy new hop and makes you want to beg for more.

2011-09-28T07:11:00.001-07:00

Good News from Durango
Denverites, who are blessed with an abundance of breweries within just an hour's drive, too often tend to forget that southwest Colorado holds its own special draw.
The Beer Geekette and did a couple of book-signings this past weekend at the close of Durango's Beer Week - right before the start of GABF week up here - and found several fantastic pieces of beer news to recommend:
*Steamworks Brewing continues to diversify and master a number of styles. The Berliner Weisse on tap this weekend was smooth with just a hint of citrus sour - just like sour and wheat fans could hope.
*If you're looking for hop bitterness without it being overdone, Ska's Operation Ivy wet-hopped IPA packs it in. The brewery will have it on tap at events in Denver this week; try to catch it.
*And, yes, the guys at Ska still know how to party. Their 16th birthday bash, fueled appropriately enough with music from ska bands like The Toasters, seemed to bring out every brewery and beer drinker in southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico.
*Pagosa Brewing, still selling its wares only out of the brewery in tiny Pagosa Springs, continues to have beers worth driving for. The Belgian Amber in particular was about as easy-drinking yet still satisfying a beer you can get when mixing in a large quantity of Belgian yeast.
*Kudos to Mark Youngquist at Dolores River Brewery for continuing to make some of the best beers you've never tried (unless you've visited the 800-person town). His Snaggletooth double pale ale, packed with five different types of hops, made you stop and think about what you were drinking more than anything else at the Ska party.

2011-09-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

Denver Beer Fest/GABF Week Highlights

Is it GABF week already? These things sneak up so fast, and you just don't have the proper amount of time to get your liver in shape. But rather than complaining about it, you might as well dive right into the mayhem. After all, this is not a week you want to miss.

The official website for Denver Beer Fest has the most extensive list of events from now until Sunday. But here are a few highlights for those of you who either didn't get tickets to the Thursday-Saturday Great American Beer Festival or simply can't wait that long:

Monday

* 5 p.m: Falling Rock Taphouse hosts its official GABF kickoff party, with beers galore.

* Vine Street Pub releases Four Virtue Reserve, a new Belgian beer

Tuesday

* Strange Brewing will be showing the movie "Strange Brew" all night - and serving special sausage plates.

* 5-7 p.m. Oskar Blues Brewery hosts its own rare beer tasting downtown at the Paramount Cafe.

Wednesday

* 5-8 p.m.: Shameless self plug: I'll be signing copies of my book, "Mountain Brew: A Guide to Colorado's Breweries," while chefs pair appetizers with Colorado beers at 16Mix downtown.

* 6-9 p.m.: Rackhouse Pub hosts a rare beer tasting for $35.

Thursday

* Shmaltz Brewing will be at Freshcraft all day, starting with a rare bottle tasting at 2 p.m.

* Falling Rock brings in out-of-state beer stars for some rare tappings, including Anchor Brewing (2 p.m.), Full Sail Brewing (10 p.m.) and Green Flash Brewing (11 p.m.)

Friday

* Avery Brewing is breaking at some rarities at Falling Rock at 2 p.m. and then hosting a Heaven and Hell party at Freshcraft at 10 p.m.

* Falling Rock's lineup includes tastings from Rogue (3 p.m.), Dogfish Head (10 p.m.) and Alaskan Brewing (11 p.m.)

Saturday

* Freshcraft features tappings from Upslope Brewing (11 a.m.), Oskar Blues (2 p.m.) and Widmer (10 p.m.)

* 10 p.m.: Still have a functioning liver after the GABF closes? Finish it off with rare beers - including a number of sour ales - from New Belgium Brewing at Falling Rock.

2011-09-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

Denver Beer Co.: Nice Stuff

When the Fearless Tasting Crew tried to visit Denver Beer Co. on its opening night in mid-August, we were rebuffed because it was just too crowded. Grousing ensued, but there was one strain running through the group: This place must be pretty good to attract that crowd.

Now, a couple weeks into its development, it is safe to proclaim the city's newest brewery, at 1695 Platte St., was indeed worthy of its initial "pretty good" prediction and may even be on the verge of the sought-after "pretty damn good" moniker. But this much is for sure: co-owners Charlie Berger and Patrick Crawford are at their best when they are not brewing to style.

Denver Beer, it should be explained first, is not a brewery like say, Oskar Blues that is going to be known first and foremost for one beer. The brewers plan to rotate beers all the time without any single constant presences but with a desire to experiment, the staff will inform you.

That experimentation takes its best form in the Saison It Ain't So!, a Belgian farmhouse ale brewed with black pepper, "dry-hipped" with rose hips (their pun, not mine) and aromatically driven by lemongrass. It is a beer bursting with flavor, an impressive display of bravado for a fruity saison that keeps you looking for different flavors.

That's true too for its Storm Summer Stout, which is light-bodied but offers a very coffee overtone and an eye-opening grape-skin feel on the back of the tongue that sweetens the overall taste. This isn't going to win any style-driven awards, but it will make you look at the beer in your glass and ask admiringly: "How did they do that?"

On more by-the-book beers, Denver Beer is fully competent and enjoyable, just not as likely to cause you to do a double-take at your glass. The Pomegranate Wheat is refreshing and light, the Rye 25 Pale Ale has nicely competing sweet and bitter flavors and the the Smoked Lager has a mesquite overtone with a slightly thicker body than you might expect.

Still, it's always hard to judge a brewery that plans to rotate its selections based on what one had a couple of weeks ago. But in terms of atmosphere, the place just feels nice: a hollowed-out garage with big, open windows that make it seem even airier and roomier than its ample room space provides.

And in terms of the feel of the beer, it just feels like a place you want to go back to at least once a month, to see what they're working on next. Not every beer will blow your mind, but it's likely there's something on the menu that will - and will make you break into spontaneous discussion about the ingredients used in there.

2011-08-25T21:46:00.000-07:00

Reaching Enlightenment through Buddha Nuvo

When you buy a $39 beer - assuming that is an action you ever take in your life - you expect it to be good. Mystical good. Good as in the beer quenches your palate, then the empty bottle washes your car and does your taxes good.

It was with some trepidation, then, that I purchased the first $39 bottle of beer in my life two weeks ago: The 14-brewer collaboration effort known as Buddha Nuvo. It was a treat I had gotten to see these brewers making way back in February. But when I cracked it open for the Fearless Tasting Crew, no one knew what to expect.

The most concise appraisal of this 750 milliliter investment is this: You could buy dozens upon dozens of more economical beers and chances are you'll not taste even one of the booming symphony of flavors that mesh to make this one of the most memorable Colorado beers in years.

Buddha Nuvo's ingredients include spelt, oats, cans upon cans of pumpkin, peppercorns and the rare Asian fruit known as Buddha's Hand. This 12% ABV saison is fermented with Brettanomyces, aged in French Oak Chardonnay barrels and primed with honey.

You're jolted right away by its strongly floral and perfumey nose that precedes a jasmine-tinted flavor greeting your palate. Swirl it around, sip it down and something else emerges - a muscat-like, slightly grape, slightly plum flavor that feels almost granulated in the way that it falls over your taste buds.

The taste is piercing, and in it you can pick out the dance of ingredients that brewers from places like Trinity, Rockyard, Black Fox, Crooked Stave and Strange - among others - tossed into this creation. It lights up your tongue somewhat like a foreign spice and then leaves you with a sharp alcoholic backtaste that is comparable to the fizz of champagne - not a distraction but an addition.

The Beer Geekette may have put it most simply when she said: "It tastes like a tropical forest." But even such forests can get heavy at times. Buddha Nuvo, on the other hand, is a wholly pleasant, if challenging experience. And it is a thoroughly modern and thoughtful beer that combines a lot of daring ideas with ingredients that, surprisingly, conform within one bottle.

So, go ahead and splurge at participating breweries, beer bars and liquor stores. This one's worth it.

2011-08-23T05:28:00.001-07:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

Wow, it's been a while for this column. But there's some good stuff happening this week, so here's just a few of the highlights ...

Mountain Brew Book Signings

(And yeah, I'm a little biased toward these events)

*Wednesday, 6 p.m.: Ale House at Amato's in Denver

*Friday, 5:30 p.m.: Oskar Blues' Tasty Weasel Taproom in Longmont

Beer Festivals

*Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m.: San Juan Brewfest, Durango, $25

*Saturday, 6 to 10 p.m.: Foam Fest at the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo, $20 plus festival admission

Anniversary Parties

*Saturday, 11 a.m. to close: Trinity Brewing's third anniversary party at the Colorado Springs brewery. No cover.

*Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.: Freshcraft's first anniversary celebration, featuring rare tappings from Oskar Blues, Avery and Upslope and rare bottles from Odell and Boulevard. No cover.

Firkin' Fun

*Wednesday, 4 p.m.: Elk Mountain taps Red-Headed Stepchild.

*Friday, 3 and 7 p.m.: Dry Dock taps Watermelon Kolsch.

New Releases

*Thursday, 6 p.m.: Rock Bottom Downtown Denver taps Red Rocks Irish Style Red.

*Friday: Twisted Pine releases Black Swan Saison.

*Saturday, 2 p.m: Oskar Blues releases Deviant Dale's IPA in Lyons.

2011-08-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

Five Craft Lager Festival Thoughts

It's been one week now since the Manitou Craft Lager Festival. Generally, if something sticks in your brain that long, it's made an impression. And there are several things from this year's event that made an impression.

1. Odell Brewing can do no wrong

Usually, small-batch pilot experiments are big, bold flavors too risky to appeal to the mass population. But this year, Odell made a pilot kolsch for the festival. And it may have been the best beer there. Glisteningly smooth and crisp, this version of the German style increased the standard amount of hops in a kolsch by just enough to make this a sharp but still very easy-drinking beer. Let's hope this moves from pilot batch to six packs very soon.

2. Summit County brewers are underrated

The longest lines of the weekends formed at the Dillon Dam Brewery booth, where Cory Forster (far right in the photo) poured a malty, approachable Montezuma Marzen that seemed perfect for the summer heat. Next to it, Pug Ryan's brewmaster Dave Simmons (center in photo, next to me) doled out his thick, sweet Helles Bock and a smooth, easy Pallavicini Pilsner. Pug's sends a few beer in cans to the Front Range and Dillon Dam none; these two breweries are proving, however, that Summit County has a selection worth traveling for.

3. Highly hopped pilsners are an idea whose time has come

Avery debuted its Joe's Pilsner last year and shocked a lot of people with the amount of hops you can put into a 4.7 percent, light-bodied beer. It was back this year, but it was not alone in its genre. Lost Rhino Brewing of Virginia, which is set to begin Colorado distribution soon, showed up with an aggressively hopped Rhino Chaser Pils that added a firm, sweet malt backbone to its character. It would not surprise me to see the hopped pilsner, with its combination of refreshment and bitter joy, blowing up to become the next big style, ala the Belgian sour or black IPA.

4. The clown remains a prince

Shmaltz Brewing of New York and its creepy clown symbol remained the most talked-about out-of-state brewer at the festival. I asked a number of people who stopped by the Mountain Brew booth what their favorite beer was, and the most common answer I got was the Coney Island Albino Python, a wistful ginger-touched white lager. But the bock-like Blockhead and whiskey-tinged Barrel-Aged Blockhead added greatly to the resume of a brewery that should find a way to have a bigger presence in Colorado.

5. Festival organizers were attentive to attendees' pleas

Last year, half the beer booths had shut down with two hours to go on Saturday and attendees were up in arms. This year, festival organizers smartly reduced the two-ounce pours to one ounce, leaving lines a bit long at times but ensuring that drinkers could get whatever they wanted to try. They also added distillers, giving the daring another option of beverages to try. And the security was on the lookout for the excessively drunk, meaning that people who were really wanting to sample and discuss the beers weren't being pushed around by the belligerent. Other than the 30-minute rainstorm that stopped strolling and sampling for a while Sunday, this was a better festival all around than last year. And it once again should be regarded as one of the finest in the state.

2011-08-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

Stop ... Lager Time

Colorado has more beer festivals than Batman has archenemies. But there are four that year in and year out stand out:

*Denver's Great American Beer Festival in late September;

*Vail's Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines festival in early January;

*Salida's Brewers Rendezvous in early July; and,

*The Manitou Craft Lager Festival, coming up this Saturday and Sunday.

Each of these brings a unique assortment of brewers from across the state and country. And each is notable because the brewers don't just show up but bring harder-to-find selections and even make unique offerings to roll out at the events.

But the Craft Lager Festival, entering its ninth year this year, earns special kudos among the group because it has played a significant role in Colorado breweries taking an outdated style of beer and spicing it up. And any event that makes the lager - the kind of beer most often associated with megaswill - special is worthy of our compliments.

And I'm not just saying that because this is the first festival at which we'll be selling my book, Mountain Brew.

Really, take a look at some of the offerings that will be available this year. Odell Brewing is rolling out a pilot kolsch beer. Rock Bottom Colorado Springs is bringing a chili pepper Mexican lager. And AC Golden, known largely for its Colorado Native lager, is bringing a German-style pilsner that you can't find on store shelves.

And, of course, that doesn't even count the fantastic offerings from smaller breweries that aren't available statewide, such as Pug Ryan's Helles Bock or Rocky Mountain Brewery's Smoked Hefeweizen.

The only complaint that patrons have had in the past about the festival is that it's grown so fast that breweries run out of beer too quickly. But organizers have always responded strongly to feedback, and there are great hopes that the beer flows until close to closing time this year.

So, cheers for the Craft Lager Festival, which runs from 1 to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. And I hope to see a number of you down there celebrating this unique take on the Colorado brewing tradition.

2011-08-08T21:46:00.000-07:00

Cheers for All Seasons

This month's edition of 5280 magazine has a thought-provoking article - or at least the things I like to think about - in which it lays out seven beers that are perfect in each of the state's four different seasons. It's a well-written and mouth-wateringly photographed piece by Patrick Doyle, Natasha Gardner and Geoff Van Dyke.

But no proper geek can look at a story such as this without weighing in with some opinions. And with that, let's take a walk through the seasons to dissect this piece of work ...

Summer

Cheers for: Giving a nod to Steamworks' Colorado Kolsch, one of the most refreshing beers in the state. Including Avery Joe's Premium American Pilsner, because even lagers deserve a good hopping. Citing Ska's Mexican Logger, a light, particularly apropos beer for the season.

What they forgot: I realize that the lists were made up of beers that you can buy in the Denver area, but no summer list is complete without Pug Ryan's Helles Bock, sweet and full of body and the best there is for the season. Also, this seems like the proper season for New Belgium's delicate but flavorful Mothership Wit, which the article put in the spring collection.

Fall

Cheers for: Including Breckenridge 471 IPA, the most well-balanced double IPA in the state and a great pick for any season. Noting the "mashup of flavors" in Boulder's addictive Flashback India Brown Ale. Giving special recognition to Great Divide's Fresh Hop Ale, a wonderful get-it-while-you-can fall seasonal.

What they forgot: It's no sin to leave out most Oktoberfest beers, but Avery's The Kaiser Imperial Oktoberfest belongs in here for amping up everything the Germans taught us about the season and making it better. In the dark-but-not-dark-of-winter category, Crystal Springs' full-bodied Doc's American Porter is a perfect sipper while you watch leaves blow by.

Winter

Cheers for: Leading the section with Bristol's Winter Warlock Oatmeal Stout, simply the most consistent, most warming winter seasonal brewed in Colorado. Including Odell Red as a beer with the malt and hop characteristics to stand up to typically darker winter beers.

What they forgot: Twisted Pine's beers are conspicuously absent from all four seasons; Big Shot Espresso Stout seems an awfully good choice here. Avery's New World Porter negotiates better than most beer the transition from hoppy fall beers to malty winter beers, straddling both worlds well.

Spring

Cheers for: Recognizing the greatness of Breckenridge's Imperial Pilsner, which shocks the pilsner genre alive with its 7 percent ABV content. Lauding Mothership, even if it seems a better summer beer. Giving the fist bump of love to Dry Dock's Apricot Blonde, a great beer to ease your tastebuds back to normal after a winter of beating them with heavy malt and hops.

What they forgot: Spring is the time to crack open a light-bodied but slightly spicy saison, and Funkwerks' Saison seems to fit that bill perfectly. And while it's not distributed in Denver, it is highly worth driving to Frisco to get Backcountry's Breakfast Porter, the closest thing there is to hopped coffee, when it's released in mid-spring.

Altogether, though, it's excellent work that is worth debating over a beer or two, 5280.

2011-08-01T21:58:00.001-07:00

A Great Beer Bar Closes

Denver beer aficionados got some sad news today, as Westword's Jonathan Shikes reported that Uptown Brothers Brewing has closed.

The bar just up the street from the Capitol never got the chance to live up to its brewing moniker, as owner Paul Lumbye was still readying to make his own beer. And that's a great shame, because if he was half the brewer that he was a beer buyer, it would have been a great product.

In a downtown scene increasingly filled with taphouses, Uptown Brothers made its mark with its unswerving loyalty to small and upcoming Colorado breweries. It was the place in town where you could most consistently find Black Fox or Asher Brewing beers, for instance. And just a week ago Saturday - my last visit to the bar - it was serving Crooked Stave and Renegade beers, before most people had heard those breweries were open.

Lumbye was always there with a smile and happy to talk beers, too. According to the Westword story, he's looking to try to sell Uptown Brothers to someone else who wants to continue the concept. I hope he does, for the sake of local beer lovers. But I also hope he finds his way back into this business somehow, for he deserves to have someone thank him for his dedication to local craft beer far longer than the 14 months we got to do that.

2011-07-21T06:13:00.000-07:00

Mountain Brew - Yes, It's My Book - Debuts Friday

Anyone who follows this blog knows its author's proclivity for drinking and writing. And they may have noticed too how all of that seemed to stop from January through mid-June of this year.

Well, here's what happened: In that time period, I was penning my first book, a look at each of the state's breweries and their unique personalities. And tomorrow, Mountain Brew: A Guide to Colorado's Breweries officially comes out.

The book is a labor of love for which I spent nearly two years travelling throughout the state to visit every brewery and to sit down with their brewers or owners and talk about the business. It does not feature critiques of beers, though it does list the signature beers of each establishment. Instead, it's meant to tell the stories of each institution and to serve as a companion guide for anyone who wants to travel through a city or even the state, visit breweries and understand the history of the beer makers they are enjoying.

Those who may want to visit some of the larger and better known breweries in the state can find out more about the outsized personalities in the industry in Colorado. When did Brian Dunn have the revelation that led him to open Great Divide? How did Kim Jordan come up with the idea of granting ownership in New Belgium to her employees? What is the most important thing Doug Odell wants people to know about his brewery? (Hint: It has nothing to do with Odell beer.)

Maybe the part I enjoyed most, though, was learning about the breweries in towns as small as 450 people across the state that rarely pop up on Denver beer-bar taps or at beer festivals but that have fantastic stories to tell. These are places like Three Barrel Brewing in Del Norte, a quiet San Luis Valley town where owner Jim Bricker brews his recipes in a room in the back of his insurance office. Or Ourayle House, a Ouray outpost where James Paul Hutchison makes 1-1/2-barrel batches that he hawks from a swing behind his bar and that he once traded for elk cleaned off a highway. Or Dolores River Brewery north of Cortez, where former Rock Bottom pioneer Mark Youngquist doles out as assortment of non-style-specific ales to rooms packed with what can be as much as 10 percent of the 800-person town's population on a Friday night.
The book will be available at local bookstores and national chains, at a number of breweries and online at places like Amazon or the website of my publisher, History Press. I'm also planning a number of book-signing events, including two launch parties: At 6 p.m. on Aug. 4 at the Denver Press Club and at 4 p.m. on Aug. 6 at Strange Brewing in Denver. I'd love to see any readers there.

Also, I've expanded beyond the blog and now have a Facebook page (Mountain Brew), a website for the book and a Twitter account at @MtnBrewBook. Between this site and those, I'm hoping to spend even more time writing about beer and exploring the breweries of this state.

In the end, if no one bought the book, I'd still look back fondly on my travels across the state, my conversations with the good people in this brewing industry and the adventures that come when you're trying to cram nine brewery visits into one weekend. (A special shout-out goes to Tony Simmons of Pagosa Brewing, who began our 10 a.m. interview by serving me a three-year flight of his barleywines.)

But I'm hoping a few people might buy Mountain Brew and learn the sheer joy, as I did, of the all-encompassing brewery culture of Colorado. And hopefully, I'll even see a few of you when I'm out at those breweries in the months to come.

Cheers.

2011-07-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

Oh. Canada.

Drinking Canadian beer makes me think of college. Molson and Labatt's and Moosehead were gourmet treats back then, bold trips beyond the domestic beers that we drank for effect rather than for taste. And even if I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was different about those beers, they just carried an aura to them that made them something special - until, in time, we forgot about Canadian beers.

About a month ago, one of those beverages from the north invaded America. Alexander Keith's, which has been brewed in Nova Scotia since 1820, broke across that largely unguarded border and moved into 22 states, including Colorado. A minor media blitz heralded its arrival. And those of us who once saw its countrymen as some sort of superheroes began thinking just a little bit again about what being a Canadian creation meant.

Alexander Keith's presents a twofold hurdle to returning to that innocent time of Canadian beer worship, however. First, it brings little, if anything, new to a party of American beers that has only blown up in the past 15 to 20 years. And second, it's not really Canadian.

Let's deal with the latter fact first. Alexander Keith's is the most revered brewery in Nova Scotia. But the beer it's sent stateside is actually brewed in Baldwinsville, N.Y. That beer is marketed by Anheuser-Busch, whose Labatt subsidiary owns Mr. Keith's business now. And the three beers introduced in America are made strictly for America; you'll find them on the brewery's new website, but not on the site anchored in Canada.

So, once you get past the new "world of beer is flat" reality of global mergers and regional brewing, you ask instead: Is the beer flat as well? The good news is that it isn't. But there's something oddly fruity about Alexander Keith's three American offerings, none of which is marketed as a fruit beer.

The best of the lot is Alexander Keith's Nova Scotia Style Lager, which has a slightly English nose but a more German taste accenting a sharply hopped but subtle-tasting beer that brings with it a heft. Yet, as the beer warms, it takes on a toffee-candy sweet flavor that moves this from fully pleasant to a bit too heavy.

The Nova Scotia Style Pale Ale (and, yes, every offering wants to beat into your psyche that it's Canadian) is very lightly hopped but surprisingly fruity, carrying with it an underlying berry taste. This succeeds fully in being an easy-drinking beer appropriate for balmy American summers, but it lacks the typical characteristics of a pale ale.

And finally, there is the Nova Scotia Style Brown Ale, a beer reminiscent of Newcastle with brown sugar notes to it. The cascade hops in this offering are buried beneath a syrupy honey body that makes this a one-and-done beer for the sake of your taste buds.

It's been so long now since I've had a Moosehead or Molson that I can't compare these new invaders to the beer immigrants I knew in my early 20s. But, like them, Alexander Keith's feels destined to fade into memory quickly, offering little besides a cool-looking picture of a stag on the label that makes you want to go back for seconds.

2011-07-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

The New Tastes of Summer

It's one thing for breweries to rebel against the grain of summer, as Great Divide did in releasing three monster beers a couple of weeks ago. But sometimes, Colorado breweries can go the traditional route, yet produce unexpectedly tasty results in a low-hop, low-malt season.
One of those recently released treats comes from Fort Collins Brewery, the seasonal Maibock that just showed up in the local liquor store in the last week. Brewed in fall and aged in the summer, this is in many ways a traditional spring beer. But it's got the resume and chops to stand out in the summer crowd.

Presenting a decidedly caramel color, this quaffer is toffee sweet, with warm notes of a slight burnt-pan cooking goodness flowing through every taste. What is appealing about it is that is has a very understated yet present body that offers a bock that's both sweet and roasty without being syrupy or heavy.
Crystal Springs Brewing's Summertime Ale, a kolsch-style ale, is appealing in a different warm-weather way. This is a light-bodied German-style beer that introduces itself with a hint of sweetness to open your eyes.

Further sipping reveals a slight honey taste, blending effortlessly with the malts and without the residual heaviness of most honey-tasting beers. Thus, you have a concoction that goes down very easy for hot evenings such as tonight but lets you know it's something more than a light lager.

Surely there are more great Colorado summer creations out there. Anyone have recommendations?

2011-07-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

The New Beer Drinker's Guide is Here

Actually, that headline is about a month overdue. But piles kind of built up on my desk over those 5-1/2 months when I didn't post (which will be explained in the next week). And when I started rifling through them recently, I noticed some news blurbs were overdue. Like, um, this one.

If you're not familiar with the Beer Drinker's Guide to Colorado, it is one of the finest resources for pub crawlers in this state. You've probably noticed them in breweries across Colorado, whether for sale or on display on the wall. A fold-out map lists 142 separate breweries across the Centennial State, from legends to little guys to all six free-standing Rock Bottoms.

But map author Mike Laur gives you more. There's listings on the back of beer bars, historic saloons, 14ers and parks. Laur explains basic beer characteristics and proper glassware. And he even throws in coupons to about two dozen breweries.

If anything, the brewery list may be too extensive for the average drinker. Laur includes both meaderies (which make a beer-like substance but not quite beer) and extract breweries (which make a substance that can only be referred to as "beer") next to the Great Divides and Odells of the world. In one of my favorite twists, though, he also includes breweries that are set to open soon but haven't quite cracked their doors, giving hard-care beer geeks things to watch for in the coming months.

All this is to say, in case you couldn't tell, that this fifth edition of the map (suggested retail: $14.95) continues to be a great product, and one that adds to the culture of beer fanaticism in this state. That Laur does it as a side business (he's also a Colorado Springs videographer) is testament to his love of the beverage.

Now, if only there were a book that true beer geeks could by along with his map to tell the stories of these places across the state .... But, as I mentioned earlier, just wait a couple of days and that too will be fully explained.

Cheers.

2011-07-11T22:03:00.000-07:00

Crazy ... Like a Hophead

An Episcopalian priest, a biker and a Bernese Mountain Dog walk into a bar. And then they all have a beer - all except the dog, that is. It may sound like a bad joke, but this was exactly the scene at Crazy Mountain Brewery on Sunday afternoon.

As eclectic as it may have seemed, the diverse group of beer lovers paired like a fine cheese with the selection of eight unique beers pouring from in the brewery whose tap room opened less than a year ago. And for anyone making a first visit to the location in Edwards, about 1o miles west of Vail, it was a mellow, welcoming place to explore new twists on familiar beer styles.

Brewer Kevin Selvy's story is a familiar one: He worked his way up through the brewing ranks, starting in Anchor Steam's winery, before starting out on his own. And, while longing for experimental beers, he brewed a wheat and an amber out of the shoot to introduce Crazy Mountain to the world.

But that wheat - Lava Lake Wit Beer - is a Belgian wit made with chamomile, coriander and Curacao orange peel. It's a strong, fruity, multilayered wheat that thrusts a hint of spice into your mouth in a strangely calming way.

And that amber, Crazy Mountain Amber Ale, is one of the most highly hopped of its variety, with West Coast hops. It mirrors the trend toward over-hopping red ales, but with the smoother and less malty body, it leaves a slightly less substantial but terribly enjoyable amber you could drink all night long.

Crazy Mountain's other joys include its Cara De Luna Ale, a black German pale ale that's more dunkel than double IPA but uses the hops to balance the dark malt nicely. There's the Est Rousse Belgian Amber, which presents a sweet, slightly burnt caramel taste in the same delicate way that a pale ale presents its flowers. And, for a limited time, there's the Apres Cuvee, a barrel-aged blend of barleywine, winter ale and pale ale that's like a big, sweet, oak-encrusted bomb of a hearty pale body.

You have to work to find Crazy Mountain's taproom - it's in the back of shopping center situated beside two roundabouts at the entrance to Edwards - but doing so is worth it. It's a place where you bring your own food, listen to music and kick back at pine-beetle-killed wooden picnic tables and see just who or what walks in to join your afternoon.

2011-07-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

The Dark Side of Summer: Great Divide's New Releases

Friday night was hot, and standing on the concrete patio outside of Great Divide didn't make it any cooler. At most breweries, the new beers that would have greeted attendees at the release party would have offered some soothing with a tang of fruit or the refreshing lightness of a pilsner body. But that's not the Great Divide way.

Instead, the brewing savants at Denver's most experimental beer maker reintroduced a smoked Baltic porter and a barrel-aged IPA and then topped the evening off with a new Belgian-style imperial stout. When the lightest beer of the trio involves the term "barrel-aged," you know you're in for an interesting evening.

Yet, it once again worked, even if not all of the results were completely what was expected.

The Belgian Style Yeti, a new offering, had a whole lot going on in one complex beer. The dark-as-night malt imposed a roasted chocolate taste but quickly was compounded by an estery spice flavor that left you swirling the 9.5 percent ABV brew over your tongue to determine what style this creation was. In the end, the conclusion was that it was a whole new, um, monster - one that you'll probably only drink one of but will enjoy thoroughly while you have it.

The Smoked Baltic Porter - seriously, isn't this a beer for the dark of winter? - returned for its second year and presented both smoke and burnt malt characteristics that felt amped up from version 1.0. It's a heavy beer built on a firm base of chewy upfront malt and background hops with just a touch of chocolatey sweetness. If you can get over the fact that you might be drinking this on a sun-drenched porch one happy hour, you find that it's multilayered yet still accessible. It's highly recommended for mountain camping trips.

Then there is the Rumble IPA. When Great Divide introduced Rumble in 2010, it was arguably the most interesting beer the brewery had rolled out since debuting its Hercules Double IPA, a hopped delicacy in which the sharp flowery tastes blended seamlessly with the French and American oak barrels in which they were aged in order to create a beer that approximated a highly drinkable version of a brown liquor. But this year's effort feels a bit dialed back. The oak is far less pronounced, leaving the subtly hopped beer with more of a sweet mouthfeel than something dusty and ornate. The result is still enjoyable, but no longer in the realm of Hercules or Espresso Oak-Aged Yeti as a masterpiece that defines the brewery.

What still defines the brewery is daring, though, and these beers can be used as evidence that the spirit of swimming against the current lives on there. And, in what may be the best news, each of the seasonals is available in liquor stores so you can also take them home and enjoy their lurking darkness in an air-conditioned home.

2011-06-30T19:41:00.001-07:00

Louisiana Beer Revival

When I first traveled to New Orleans in 2004, the size of the beers was big, but there was nothing easy about them. This was a mass-produced, taste-free beer town, and even the local products, with the exception of an occasional brilliant flourish from Abita Brewing, did not stand out.

So, when the Beer Geekette and I went back two weeks ago for a friend's wedding and her fiancee told us that he was taking us to places to get the best local beer, I was skeptical. New Orleans gumbo? Yeah. Po' boys? You bet. Louisiana craft beer? Uh, really?

So, here's the pleasant surprise: A craft beer culture is growing in the town and the state, and its even taking on its own unique, refreshing and often fruit-flavored style. Many of the local breweries demonstrate daring in a different way than their peers in Colorado or California, but the results are very rewarding.

Take, for example, the aforementioned Abita, a brewery that went national in the early '90s with its then-bold Turbodog dark brown ale but slipped into the background as the years advanced. In addition to its highly drinkable Amber and sticky-sweet Andygator doppelbock, the suburban New Orleans brewery is now offering a Double IPA in its Select Series. Thick with the strongly sweet citrus taste of Cascade and Centennial hops, this is a little more sugary than some of its ilk but packs a flowery punch.

More on the local-is-unique scale was the Hurricane Saison from Nola Brewing, which incorporates the eponymous street-strolling sugar bomb of a drink with a beer style that tends to embrace its quirks. This rolls sharply over your tongue - and it's definitely not for those who don't like sweeter beers - but leaves a memorable impression.

Most impressive among the lighter, fruitier selections that seemed to dominate menu boards at the Bulldog, a fantastic beer bar with two locations, was the Covington Brewhouse Strawberry Ale. The eye-opening jolt of strawberry puree brewed into this cream ale took on a semi-sour edge that made this beer acidic enough to have some heft yet sweet enough to enjoy. And, for the record, very few member of the Fearless Tasting Crew drink beers with the word "berry" in them; this is a fantastic exception.

Even some beers that didn't bring their own stamp to the genre were fantastic sippers. The Weiss Beer (pictured lovingly above with me in its nearly finished state) at Crescent City Brewhouse, the only brewpub in the French Quarter, was a smooth unfiltered wheat with just the right mix of banana and clove to aid you after walking the city in 92-degree heat.

The only beer that left a wholly negative impression was Perfect Tin Amber, a vile bastardization of an English-style ale from Tin Roof Brewing that left a highly metallic taste and unnatural aftertaste. Only then did one long for the "Huge Ass Beers" of mass appeal that are advertised by sign-twirlers on Bourbon Street.

New Orleans isn't ready to be mistaken for Denver yet. But what is growing there in its beer culture is something enjoyable and unique. Now I can't wait to find someone making a Po' Boy Pilsner.

2011-06-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

Colorado's Newest Brewery: Pikes Peak Brewing

Back in 2007, Chris Wright burst onto the Colorado beer scene with his publication of The Beer Journal, a spiral-bound 226-page notebook allowing the true beer geek to record their every sipping or food pairing experience. The book (which I still use to take notes) was such a hit that Wright produced a smaller second version available for sale nationwide.

But Wright's greatest contribution to Colorado brewing is his latest - the opening, less than three weeks ago, of Pikes Peak Brewing Company in Monument. There the computer parts salesman turned professional brewer has opened a brewpub as quaint as the bedroom community around it that serves a trove of interesting beers defying your stereotypes of their styles.

That stereotype-busting begins with The Brits Are Here!, a mild English brown ale that may be Wright's finest creation. Typically, adjectives like "light," "quiet" or even "dull" describe mild ales, but none of those can be used here. What you get is a light-bodied but surprisingly full-flavored beer that is low in hops but high in the toffee taste stemming from its crystal and chocolate malts.

Then there's his Rocky Wheat, a weissbeer that is less free-flowing wheat and more concerted clove and citrus bite because its lower-temperature fermentation compliments the fruit taste of the hops. The banana taste is low but the clove feel is especially high, specifically on the backtaste.

And just when you think you might get something you expect, Wright throws at you the Devils Head Red, a highly hopped, 7.9 percent alcohol-by-volume take on the style in which the malt and hops flavors clash for superiority. By the end, the alcohol-laden bitterness might come on a slight bit too strong, but you're still impressed at what he's tried.

The offerings are, in the words of the Beer Geekette, "the marriage of originality and drinkability."

All of this - Wright also offers three other beers currently, including a solid and warming Summit House Stout - plays out in a six-table, fireplace-laden strip-mall storefront just off of Interstate 25's exit 161. Pikes Peak Brewing has a small but satisfying menu of soups and sandwiches, and it offers four guest taps from other El Paso County brewers. (Big kudos too in the fact that the four guest beers on tap this past Sunday were of different styles than the six house beers, giving drinkers an even wider range of options.)

But while Pikes Peak is the kind of place you'd bring your parents to kick back near the fireplace with a pulled pork sandwich, it remains, true to Wright's reputation, a beer geek's delight. A chalkboard lists the IBUs, ABVs and OGs of each brew, complete with a notes section in which he breaks down the hops and malts used in brewing, just in case you were wondering.

The Beer Journal was a great gift to the world because it allowed you to geek out on its style and glass-pairing notes or to simply write down your thoughts on brews, whatever you wanted. Pikes Peak Brewing is, in many ways the descendant of that, offering complex but very drinkable brews in an atmosphere where you can break down the ingredients with the omnipresent brewmaster or just take in the homey, friendly atmosphere. Once again, Wright gives you whatever you want.

2010-12-31T15:22:00.000-08:00

Cheers to 2010's Great Holiday Beers

As the Christmas season winds down - and, as all of the liquor stores discount the holiday beers to make way for new arrivals - let us pause for a moment to honor those brews that have made this season special and just a bit warmer.

Last year I did a feature on the 12 beers of Christmas. And while I thought about that this year as well, I realized that much of the list would be a repeat. My number-one beer wouldn't have changed, and that just gets boring after a while.

So, this year, I just want to call out a few particularly special creations that lit me up like a Christmas tree. If I missed anything particularly special, please feel free to let me know. But without further ado:

* Santa's Little Helper from Port Brewing continues to be the standard-bearer for this season. So dark that it's like the winter solstice. So charged with underlying hop character that it's the imperial stout you wish you could find all year round. It's the perfect stocking stuffer that, in the Christmas spirit and for sobriety's sake, you'll want to share with family and friends.

* Left Hand's Fade to Black is like a Santa's Little Helper, but you can actually drink more than one glass in a setting. It's an especially thick foreign stout whose appeal grows more as you look less for the "special" Christmas-ale ingredients of cinnamon or nutmeg and more for a beer that just goes well with the cold weather.

*Moylan's White Christmas Spiced Lager is that beer that will bring smiles to anyone who waits all year long to taste certain ingredients. Though it features a light body, it asserts its spiciness with every sip, as the coriander and orange zest virtually pop off of your tongue.

*Mikkeller Santa's Little Helper 2010, meanwhile, is the combo of the dark and the spiced, a 10.9% ABV Belgian ale that creeps surprisingly easily across your tongue and meets the back of your throat with a hint of licorice and a zip of what can only be called "citrus pepper."

Good drinking to all on this New Year's Eve. And here's to a 2011 with even more challenging and interesting beers to come.

2010-12-20T21:43:00.000-08:00

Our Australian Beer Adventure

The Beer Geekette and I recently returned from a three-week trip overseas (which only partially explains why I haven't written anything for three full months now). Included was one week in Thailand - great food, but no beer worth writing about - and two weeks in Australia.

And there we were quite surprised by two things in particular: How tasty emu is on pizza, and how much the Australian craft brewing and regional brewing scene is advancing beyond its reputation.

During our stay we hit six different breweries, everything from the ultra-local and recently opened to the mega-brewery sans the tour.

First among them was quaint 4 Pines Brewing Co. in the Manly Beach area of Sydney, a 2-year-old gem with a char-heavy Dry Irish Stout and a Pale Ale with a bit less of a citrus profile than its American brethren. The place wasn't rolling at 4 p.m. on a Monday, but it was a great first-day introduction to the local efforts happening there.

Then, friends introduced us to The Lord Nelson Brewery in Sydney's oldest hotel, which serves a wicked lamb burger and a varied selection of largely English-style beers. The 3 Sheets Australian Pale Ale was particularly compelling with a citrus splash accompanying a surprisingly heavy malt profile.

Rocks Brewing Co., in the historic Hart's Pub in Sydney is also a 2-year-old entrant to the scene, a fine place with its own beers and guest taps, cricket on the TV and kangaroo on the menu. Not to sound redundant in its stylings, but the Fearless Tasting Crew, Sydney chapter (all five of us), ordered several pints of the 1809 Pale Ale to enjoy its aggressive, nearly American-style citrus bite.

Hunter Beer Co., located in the Hunter Valley wine region, also had a pale ale that the bartender correctly labeled as hoppy enough to be American, but what the crew fell in love with was Liquid Bacon. A golden ale with a heavy mesquite smoke presence (that really did smell of bacon), it bordered on mouth-watering, leaving us vowing to come back to the small hotel brewery on some future trip.

Bluetongue Brewery, also in the Hunter Valley, tasted American in that what-the-rest-of-the-world-thinks-of-us-after-they-drink-an-Old-Milwaukee way, complete with a premium lager reminiscent of high school parties. It was no shock to learn that it was a joint venture of SABMiller and Coca-Cola Amatil.

By far the most interesting experience, however, was touring the Malt Shovel Brewery, maker of the ubiquitous James Squire ales and brainchild of Chuck Hahn, former Coors brewer extraordinaire. Chuck, who appeared to love the sound of American accents, was nice enough to show us around and explain how he'd started the microbrewery after leaving the U.S. and trying his hand at several other Austro-Kiwi breweries. James Squire - named for a convict who became Australia's first brewer - was found at most watering holes, and for good reason. From the sweetly malty amber ale to the orange- and licorice-tinged Abbey Ale, the beers were spot-on renditions of each style and very refreshing at that.

What we did not find anywhere we went was a Foster's, which apparently is spurned by Australians in favor of their locally made and distributed products. And after sampling those products for two weeks, it's understandable why. The country's microbrewery community doesn't seem to be into the cutting-edge experimentalism of Colorado's most notable brewers yet. But it's making a host of tasty beers in multiple styles that, hopefully, can make their way overseas one day.

2010-09-22T19:33:00.000-07:00

Colorado's Winning GABF Team

In the days since the 29th Great American Beer Festival has ended, more than one person who attended has uttered the comment: "Wow, it was a strange year for medals." And certainly, many old favorites were pushed aside and new kids on the block went home with new jewelery.

How strange was it? AC Golden, the experimental brewing arm of Coors that specializes in refreshing but fairly unchallenging lagers, took home more medals (3) than the following four Colorado brewing giants combined: New Belgium (1); Great Divide (1); Avery (0); and Odell (0).

That said, surprise or not, it's time to salute the Colorado breweries that were recognized for their mastery of certain styles and type out that list of beers that need to be tried in the coming months.

AC Golden (Golden): Gold for its AC Dunkel, silver for its German Pilsner and bronze for its Schwarzbier in categories for those styles. Interesting that none of these have been bottled yet. Hopefully, that will change in the next year.

Blue Moon (Golden): Coors' craft-style brewing arm wins the biggest award that a Colorado brewer scored in the competition: Large Brewing Company of the Year. It also nabbed a gold in the specialty honey beer category for its Summer Honey Wheat Ale. And it grabbed gold in fruit beer for its Chardonnay Blonde, beating out New Glarus' legendary Raspberry Tart, which earned a bronze in the fruit beer category.

Boulder Beer: Gold in the English-style mild ale category for its easy-going Business Time Mild.

Bristol Brewing (Colorado Springs): Laughing Lab Scottish Ale wins a well-deserved medal yet again, a bronze in the Scottish-style ale category. And the Old #23 Barleywine takes silver in its namesake category.

C.B. Potts (Fort Collins): Dark Side Lager grabs bronze among European-style dunkels.

Del Norte (Denver): Manana, one of the most refreshing summer beers you'll find, earns gold in the American-style amber lager category.

Dillon Dam (Dillon): McLuhr's Irish Stout garners silver in the classic Irish-style dry stout category.

Dry Dock (Aurora): Say hello to Colorado's most awarded brewery of 2010, which I'm told lost out on a second consecutive small brewer of the year award by a tie-breaker to California's Mad River Brewing. The haul: four silvers for Noble Stuff Export (dortmunder/Oktoberfest), Bismarck Altbier (German-style altbier), U-Boat Hefeweizen (south German-style Hefeweizen) and Whale Tale Wit (Belgian-style witbier).

Equinox (Fort Collins): Less than five months into its existence, this family-run brewery in downtown Fort Fun nabs a bronze for its Eclipse (English-style) Brown Ale.

Glenwood Canyon (Glenwood Springs): Carbonator - a big, sweet, alcoholic doppelbock - takes gold in that category.

Great Divide (Denver): Colette, arguably one of the big-beer maker's most understated creations, wins silver in the French- and Belgian-style saison category.

Left Hand (Longmont): Fade to Black, last year's wonderfully dark holiday beer, wins a gold for foreign-style stouts. It's a great beer, but the grumbling you hear from beer fans across Colorado is the realization that this award cements the fact that the former holiday beer, Snowbound Ale, is really never coming back.

Mountain Sun (Boulder): Illusion Dweller pulls in a silver for English-style IPAs.

New Belgium (Fort Collins): Move over, La Folie. Eric's Ale, the delightfully puckery peach beer, wins silver for American-style sour ale.

New Planet (Boulder): 3R Raspberry Ale takes bronze in the gluten-free beer category for the gluten-free brewery that is less than a year old.

Pagosa Brewing (Pagosa Springs): Coconut Porter wins a silver in the all-inclusive specialty beer category.

Pug Ryans (Dillon): Here's one the judges nailed: Hellats Good Beer wins gold in the bock category.

Rock Bottom: Old Elk Brown Ale, brewed in the Park Meadows location, wins gold in the English-style brown ale category. The Louisville-based chain won six other awards as well, but this was the only honored beer from one of its Colorado locations.

Rockyard (Castle Rock): Ryed Hard and Put Away Wet, which could have won another medal if there was a category for best beer names, earns silver in the pro-am competition for the collaboration between brewer Jim Stinson and homebrewer Adam Glaser.

Sandlot (Denver): It was another big year for the Coors Field brewery, with gold for Flor Hosen (German-style marzen) and silvers for Random Luck (American-style pilsner) and Clueless Beer Writer (Vienna-style lager). Now, um, when will these be on tap at games?

Ska Brewing (Durango): Bronze medal winners for Ska Special (classic English-style pale ale).

Steamworks Brewing (Durango): Two multiple-award winners return: What in the Helles? (Munich-style helles) takes gold and Colorado Kolsch (German-style kolsch) wins silver. And then a new favorite arises, as Backslide Stout earns a gold for oatmeal stouts.

Twisted Pine (Boulder): Big taste, big award. Big Shot Espresso Stout takes a bronze among coffee-flavored beers, a popular category this year.

Yak and Yeti (Arvada): The state's only Nepalese restaurant/brewery wins a gold in the American-style pale ale category for its Himalayan IPA.

2010-09-20T06:16:00.000-07:00

Best of GABF 2010

Change was in the air this year at the Great American Beer Festival. Yes, the long-time best breweries brought their game (Russian River with a still trend-setting pucker-worthy Supplication, New Glarus with its consistently unique Raspberry Tart, Great Divide shaking things up with its oak-aged Rumble IPA). But this seemed to be the year when five other breweries really stepped up to grab the spotlight.

Call it the "line test." When you grabbed a one-ounce pour, where was it that you just wanted to turn around, head to the back of the line and wait, no matter how long, for another beer to see what else that brewer could do? Just within the confines of the Fearless Tasting Crew, these were those places: Cigar City Brewing, Six Rivers Brewing, Odell Brewing, Cascade Brewing and late-session find Weyerbacher Brewing Co.

And so, here is just one man's very abbreviated opinion of the best beers that could be found at the 29th Great American Beer Festival.

Best in Show: Based on its uniqueness as a cross between a sour and a saison alone, Cigar City's Guava Grove might have been the beer about which the most people left the festival buzzing. But what separated it from the sour genre and truly made it special was that the use of the guava for flavor, unlike sour cherries or raspberries, was not especially penetrating or intense. Instead, it just sat on the tongue, making this the most accessible and pleasing sour beer in a show where more and more made their way to the forefront.

Best hoppy beer: Judging by the fact that it, unlike most other types of hop, showed up in several beers' names, simcoe is the "it" hop right now. And nothing made better use of this edgy and intense floral flavor than Easton, Pa.-based Weyerbacher Brewing's Double Simcoe IPA. Introducing itself with a huge burst of flavor but leaving you with a more full-mouthed grassy rather than bitter backtaste, this beer, more so than any others of its genre, straddled the line between sweet and bite.

Best dark beer: Old-school stouts and porters seem to be on their way out. In fact the words "oatmeal porter" were about as rare this year as the term "light lager." But between chocolate-milk stouts and coffee-infused Russian imperial stouts, the taste that stood out the most was Six Rivers' Smoky Joe's Spicy Porter, which deftly weaved together mesquite, roasted malt and pepper spices into its own creation.

Best traditional sour: The three different barrel-aged creations that went into Odell's Friek looked at first like some strange blend of tomato and pineapple juice. But the raspberry-cherry overlap turned out to blend amazingly well and prove as refreshing as it was challenging. Kudos go as well to Cascade's Apricot Ale and its Kriek.

Best wheat/lager/lighter ale: At a festival that seemed to be all about barrels, coffee, smoke and limit-pushing new ingredients, it seemed that just about the only lighter beer turning heads was Dry Dock Brewing's Paragon Apricot Blonde. Accessibly fruit-tinged without being overpowering and without forgetting that the beer is more important than the additive, this calmed your taste buds and left you thinking "Mmm, session beer" more than anything else you tasted at the GABF.

2010-09-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

GABF, Day Two: Cup of Joe, Anyone?

The first time I put Cigar City Brewing's Final Push to my lips, I had to hold it up and make sure I was drinking what I thought. Here, after all, was a Russian imperial stout, and it was blacker than night. But the predominant taste was bold and roasted coffee. And, man, was it good.

Among all the brewing trends on display at the 29th Great American Beer Festival, which ends tonight, none seem more pronounced than the clever and tasty ways that beer makers are meshing coffee with their products.

A few years ago, coffee's main purpose seemed to be an add-on to porters, and the java taste was still faint, overshadowed by darker malts that seemed to compete with it for featured flavor status. Now, the beers, whether porters or stouts or bocks, should just be called "coffee beers," as that is their dominant personality trait.

What's more, there's nuances to this coffee. Pizza Port Carlsbad, for example, has its Coffee Monster, in which you can actually taste a slight sweetness of cream balancing out the heavily roasted aspect. Boulder's Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery is offering Onslaught, in which the coffee comes on thick and hard but actually fades into hops that appear on the back taste.

Regardless, if you like the combination of coffee and beer, these are high times to enjoy things - and to see how brewers will move this trend forward in the coming years.

2010-09-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

GABF, Day One: Six Rivers Needs Some Love

Lines were long on the first day of the Great American Beer Festival at such classic beer-geek gathering spots as the booths for New Glarus, Russian River and Lost Abbey. And they've started to stretch out at a couple of well-deserved new entrants into American brewing's upper echelon, such as Cascade Brewing and Cigar City Brewing.

But in a sight that becomes more baffling each year, there were no more than two or three people lined up at any given time to drink the haul of Six Rivers Brewery of McKinleyville, Calif. And that's a shame because it means a lot of people are missing out on one of the undiscovered gems of the country.

The seven-barrel brewery that now distributes only in California and Oregon first grabbed my attention a few years ago with its Chile Pepper Spicy Ale, in which it uses jalapeno, habanero, Serrano and Anaheim peppers to create an eye-openingly spicy but still very drinkable beverage. That beer is still around, and it's as good as ever.

But last night, the brewery laid out a trio of beers as good as any at the show (at least among the 65 I was able to taste), showing off its depth and abilities to create masterfully across styles.

The star of the quartet, and maybe of the entire festival, was Smokey Joe's Spicy Porter, which is the liquid equivalent of a mesquite grill wrapped in a starless night with pepper flakes to light up your tongue. Finding out that a local farmer grills the Indian peppers used in the beer made it only that much more appealing.

Its Sour Grapes was just sharp enough to be the perfect blend of a wine-barrel-aged sipper and acidic tongue biter. And its Raspberry Lambic-style ale was a smoother and tarter improvement on the classic Belgian style.

There's a lot to do and see with some 450 breweries in the same room. But taking the time to stop by this one brewery - something that not a ton of people appeared to do on Thursday - will greatly enhance your experience there.

2010-09-16T06:17:00.000-07:00

GABF Tour: Bold New Tastes

In past years, I've written the essential guide to beers at the GABF, a beginner's guide to the festival and even fun tours for hopheads or people who like beers with goofy names. This year, though, it seems that a tour of another sort is appropriate.

More and more, brewers are adding ingredients to beers that would have been unthinkable five years ago or are making hybrid styles for which there are no printed guidelines. And perusing the list of beers on display this year, it seems that these trends are peaking at the 2010 Great American Beer Festival.

What appears below is largely a blind list: Beers that one reads about, shakes their head and wonders how that's done. Some are old favorites that still stand out for their uniqueness. All are concoctions begging to be tried by those, like me, who appreciate brewers that push the art up to and over the edge.

So, then, here's a look at just a little of what is available, denoted by their booth numbers for 2010 and an explanation for those whose names don't tell the full story. Maybe I'll see you at one of them:

A4. Cambridge Brewing CaCow! (chocolate milk stout)

B26. Wasatch Brewpub Jalapeno Cream Ale

B31. (512) Whiskey Barrel-Aged Double Pecan Porter

C20. Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron (vanilla-tinged 12% ABV brown ale aged in barrels of rare Paraguayan wood)

C28. Papago Brewing Orange Blossom (orange vanilla wheat)

E28. Six Rivers Brewery Smokey Joe's Spicy Porter

F14. Cigar City Brewing Guava Grove (saison with secondary fermentation on guava)

F23. Elysian Brewing Mr. Yuck (sour pumpkin ale)

G1. Odell Brewing Woodcut #4 (barrel-aged, vanilla-heavy double marzen style)

G20-21. Great Divide Brewing Rumble (IPA aged in American and French oak)

H8. Brooklyn Brewery Sorachi Ace (farmhouse ale made with a rare Japanese hop)

I15. Magnolia Gastropub Oysterhead Stout (brewed with real oysters)

I36. Russian River Brewing Supplication (barrel-aged brown ale with sour cherries)

K31. Pumphouse Brewery Sour Watermelon Wheat

J35. Flyers Restaurant Strange Brew Red Pepper Porter

M14. Upland Brewing Kiwi Lambic

P3. New Glarus Raspberry Tart (a classic)

P27. Short's Brewing Black Licorice Lager

2010-09-15T19:29:00.000-07:00

Great American Beer Festival: The Essential Reading List

Yes, the G ABF is all about tasting as many beers as you can and trying to keep your taste buds about you and fighting off the urge to call into work sick with a hangover on Friday morning. (And I'll detail some ways to do that tomorrow.) But in recent years, the festival also has added an exciting new feature that lets you enjoy the thrill of beer you felt long after last call has been uttered on Saturday night: The GABF Bookstore.

I could go off about the wondrous guides to making beer here, but the truth is that if you're a true home-brewing geek, you likely know about them already. Instead, I want to highlight a couple of the books and other reading materials that I've pored over in the past year that should be on everyone's to-read list.

Red, White and Brew by Brian Yaeger

Brian is a fascinating case study: A self-taught beer geek who quit a good job as a college spokesman and set off to interview 14 brewers who he thought represented the true spirit of American ingenuity. What came out of it is a road trip that winds through every mindset in American culture and reveals what makes iconic brewers - those from Dogfish Head to New Belgium to East Coast favorite Yuengling - want to be who they are.

Yaeger spices his extensive and sometimes very personal interviews - you will cringe when D.L. Geary describes the role his brewery played in the breakup of his marriage - with relevant anecdotes from his own life. And in the end, you'll get a feel for why brewers become brewers and will envy Yaeger for his cross-country adventure, appreciating all the more the nature of American beermakers.

The Beer Guide, edited by Josh Oakes/published by Barry Shlachter

Compiled from the comments listed on Ratebeer.com about more than 2,700 brews, this is simultaneously the most informative and caustic quick-hit description of beers that's ever been produced. Rating every beer that's even semi-widely available (at least as of 2008) on a one- to five-star scale, this bulky pocket-sized guide could be helpful to you as you decide what to order off of a great beer bar's menu.

But more likely, it will make you double over in laughter when remembering some of the worst beers you've ever drank. (Among my favorites: A description of France's 33 Export as "corn, rice, hay, sweat socks and wet dirty dog and some other maltiness"). And in describing other fine brews in the complexity of their flavors that few magazines touch, it will make you realize why the beers we love are the beers we love.

33 Bottles of Beer by Dave Selden

This isn't a reading book so much as a pocket guide to your own personal thoughts, but it's done quite skillfully. Selden wanted a book small enough to take notes during beer festivals but large enough to give you space to explain their primary qualities in charts, and this may just be a beer geek's dream.

I personally have tried a number of beer guides (though I still think nothing works as well as the actual GABF guide with a steady hand to back it during the festival), but many have been too big or given you too little room to express your thoughts. Selden's version is a pocket-storable guide that gives you a little of both and allows enough room for you to recall which beers you need to try again.

Beer Drinker's Guide to Colorado, 4th edition

This is not a book but a map, and what a map it is. Laying out the whole of the state, it pinpoints the locations of 126 breweries for you, including those with multiple sites (think Breckenridge or Rock Bottom) and those that have yet to open but will be doing so in the near future (anyone ready to visit Caution Brewing Co.?)

Creator Mike Laur broke ground with the first edition of this guide, and its staying power is demonstrated by the fact that you can pull into many breweries throughout the state and see it hanging on the wall and for sale behind the bar. The newest version has an increased amount of coupons, a decent style guide and a drive-time map and should be hung on your wall at home before you set out on any type of beer-tasting road trip.

2010-09-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

This Week in Colorado Beer: GABF/Denver Beer Fest edition

There's a little event coming up this weekend called the Great American Beer Festival. If you're a beer geek enough to read this blog, I assume I don't need to say a lot more. But then, even if you are a beer geek but you don't have tickets, you're pretty S.O.L., as it sold out a record five weeks in advance this year.

But don't despair. There's a couple of places that rumor has it may be serving good beer this week, even if you're not going to the festival.

Denver Beer Fest: This isn't actually one place serving good beer. It's about 35 of them, putting on something like 150 beer tastings, meet-the-brewer events, pairing dinners and even offering beer ice cream. I wrote in my day job about one place that's even making beer cupcakes. And the idea, in its second year of organizing by the Visit Denver convention and visitors bureau, is a wonderful one to get people excited leading into the GABF. In fact, you can see a full schedule of the events here.

But as much information as that website contains, it doesn't capture everything that's going on this week. And neither, frankly, will this blog. But I wanted to list just a few of the highlights for those who are hoping to cash in on all the beer rock stars who will be in town this week.

Tuesday

*Upslope Brewing begins five days of breaking out barrel-aged beers at its Boulder home.

*Jeremy Cowan, founder of New York's Shmaltz Brewing Co., holds a beer dinner/book release at Choice City Butcher & Deli in Fort Collins.

Wednesday

*Great Divide extends its tap room hours from 11 a.m. to midnight, hauls in food from Appaloosa Grill and taps a variety of unique and rare beers for the next four days.

* Gordon Biersch taps its Festbier Oktoberfest beer in Broomfield

Thursday

*Breckenridge Brewery continues its rare beer tapping that is running from Sept. 11-19, with 12 specially made beers on tap at 12 different restaurants around town. Use this map like it was a treasure map.

Falling Rock

Yes, these guys deserve their own section because of the depth and breadth of events they are offering this week. Here are a few of the highlights:

*5 p.m. Wednesday: Longmont's Left Hand Brewing and Terrapin Brewing of Athens, Ga. release their third collaboration beer: Oxymoron, an India pale lager.

*10 p.m. Thursday: Chris at Falling Rock promises to break out a stash of aged and rare Stone Brewing beers.

*Noon Friday: The annual contest to kill a keg of Sierra Nevada's Estate Harvest Ale in record time takes place again. Hide the squeamish livers.

*10 p.m. Saturday: Still standing after three days of GABF? New Belgium breaks out its rarities. This is a great way to finish the festival, as these often involve a slew of Belgian sours that are the only beers that can revive overused taste buds.

2010-08-30T21:32:00.000-07:00

Summer Beers 2010: The Pure Refreshers

The Beer Geekette yelled at me the other day about something I've posted and talked much about since. When I explained that Avery's hop-forward Joe's American Pilsner was my favorite summer beer in recent memory, she asked: "Can't you just enjoy something that isn't hopped, sour or amazingly strong?"

I thought about it, and the answer, truthfully, was "no." For the most part, a good beer should be like a good movie: Stacked with layers of complexity, throwing in a few surprises around selected turns and leaving an impression well after you've finished it. But then I began thinking that maybe a good beer sometimes could just be like a quality comedy: Pleasing without being challenging, satisfying without being sharp. And that's when I thought about a whole new breed of summer beers.

There are certain beverages out there made for the hot and sticky season that go down easy and leave you with a smile on your face. And to a few of them this column is dedicated - the lighter beers made with just enough heft to keep them interesting but still appealing to everyone.

1) Manana - Del Norte Brewing

No beer captures the enjoyment of the much belittled Mexican lager style more than this creation from Colorado's only all Mexican-style brewer. As an amber lager, it fills the mouth with a malty, slightly caramel feel but backs it with a smooth and deceptively easy body. Most beers shipped north from south of the border can only wish they were this enjoyable.

2) Newcastle Summer Ale

The wet-rope taste that defines the most mediocre English beers is gone from this creation, replaced by a citrus hop zing that is terribly easy on the mouth but tasty enough to maintain interest. It carries a slight more copper hue than many of its summer brethren, and the color reflects a commitment to more flavor than many breweries' summer renditions.

3) SummerBright Ale - Breckenridge Brewery

Poured with a hazy gold consistency and minimal head, the light citrus aroma in this seasonal from the Denver brewer belies a pleasant body. What you have is a slightly dusty but very refreshing golden ale with a background hint of lime that splashes up its personality just enough. This is a beer that cools you without challenging you, a summer edition that really should be sipped at a grill or after mowing the lawn.

2010-08-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

Manitou Festival Highlights

Yes, there were a few problems getting all of the beers you wanted at the Manitou Craft Lager Festival this year. But, showing why the event is so good, there were also some finds. Here's a look at a few things that stood out among the entries from the the 26 participating breweries:

*Avery Brewing is officially through the looking glass in terms of hopping a lager. Its recently released Joe's Premium American Pilsner blends a truly refreshing lighter body with a jump-up-and-grab-your-attention amount of hops to create one of the most interesting summer beers in recent memory.

*Looking for the next impressive beer trend? Think Helles. The bolder, sweeter style of lager was on fine display at several breweries. Pug Ryan's brought the biggest and toughest of the bunch, and its charge could not be ignored. The soon-to-open BierWerks of Woodland Park also rolled out a very medium-bodied, balanced and refreshing entry.

*Oak aging is doing wonderful things to lagers. This was most evident for the short window of time in which Odell was pouring its Woodcut #4, a shockingly smooth 11% ABV vanilla wonderland of a double-marzen-style lager aged in virgin American oak barrels. And even a smaller brewery like Rockyard showed with its Excavator Doppelbock that oak aging can make what is considered by some to be the simpler style of beer into a complex and meaty creation.

*Left Hand Brewing's Oxymoron was tapped a little early at the festival - it had yet to be filtered, I was told - but it portended a fascinating experiment to come. This "teutonic India pale ale" was brewed with a lager strain and was the hoppiest entry of the festival.

*If you're looking for someone to push the envelope a little further, look no further than Trinity Brewing. This year's debutante beer was the Kinky Reggae, an unhopped lager brewed with Jamaican jerk spices. There was considerable debate among the Fearless Tasting Crew about the merits of unhopped beers, but the rising spice level left this alone in terms of unique flavors at the event.

2010-08-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

Manitou Festival Growing Pains

It didn't take long last weekend to remember why the Manitou Craft Lager Festival is one of the highlights of the Colorado summer season. Breweries from up and down the Front Range converged on an eclectic small town. Many brought beers well outside their standard fare that can be found in any liquor store. Some even brought beers that they were debuting at the festival (or, in the case of Left Hand Brewing, were showing off even before its official debut).

But by late afternoon Saturday, the increasingly popular gathering was starting to show its growing pains. By 4 p.m. - two hours before the five-hour session was over - two popular breweries had run out of beer. By 5, a full 13 out of the 26 breweries present had gone dry, though Trinity Brewing deserves credit for tapping another keg late in the day after it had run out originally. And the lines at the remaining booths had moved from resembling Russian River crowds Thursday night at the GABF to bearing a similarity to those New Glarus giant queues at the Saturday afternoon tasting session.

An overabundance of beer drinkers is not always a fatal problem; it's certainly no worse than, if not less of a problem than, throwing a tasting where nobody comes. But the great joy of the Manitou festival has always been that it felt just a little different from many of its summer cohorts, more like a laid-back gathering of beer aficionados hanging out on a summer day than a cram-packed room of people searching for any beer they could find. It got to the point this year where a close friend told me: "That's it, I'm not coming back next year." I'm not ready to take that step, but any time you get longtime fans - this buddy and I were at the very first Manitou festival together - spouting that level of frustration, it may be time to re-examine things.

So, before I laud some of the stellar creations that were served at the festival (which will be tomorrow or Saturday's post), I want to make a plea to organizers as a fan: Some changes are needed.
*Ask the breweries to bring a few more kegs. Even if people are drinking, say, Ska's standard fare rather than their tasty, rarer schwarzbier late in the festival, they'll have something there to enjoy.
*Consider limiting limiting the number of tickets sold. While I can criticize a certain other friend who didn't show up until 4 p.m. (and I did), his tardiness should not have left him largely without options for most of his time there, since he did show up for 40 percent of the festival.
*Create more activities that didn't involve standing in line. You've already got a headier crowd than at most summer festivals. Rather than just throwing up your standard music stage, have some big name brewers give a talk or pour a special creation for seated crowds at various times. This might pull some people away from the long lines and slow down the taps just a little.

Again, I will be back next year. The festival is too interesting and the beer entries too creative to ignore. But once you start losing hard-core beer geeks who have been there for eight years - the kind of people who will step out of lines to discuss the beer with strangers who want to have the same conversation - you run the risk of taking away the joy of what makes the event special.

2010-08-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

There are very few weekends that I mark early in the year and reserve, but this is one of them ...

Beer Festivals

*Saturday and Sunday, 1 to 6 p.m.: One of Colorado's finest beer festivals, the Craft Lager Festival in Manitou Springs, takes place this weekend in Memorial Park. Colorado's finest brewers bring in their wheats, their pilsners and their special creations, some made just for this festival. And a few breweries will pop in from places like New York, Massachusetts and Oregon as well. The sun is hot, the atmosphere is casual and the cost is $35 - or $65 for a couple. Plus the money goes to benefit open-space preservation.

*Saturday, noon to 5 p.m.: Won't be on the Front Range for the lagerfest? The Winter Park Beer Festival features 19 breweries, many of them doing double duty at both gatherings. Tickets are $30 for unlimited tasting, and there's tons of music planned at Hideaway Park as well.

New Releases

*Friday, 5 p.m.: Trinity Brewing of Colorado Springs releases its Kinky Reggae, a Jamaican jerk-spiced concoction. Word from the brewery is that it tastes like a spice-filled Christmas beer.

*Tuesday, 5 p.m.: Bristol Brewing of Colorado Springs releases its Cheyenne Canon Ale, a pinon nut-roasted brown ale that benefits the Friends of Cheyenne Canon.

*Just got an e-mail this week that BJ's Brewhouse has put out its Light Switch Lager, for those of you looking for something really light this summer.

Beer/Food Pairing

*Tuesday, 7 p.m.: It's like man vs. beast or soccer vs. football. Great Divide Brewing engages in a beer vs. wine dinner at Denver's downtown TAG restaurant. Weigh in for $60.

2010-08-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

A Whole New IPA Experience at Great Divide

The Beer Geekette doesn't drink IPAs, period. It's not just the hop bombs she doesn't like; she eschews lousy, watered down ones too because the acidity to the hops flavor is off-putting to her, no matter its strength. But on Friday night, she discovered Great Divide's new Rumble IPA. And suddenly, this one beer that she had just met did something that her husband of four years had never been able to do: Convince her that IPAs can be a truly wonderful thing.

But while my wife's awakening was shocking, it was not, as I talked to others, the only such mind-changing that occurred during Great Divide's release party for its two newest beers, which are expected to hit liquor store shelves later this week and be available for the next two months. More than one person who had looked askew at hop heads suddenly found themselves relishing this new creation, which truly does present the IPA in a new way.

Rumble, you see, is an American IPA aged on American and French oak, and while the hops provided the bass line that helped to tell the story of this beer, it was the oak flavoring that played the main guitar. It lent the beer an air of a soft Scotch whiskey, a woody taste that permeated every taste bud without overwhelming them. And, in what may be the key to its cross-over appeal, this was an IPA that made its mark but then faded without leaving behind the bitter aftertaste so familiar to the style.

The 7.1% ABV concoction was served slightly warm, giving drinkers a chance to observe even more its nuances. (One really should think about serving this in a tumbler, in fact.) You are likely to walk away considering this a "thinker" beer in which every taste gives you a chance to mull the many flavors without jerking your head back in any taste-bud assault.

That said, the other star of the night - though clearly the Apollo Creed to Rumble IPA's Rocky - was also impressive. The new Smoked Baltic Porter takes a classic dark-and-thick as night style and lays a not-so-subtle smoke flavor on top of it to toughen up a genre that wasn't lacking in manhood before. The smoke competes with but ultimately outstrips the malt, leaving this a beer that almost seems better made for cold nights months down the road.

Regardless, it's a daring style that, like Rumble, will take your taste buds for a ride. Unlike Rumble, however, it stops short of redefining an entire genre of beer.

2010-08-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

Beer Festival

*Saturday, 1 to 6 p.m.: If you've got some time to kill while you're at the Larimer County Fair, stop by the Gnarly Barley Brew Festival. Ten bucks gets you four tokens ($1 apiece for each additional token) and the chance to try offerings from 22 breweries, including a couple that don't often make it out of the northeast Colorado area.

New Releases

*Friday, 5 to 9 p.m.: Black Fox Brewing in Colorado Springs (specifically in Bristol Brewery) releases "Don't Call Me Wit," a summer saison.

*Friday, 6 to 9 p.m.: Great Divide Brewing releases its Rumble IPA, an American IPA aged on French and American oak, and a Smoked Baltic Porter. Fifteen bucks gets you four beer and two food tickets. The Fearless Tasting Crew will be there in style.

*Friday, 6 to 9 p.m.: Avery Brewing cracks out Quinquepartite, a sour ale that blends beers aged in port, chardonnay, zinfandel and two cabernet sauvignon barrels. It's made only 60 cases of the fifth beer in its barrel-aged series.

*Saturday, 4 to 7 p.m.: If you've got any liver left after those Friday night tastings, Odell Brewing is releasing its Deconstruction Golden Ale.

2010-08-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

Summer Beers 2010: The Innovators

Summer too often is a time when breweries can rest on their laurels, turn out the lightest and blandest beer they've produced and claim that this is what the weather demands. But something odd has happened in the summer of 2010.

This is the year, it seems, that brewers across Colorado are finding ways to infuse not just bold tastes into their straw-golden beers but fully new tastes with which few of their peers have experimented. And so, in the first of what should be an occasional series over the next month looking at the beers of the season, I'd like to salute three Front Range breweries that are opening eyes during what once was considered the throwaway time for beer-making.

1) Golden City Brewery - Watermelon Kolsch

It's not often that you admire the pulp in a beer. Yet, sitting on the lively outdoor patio at Golden's second largest brewery and watching the sun hit the floating pieces of watermelon in this beer, you admire the creativity even more. This is a concoction that manages to take one of the subtlest tastes in the fruit world and infuse it into a beer just light enough to let it stand out without overkill. And while other popular beer fruit, such as strawberry or apricot, can make you ask why someone thought the addition was a good idea, the slighter sweetness of the watermelon actually compliments the gummy maltiness of the kolsch and really does make this stand out as a particularly appropriate and memorable combination of tastes.

2) Wynkoop Brewing - Tut's Royal Gold

Making an "imperial Egyptian ale" to go with the King Tut exhibit at the Denver Art Museum sounded at first like a cheap publicity gimmick. But tasting this unique unfiltered beer that approximates a Belgian golden ale with honey and Egyptian spices indicates that Andy Brown and his staff at Wynkoop put a lot of thought into its creation. Tut presents itself with the taste of honey sweetness, but this thick, vaguely musty beer finishes with spices that remind one of saffron and yet don't remind them of other beers. A few friends noted that the taste could have been more assertive, but overall this is an ambitious effort that should be tried.

3) Phantom Canyon Brewing - Dompfbier

Alan Stiles arrived at this Colorado Springs brewpub earlier this year with a clear desire to shake things up. And while the litany of new beers that he is producing is impressive in its length alone, none of them have been as jaw-dropping as this amber ale made with hefeweizen yeast that debuted at the start of July. This clash of American and German styles produces a vaguely Belgian product, one in which the cooling yeast fizz cascades over the tongue, mixing with the peat-like malt in a way that gives it a sizzle. Refreshing, meaty and daring, this is one of the best examples of how a beer can be a perfect summertime treat that is suitable for admiration at any time of the year.

2010-06-19T12:34:00.001-07:00

A Mini-Keg Party

When I was growing up and too young to drink beer - legally, at least - one of the big products on the market was the Coors party ball. It was portable, it held a lot of beer, it cost less than a keg. All in all it was great - except for the fact that it typically was full of lukewarm Coors Light.

The mini-keg isn't a product that many breweries have since tried to reproduce. But Newcastle Brown Ale thinks the concept could be a winner. And so, it is rolling its DraughtKeg out across the U.S. this summer after trial runs in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago with it. And Denver, naturally, is on the list of places it will be available.

The DraughtKeg holds five liters (1.32 gallons) and comes with a two-part tap system so simple that it makes tapping a full keg look like rocket science. Directions say you need to chill it for 10 hours before serving, though I found that a six-hour respite in ice will do it just fine. And the keg, which fits without problem into an average-sized cooler, is guaranteed to remain fresh for 30 days.

To test out this new product, I took it for a recent weekend at a friend's cabin where the Fearless Tasting Crew was happy to help me out. The results were fairly positive.

The beer remained cold and fresh. It was easy to pump. It was light to carry, even when full. And while I admit a bit of a prejudice against brown ales in general because I find them to be dull and looking to please a mass audience without unique flavors, the idea of bringing a mini-keg of the ever popular Newcastle turned out to be a good one when you're trying to meet the taste needs of a large and diverse group of drinkers.

On the down side, I found that the farther the DraughtKeg got drained, the foamier it became - not unlike a full-sized keg, but the foam seemed a bit more excessive here at the end.

Suggested retail price for the draughtkeg is $22.99, and it is set to become a full-time product for Newcastle. It may not be the dream thing to bring to a picnic of hop heads and beer snobs, but I'm betting this would make you some friends at an office barbecue or family reunion.

Also, Newcastle has put out what it calls its Geordie Schooner, a special glass that aims to maintain the head of its beers while using a laser-etched star on the bottom of the glass to create a continuous stream of bubbles. The product - which, true to its billing, seemed to maintain the head of the beer well - is available at select bars across the country.

2010-06-18T05:42:00.000-07:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

New Tappings

*Saturday, noon to 6 p.m.: Avery releases its Joe's American Pilsner, which promises to be unusually hopped for a beer of its style, at the brewery in Boulder. It won't be available outside the brewery until mid-July.

*Saturday, 2 p.m.: Odell Brewing brings back a limited edition of its Double Pilsner, a beer that redefined the summer style. Tapping at brewery.

*Tuesday, 6 to 8 p.m. Gordon Biersch brewery taps Sommerbrau, a kolsch-style pilsner with a slight fruit zing. Caribbean appetizers will be served at the tapping.

New Releases

*For those of you that drank a little too much during the U.S.-England soccer game last Saturday (not that I would know anyone who fits that description) and missed Great Divide's 16th anniversary bash, take heart. Both the 16th Anniversary Wood Aged Double IPA and the Double Wit are in stores now.

*Wynkoop Brewing has canned its second beer, Silverback Pale Ale, and it hits five area liquor stores today before going into wider distribution next week. It also is available at the brewery.

Beer/Food Pairings

*Tuesday: Avery and Upslope Brewing are jointly hosting a beer dinner at Highlands favorite Duo restaurant. Tickets are $39.

*Thursday, 6:30 p.m.: Wykoop joins with California legend Stone Brewing to host a Father's Day beer and spirits dinner at the downtown brewery. Tickets are $40.

Free Stuff

*Saturday and Sunday: Any father enjoying a beer at one of the BJ's brewpubs in the area receives a free pint glass. If you're not a father, borrow your neighbor's kid and fake it.

GABF Tickets

*Finally, if you've read this far down, you should know that Great American Beer Festival tickets go on sale for American Homebrewers Association members at noon Tuesday, exactly six days before they go on sale to the general public. Go to the AHA website for details.

2010-06-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

Grand Teton's Dueling Tastes of Summer

Most breweries that delve into regular seasonals can be relied on to produce a summer ale that is lighter bodied, maybe splashed with a hint of citrus. And if they dare to come out with a second hot-weather beer, it's usually something in the wheat family.

And then there's Grand Teton Brewing Co., the Victor, Idaho-based rising star that's decided summer is appropriate for two very different tastes. One is the lighter, sweeter taste of a white beer ... albeit, a Belgian double white. And one, of course, is a double IPA, since nothing says "beat the heat" quite like a hop-gutsy 8 percent ABV concoction.

The big boy, released April 1 and available through September, is the Lost Continent Double IPA, a 2009 debut that is back by popular demand. Only this year's version is a little different, with a half pound of "dry hops" added to the three pounds of hops per barrel in kettle and a revised fermentation program aimed at producing a more traditional double IPA flavor.

What comes from those changes is a medium body with a big, bold taste, one that lets you feel citrus zest and chewy flower root in every sip without the stickiness that sometimes is present in this style. And while Lost Continent may be lacking some of the bitterness of other double IPAs - a positive attribute for the new version - it does fall into that classical taste now, something golden enough to be drunk all year long and bold enough to be noticed.

The Tail Waggin' Double White Ale, the summer release in Grand Teton's cellar reserve series, is an animal of a different nature, however. This one provides a little more bark than bite, and the opinions of the Fearless Tasting Crew were decidedly mixed during a tasting at a Memorial Day get-together.

This new creation adds zing by mixing lemongrass flavors in with the traditional orange peel and coriander overtones, leaving your taste buds scrambling a little more to try to figure out what it rolling over them. It is light-bodied with a late-breaking sweet backtaste, leaving it decidedly refreshing in the warm weather without ever being confused with the beer your grandparents drank in the summer.

But the hints of lemongrass and orange peel remain just hints of taste in this one, far enough off that you can imagine what just a little more of either could have done to lift the flavor profile of this beer. In the end, Tail Waggin' is a decent beer, but not the kind of mind-blowing flavor bomb that past Cellar Reserve series entrants such as the Pursuit of Hoppiness American Red Ale and Sheep Eater Scotch Ale have been.

2010-05-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

A Strange - and Wonderful - New Experience

Strange Brewing Co., Colorado's newest brewery, just entered its second week of operation today. But if it is anything like the first week, owners Tim Myers and John Fletcher may have to spend less time thinking about their day-to-day operations and more about how they plan to expand their place.

The then-three-day-old business had people stacked up three deep around 7:30 p.m. last Friday - the second time in two days it had seen an overflow crowd, Myers said. It ran out of one of its four beer offerings during the rush and saw the peanut stash on the bar dip perilously low too.

This initial fervor is well deserved, as Myers and Fletcher have made an interesting batch of beers with which they are splashing onto the scene. There's no blonde, no red ale, no lager and no wheat - in other words, none of the standard fall-backs that other breweries offer to appeal at first to a mass audience.

Instead, the star of the show was the Strange Pale Ale, a surprisingly robust version of the style that presented itself with a strong, bitter burst of hops and lingered with tastes of grass and grapefruit on the back of the tongue. It had a bigger nose than most pales - arguably an IPA-style nose - with a medium body and full-mouth taste.

If the pale was the best in show (as judged by the members of the Fearless Tasting Crew last week), then the contestant that drew the most second and third glances was the Tainted Black Pale, an offering that looked like New Belgium's 1554 but tasted a lot more like something that would come out of the hop-minded folks at Great Divide. The malt announced itself with such gusto that you knew you weren't drinking something out of the standard pale family, but the citrus hop kick still tinged the sides of your tongue in a methodical way.

Finally, there was the Paint It Black Stout, a nitro-infused alcoholic version of a chocolate mocha, thick and deep and just rugged enough, especially with its slight hop backtaste. It was a filling stout that didn't have a particularly heavy body but was worthy of being swished around in your mouth.

Myers and Fletcher opened the brewery after, like many of us, losing their jobs during the recession in 2009. Here then is a toast to good fortune, as many in last weekend's mob seemed to think this was the career they should have been in all along.

2010-05-21T07:25:00.000-07:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

I haven't done this in a while, but seeing how it's American Craft Beer Week and the weather is too nice to stay inside and drink, it sounds like an appropriate time to start again ....

New Brewery

Two of my former Rocky Mountain News colleagues, Tim Myers and John Fletcher, officially opened Strange Brewing Company in Denver on Wednesday afternoon. It will be cranking from 4 to 8 p.m. both today and tomorrow at 1330 Zuni, Unit M.

Beer Festival

Saturday, Noon to 4 p.m.: Pumphouse Brewery and Restaurant in Longmont is bringing in about 20 breweries - from the local to Pacific Coast darlings like Lagunitas - to raise money for the charity Doctors Without Borders. Tickets for the Spring Beer Festival are $30 at the door and get you 10 4-ounce tasters.

Beer Tappings

Today, 5 p.m.: Trinity Brewing of Colorado Springs releases Southern Hospitality, which is brewed with fresh roasted pecans, brown sugar, whole cinnamon sticks and fresh Madagascar vanilla beans.

*Dry Dock Brewing of Aurora releases two Craft Beer Week specials over the next two days: Its Firkin of Wasabi Rice beer today and its Cream Ale tomorrow.

Beer-Food Pairings

Tuesday, 6 p.m.: Great Divide Brewing hosts a beer dinner at Duo Restaurant for $39.

Tuesday, 5-8 p.m.: If that's too rich for your blood, amble down to Great Divide for its monthly beer-cheese pairing, which will run you $18.

2010-04-21T21:31:00.000-07:00

Crazy Mountain: Coming Soon to a Ski Town Near Us

Just as the Texan skiers exit Colorado and the leaves begin to come back to the trees, it seems too that new breweries begin to peek their heads out every spring. And the first arrival of the season, Crazy Mountain Brewing Company, brings with it the hope that each of the year's rookie aspirants can carry as much promise as this newcomer.

If you haven't heard yet of Crazy Mountain, that probably just means you don't hang out a lot in the Vail area. The brewery made its splash debut at the Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines festival in January, where it made such an impression with a Belgian golden ale that founder Kevin Selvy was able to secure the final funding he needed to open. It's currently contracting its recipes to be brewed while he puts the finishing touches on its Edwards taproom and production brewery, expected to open in June or July.

Kevin, who was nice enough to meet me last weekend at Bacco's Bar, one of eight restaurants in the Vail Valley that has his Crazy Mountain Amber Ale on tap, brings a wealth of experience to the venture, having gone to school at Colorado State University and later taken a job with Anchor in San Francisco. Although Crazy Mountain has created just two brews so far - the other being its Lava Lake Wit Beer - Kevin plans to experiment with making everything from the ubiquitous IPA to a creation using Ponderosa pine needles.

The Amber Ale is a highly appropriate apres-ski offering, a smooth and drinkable beer at 5.25 percent ABV but once that laces the red-tinged recipe with enough hops to wake up even the dehydrated taste buds on the back of the tongue. Kevin wanted to debut with an amber that was nicely balanced, he said, and ended up meeting that goal while also exceeding taste expectations of the style.

Crazy Mountain will, in time, make its way through not just the valley but all of Colorado, and it will be a substantial new offering to the state's collection of breweries. And, if 2010 unfolds like many years past, it hopefully won't be the only new brewery that debuts and gains traction.

2010-04-18T18:42:00.000-07:00

Colorado Native: An (Almost) All-Colorado Beer

One of the best trends in recent years has been the effort by Colorado breweries to include as much hops and barley grown in the state as possible in their products. And now one beer - and one from a company that you might not expect - has pushed the effort to the point where 99.8 percent of its ingredients and packaging hail from the Centennial State.

Colorado Native is an effort by Coors incubator AC Golden Brewing Co. to jump on the local-first trend and capture the growing audience of people wanting to support community businesses. I wrote about it two weeks ago for the Denver Business Journal, and you can read more about the business plan and specifics of its local nature here.

The reason that AC Golden president Glenn Knippenberg had to hedge on the full 100 percent is that the company still brings in some of its hops from out of state to brew this amber lager. And that's an important difference because almost all of the other beers made to highlight Colorado ingredients, such as Odell's Mountain Standard Reserve '09, were produced specifically to highlight the small but growing hops industry in the state.

Then again, AC Golden is a brewery that doesn't try to break the bank on hops, having produced a few delicately crafted but hop-flower-limited lagers since it first opened inside the Coors brewery about a year-and-a-half ago. The company's goal is to create quality drinkable beers that could appeal to a mass audience - though certainly not as mass an audience as Coors or Coors Light, which many beer geeks would argue don't bring quality to the equation.

In that vain, Colorado Native is much like the company's two previously marketed efforts, Herman Joseph's Private Reserve and Winterfest - not a beer that attacks and challenges the taste buds as much as one that goes for more up-scale drinkability than many lagers.

There is a dough-like, slightly baked husk of malt that introduces the flavor of this beer, and it settles quickly and unconflictingly onto your taste buds after that. Then there is a faint rush of grassy back taste that Colorado Native leaves on nether-regions of your tongue, as well as a bit of chewy, slightly caramel feel that inhabits your mouth for just a few seconds.

But what this is is an amber lager with a bit more weight and flavor then its parent company's other concoctions, a good beer for post-lawn-cutting porch sipping but not one that will inspire you to muse about its complexities with friends. But if Colorado Native lacks somewhat the daring hop bravado that's come to define the Colorado microbrew industry, it should be saluted for doing what many of those edgier beers are attempting to do for local ingredients - but taking it a step further.

2010-02-28T21:21:00.001-08:00

And Now for Some News on Where You Can Buy Your Beer

My business reporting job and beer-blogging hobby don't intersect too often, but last week I had the opportunity to report on a story in which many beer drinkers may be interested.

If you haven't heard, there are - or, should I say, were - two bills going through the Colorado Legislature that would expand the locations for selling beer in the state. The first would have allowed convenience stores to sell full-strength beer instead of just the 3.2% ABV version of the product they now can sell. The second would allow grocery stores to buy the liquor licenses of local liquor stores and sell whatever they would like.

Well, under heavy pressure from the Colorado Brewers Guild and local liquor stores, the convenience-store sales bill died in a legislative committee Wednesday. The grocery-store sales measure, meanwhile, hasn't been scheduled for a hearing yet.

This is one of those rare posts where I won't offer an opinion, as it's my job to stay neutral in legislative matters (unless, of course, they specifically try to ban double IPAs, in which case I'll lead the march on the Capitol against it). But I thought it was worth keeping people abreast of what's going on in the strange intersection of beer and government.

2010-02-23T05:37:00.000-08:00

The Case for Canning Toked Porter

As I was reflecting on a recent posting about Oskar Blues' upcoming new canned offering, the Gubna imperial IPA, I cracked open the brewery's Toked Porter, a normally tap-only smoked porter that it canned specifically for its Seventh Canniversary party in December. And, like a revelation from above, something occurred to me.

While I won't say Toked Porter should be packaged and released instead of the Gubna - which has been delayed by just a few days, as canning is expected to begin now on March 4 - I will say it should be available to a much wider audience. Specifically, I'd suggest as a beer fan that the officials at the Longmont brewery think about putting both of these creations into vessels for more of the world to share next year.

One of their stated reasons for canning the new 10% ABV imperial IPA, after all, is to put something in a can that hasn't been packaged in that way before. Head brewer Dave Chichura noted Gubna would give some competition to Ska's wonderful Modus Hoperandi IPA - not rip-your-throat-out, run-you-out-of-your-place-in-the-market direct competition but a friendly sparring between two closely tied friends (Ska has Oskar Blues' old canning line) that make the best canned beer available in the country and both make each other better when they come up with these great new ideas.

But there's nothing anything like Toked Porter, a deeply dark concoction with an almost peppery smoke quality that evolves from mildly sweet on the front end to just plain assertive on the back end, on the market right now. And as long as they're giving the beer-drinking public one gift of head-turning beer in a can, why not two?

Just a thought ....

2010-02-20T19:02:00.000-08:00

Ed Sealover Colorado Beer Explorer from Denver Promo on Vimeo.

OK, so I decided to jump into the modern world and make a video, with the help of my friend and videographer Laressa Bachelor. I figured it was a way of trying to sum up why I loved beer and how I came about to writing this blog - in other words, an attempt to answer the question: "What the hell are you doing here, Sealover?"

I'd be curious to hear any thoughts on it or its contents from people who know videos and blogs far better than me. But even if you don't feel like praising or criticizing it (and both are accepted), please enjoy it.

2010-02-14T21:18:00.000-08:00

One, two, three, four, I declare a Can War!

Since its debut in its signature green-and-white cans nearly a year ago, Ska Brewing's Modus Hoperandi India Pale Ale has been the flag-bearer for hoppiness in aluminum packaging.

Well, Oskar Blues Brewing has had enough of that, thank you very much. And this week they officially announced that they're throwing the competition into high gear.

GUBNA Imperial IPA, a 10% ABV imperial red that the Longmont brewery begins shipping on March 1, is a direct response to the tasty product from their Durango-based competitors, Oskar Blues head brewer Dave Chichura said. Selling for $14.49 a four-pack, it will also introduce a new taste to the world of canned beers, which, while rapidly improving, largely includes pleasant sippers like Oskar Blues' Mama's Little Yella Pils but still lacks the beat-your-taste-buds-silly-with-hops genre member.

"We've got a nice little lager that we do, and we like doing that," Chichura told me in an interview in December. "But I've been wanting to do a big, smelly, alcoholic, big-ass IPA."

Since OBB hasn't started shipping the Gubna yet, I can't say if it meets that definition. But if it does, it could be a distinctly different beer that Modus Hoperandi, which is a classically made, wonderfully tasty IPA that leaves a bitter hops flavor on the side of your tongue but doesn't overwhelm you with its flowery scent or feel.

One can only hope that the next stop in this can war is retaliation by Ska. Once you get two breweries competing, after all, we all come out winners.

2010-01-27T20:59:00.000-08:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

I've come down sick and can't drink beer at the moment, but that doesn't mean you can't ...

The Ranger Is Rolling

*New Belgium's Ranger IPA, which I wrote about a week ago, finally hits stores and bars this week. Falling Rock Taphouse offers a public kickoff of it Friday at 5 p.m., and Trinity Brewing in Colorado Springs is holding its own release party for it at 5 p.m. Tuesday.

New Tappings

*Thursday, 6 p.m.: Rock Bottom Brewery Downtown rolls it its latest, a Subzero Winter Ale. The tapping is part of the Apres-Ski Party associated with the SIA Snow Show over at the Colorado Convention Center, so expect an even more festive atmosphere than usual.

*Friday: Fort Collins Brewery unleashes its Scotch Lager, yet another intricate non-ale from the brewery that arguably leads Colorado in lager experimentation.

*Friday, 5 p.m.: Trinity taps its Stop Making Sense Eis Bock, a doppelbock aged and frozen before it's tapped. It comes in at 11% ABV, so bring a driver.

New Offering

*Right around now, Left Hand Brewing has been set to release its 400 lb. Monkey, an IPA it had been testing since June. This new creation adds an almost bubble-gum sweet tinge to the classic bitter hops. The taste is a bit more atmospheric and maybe just a bit more aged than a bite-your-buds fresh hop. But it's definitely another classic in the Longmont brewery's collection.

2010-01-19T20:46:00.000-08:00

New Belgium's First IPA

After 17 years in the business, the Fort Collins brewery known for its Belgian-style creations and experiments in sourness has crafted its first India pale ale, due to hit shelves on Feb. 1. And Ranger IPA stands out from the crowd in one particular way: it is one of the lightest IPAs you will taste.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, depending on what you want out of your hoppy beers. But the straw-golden body and slightly floral-citrus nose immediately indicate that the IPA you are drinking here is not one of the scorch-your-palate hop bombs that breweries like Stone and Russian River have made into the very definition of the style.

The lightness present here isn't without taste. Indeed, the warmer it gets, the more that the grapefruit characteristic wafts to the surface and makes its presence known. In fact, once you prepare yourself for the lack of taste bud assault to come, you admire the core easiness that is present here.

And maybe that is what one should take from this newest entry into the IPA market. New Belgium hasn't given to the beer world a creation that will re-define the style or make you wonder how much earthy, grassy flavor a brewer can drop into one glass. It is, instead, an easily accessible beer that drinkers not fond of the big, bold flavors that dominate the style can still drink. And enjoy.

This won't go down as one of New Belgium's master strokes, like the far-less accessible Le Terroir that pushes the boundaries of sour beers but leaves you shocked at its complexity. This is just a smooth, palatable take on the IPA - take it or leave it.

2010-01-14T20:39:00.001-08:00

Five Lessons Learned from the 2010 Big Beers Festival

This is a few days late and maybe even a few dollars short, but there are a couple of things that I think everyone learned from this year's Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines festival in Vail:

1) Sour beers are not only becoming more common among brewers, they're becoming more palatable to everyone's taste buds. The prime example of this is Odell Brewing's Friek, a blend of "old, young and even younger" barrel-aged sour beer - in the words of master brewer Doug Odell. The effort had the distinctly biting characteristic of tart cherries aged in the older barrels but was smoothed out by last year's harvest raspberries that were blended into the youngest strain. It was crisper and fresher than many of its sour counterparts - though maybe not with as piercing a bite - but I knew that it truly had transcended the genre when the Beer Geekette, who usually winces at sour offerings, said she enjoyed it. Let's hope this is the breakthrough beer that brings sour into mainstream offerings.

2) The roasted, percolated, straight-out-of-the-jungle taste of coffee beers is hitting new heights every day. This had become apparent by some local breweries' efforts, especially those of Pug Ryans and and Backcountry Brewery, at recent local festivals. But San Diego-based Ballast Point Brewing's Victory at Sea Imperial Porter may have ratcheted the competition up a notch. This 10% ABV concoction from took a coffee beer to levels the genre doesn't normally go: a fresh-brewed frontal assault with just a tiny bit of vanilla on the backtaste. It was arguably the strongest yet most pleasing beer at the festival.

3) It's time for Papago Brewing to start distributing outside of the greater Phoenix area. The purveyors of the GABF-famous orange wheat and vanilla coconut porter masterpieces displayed in a special tasting seminar a Irish cream coffee stout that made the perfect pairing for ice cream (which may not be a combo you've always thought of, but trust me when I say that you want to try it). Scottsdale-based Papago is doing with new flavors and styles the same wonderful experimentation that the much more heralded New Glarus Brewing is doing with fruit beers. Yet, they're just one state away, and that bar at the border that stops them from getting through to Colorado needs to drop.

4) Dissension, thy name is cherry imperial stout. The most debated beer of the festival, at least to the Fearless Tasting Crew, was Longmont-based Pumphouse Brewery's 10th Anniversary Cherry Imperial Stout. Some in the bunch thought it was an overload of cherries and chocolate that just made it unpalatable. But I felt it was one of the gutsiest experiments at the show, a bold bombardment of taste buds that was quite heavy and over the top but the closest thing that's ever approximated chocolate-cherry cake in liquid form. And it seemed to be the statement that announced brewmaster Dave Mentus to the world.

5) The traditional definition of a big beer is starting to fade. Barleywines, double IPAs - these were the featured attractions that defined the "big beer" genre for at least half a decade. But while some of them were still turning head - Coronado Brewing's Idiot IPA was one that exuded flowers while keeping its bitterness in check, for example - they were not the stars of the festival. Belgian strong ales, spiced porters, oak-aged offerings, these are starting to take the headlines in many ways now. And this is not a bad thing, even for us hopheads that would gladly attend a DoubleIPAfest if anyone were to throw one. It just showed that the American craft brew revolution of the past five years continues to spread its tentacles in many directions. And that can only mean good things for the daring taste buds of this country.

2010-01-08T07:25:00.000-08:00

Big Beers Time

When you talk about the best of the numerous beer festivals in Colorado each year, only one even deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the Great American Beer Festival. And that one - the Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival in Vail - is on tap for this weekend.

What's cool every year about this is that some of the best brewers both from around the country and around the world bring their most bodacious offerings and let you compare what greatness in large form looks like at many stations. What is even cooler this year is that a number of breweries will be bringing new creations specifically crafted for the tenth anniversary of the festival.

For more information, see the festival's website. If you don't have plans for this weekend, I'd recommend you find a way to get up there; if you do have plans, I'd recommend you cancel them and get up there.

2009-12-25T21:10:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 1

Santa's Little Helper

In all of holiday beerdom - through the spicy, the dark and the not-quite-either - there is one beer that seems to crash down the chimney with more ferocity than any other of the season. And that beer is Port Brewing's 13-year-old tradition, Santa's Little Helper.

The 10% ABV imperial stout is steeped in both dark, roasty malt and in harrowingly bitter aftertaste hops that sing of its strength. Pouring as thick as the motor oil in the fat bearded guy's sleigh, this presents an alcohol flavor that is certainly present but also is masked somewhat by the prominent chocolate and peat tastes.

Yet, through all this darkness, you keep coming back to the hops, the lingering characteristic under all of the burly, chewy taste that gives it its outstanding foundation and ridiculously loud flavor. It is wildly satisfying, like a brilliantly written subplot to an already top-notch movie, and it works in concert with the rest of Santa's Little Helper's personality to create the biggest burst of flavor to come along in winter beers.

I hope you've enjoyed these past 12 days. I know that I sure have. Merry Christmas.

2009-12-24T21:17:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 2

2 Turtle Doves

Note: I'm a fan of holiday ales, and I want to use this forum this year to lay out 12 beers that just seem essential for holiday party drinking. Plus, I want to see if I can sit down and write for 12 days in a row, a feat I've never pulled off on this blog.

Even at a time of year when you're overwhelmed by all the forms that chocolate can take, this year's seasonal by The Bruery will make you believe again the power of dark sweetness to be the official taste of the season.

Two Turtle Doves is a Belgian-style dark ale brewed with cocoa nibs and toasted pecans and coming out at a marshmallow-roastingly 12% ABV. Like many holiday beers, it employs the flavors of dark malt and chocolate, but this gift from the Orange County, Calif. brewery brings its own very, very unique style.

The chocolate here has a liqueur sweetness drifting through it rather than a straight cocoa darkness. Considering this is a medium-bodied beer despite the ridiculous alcoholic wallop that it packs, the chocolate runs through it like a river of added syrup, becoming the filling inside the big, bold, dark candy, if you will.

You can chew it or swirl it between the roof of your mouth and your tongue, but the sweetness is the ultimate compliment to the big body.

I give special props too to The Bruery for coming up with the 12 Beers of Christmas concept in a more more interesting way than a writer can - by producing a different winter seasonal each year for a dozen years (this is the second effort, following last year's Partridge in a Pear Tree). I can't wait to see what comes next.

2009-12-23T22:54:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 3

Winter Warlock Oatmeal Stout

There are big winter beers and there are dusty, pleasantly dark winter beers that aren't overpowering. And somehow, Bristol Brewing combines these two seemingly diverse genres into one spectacular bottle.

Having lived for six years in Colorado Springs, I learned that Winter Warlock is slightly tweaked every year - maybe it's a little more roasty or just a little more chocolaty in any given winter cycle. But the thick-tasting, medium-bodied combination remains, a testament to the ability to combine what is best about several winter styles and produce one of the most drinkable, most satisfying seasonal beverages available in stores.

Warlock's secret brilliance, though, is it's mixing commercial appeal with beer-geek craftsmanship in its oatmeal bedding to its lightly murky feel. Churn the two together, add a little roasted quality and you have something that defines the best of the season.

2009-12-22T22:22:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 4

Anchor Our Special Ale

There aren't many beers that are brewed with a different annual recipe that you keep coming back each year, knowing that no matter what the brewery threw in, the end result is going to be rewarding. But Anchor Brewing's annual Christmas Ale, Our Special Ale, constantly rewards its quaffers, and the 2009 edition is a rather exceptional one at that.

A combination of cocoa, caramel and cotton candy hits your tongue immediately, and the individual tastes swirl together to form overlapping layers that keep rolling back at you. A few sips into the bottle, the taste of licorice begins to appear, slowly and quietly rising to add to this beer's considerable backbone.

As it settles, the licorice blends with the cocoa to produce a unique dark but edgy flavor. This fine brew comes in both 12-oz. bottles and magnums, and I can assure you from very recent experience that bringing a magnum to a holiday party will make you a very special guest.

2009-12-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 5

Great Divide Hibernation Ale

Note: I'm a fan of holiday ales, and I want to use this forum this year to lay out 12 beers that just seem essential for holiday party drinking. Plus, I want to actually see if I can sit down and write for 12 days in a row, a feat I've never pulled off on this blog.

At age 14, Great Divide's Hibernation Ale is reaching its adolescence, but it has a maturity way beyond its years.

A dry-hopped English-style old ale, this dark and dense sipper presents an intriguing combination of flavors. Part of it is is a woody caramel that speaks to its 8.7% ABV strength. And part is the late-building taste of its aging, an almost intangible largeness of body that just makes this rest a little longer on your palate and taste a little heavier going down.

A strong, echoing taste of toffee leaves a signature personality of this beer behind. There are feelings of dark cold nights quenched by a malt-and-hop fire that just resonant with this holiday masterpiece, which is tasting better than ever.

2009-12-20T21:24:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 6

Black Cauldron Imperial Stout

In the cold, cold days of winter, nothing seems so warming as a thick, dark, full beer. And though it is a new entry this year, Grand Teton Brewing's Black Cauldron Imperial Stout jumps to the front of the pack as one of the most frost-killing, more-appropriate-for-spooning-out-than-sipping versions of a winter seasonal that has come along in quite some time.

Both smoky and sweet, this blaringly thick concoction features beechwood-smoked malt and raisins and dried fruit soaked in cherry. The smoke mellows as it warms, but the thick body stays, building up in fortitude.

This is a wonderfully complex, rich beer that you drink just one of in any given sitting. But the appreciation of its craftsmanship grows with each mouth-filling taste, and you're left both savoring it long after you've finished and pondering what taste buds each swish over the tongue will enliven as you slowly work your way through it.

2009-12-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 7

Avery Old Jubilation Ale

Avery Brewing's Old Jubilation Ale may pack a more complex combination of flavors into one 12-ounce bottle than any holiday beer sold in six-packs in Colorado.

This 8% ABV concoction is highly hopped buy still dark and chewy, presenting the hops and malt in balance (BIG balance, but balance all the same). The combination is a full-on malty bitter deluge of the taste buds.

Old Jubilation's official designation is as an English strong ale, but it is very American in terms of the amount of flavors it crams into one bottle. It falls into the holiday-ale category of beers that bathe us in warming malt for the cold season, but it goes well beyond that simple description lavishes as full a presentation to your tongue that you will find.

2009-12-18T22:47:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 8

Left Hand Fade to Black

I was somewhat distraught when Left Hand Brewing announced this year that it was discontinuing Snowbound Ale, its spiced holiday beer that ranked near the top of my annual Christmas sipping list.

I was far less bummed, however, after I tasted its replacement, Fade to Black.

This foreign export stout doesn't just greet you with the scent of espresso - it comes on with the smell of coffee that's been left to warm just a little longer, burning slightly onto the bottom of the pot in a way that ensures its attractive scent is lingering for all. And the taste follows as such: A highly palatable, medium-bodied affair with a roasted tinge that extends around the edges of your tongue and lights up your mouth.

After the introduction, you become aware that the hops in Fade to Black are present and accounted for, but it's the six types of malt that hold the upper hand in this drink. It fills you, it coats your taste buds and it leaves you wanting to leave the lights out so that you can contemplate it in an atmosphere as dark as it is.

2009-12-17T22:12:00.001-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 9

Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale

A few sips into this seasonal, you begin to say to yourself, "How exactly is this a Christmas beer? There aren't spices, there isn't a profusion of dark malts. In fact it really tastes like a classically hopped , excellent northwest pale."

Then, a few sips later, the thought crosses your mind that you don't really give a damn if Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale meets some kind of style guidelines, because this bigger (6.8% ABV) offering is just a well-made creation that works well in any season.

Celebration Ale leaves an almost spicy hops lick on the back edges of your tongue, tinging your taste buds with its dry-hopped assertiveness. It deposits a penetrating back taste that envelopes your mouth for quite a while. And, like Santa leaving presents, it leaves you no doubt that it's come to visit.

This is one of the oldest holiday beers made by an American brewery, and it remains one of the finest. It's good to know that some things don't change.

2009-12-16T21:44:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 10

A.C. Golden Winterfest

There are those guests at every holiday party who want something lighter, something that's not as, well, overwhelmingly Christmas-y as a Breckenridge Ale. And this year, even beer geeks can feel good about giving them something that fits their parameters and still delivers quality flavor: A.C. Golden's Winterfest.

The experimental Coors brewery has come up with a rich lager that isn't spicy or heavily malted but adds just enough texture to be part of the holiday style. Its red-brown color gives away its caramel personality, and the lighter body helps the caramel to be soothing rather than overpowering, like some other major-brewery holiday experiments.

Despite the lighter body, there is an almost British malty aftertaste that lingers in your mouth. This combination of attributes makes it both drinkable and memorable, and should please a wider swath of your guest spectrum than you might expect something coming from Golden, Colo. to do.

2009-12-15T20:55:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 11

Yule Fuel

Sitting in the Bull and Bush tavern, which is modeled after a 17th-century English pub, you feel right at home drinking Yule Fuel, the Denver brewery's winter-specialty spiced beer. For in its thick, viscous body served lukewarm and its spiced aroma, you conjure up images of something very old-fashioned.

Though cloves, malt and honey are all apparent in its scent, it is the honey that takes on the strongest characteristic in this libation that reminds one of a more drinkable form of mead. It takes over as the beer warms even more, making this a very sweet, very drinkable concoction perfect for fireside sipping.

Yule Fuel is not for everyone, especially those who like their beer in classic styles. But if you want something less definable and more experimental, this is worth putting in your gas tank ... er, I mean, gullet.

2009-12-14T21:23:00.000-08:00

The 12 Beers of Christmas: Day 12

Breckenridge Christmas Ale

Breckenridge Christmas Ale is a curious hybrid - the caramel malt-heavy classic American microbrew winter creation with just a tinge of dusty English characteristics to it.

Few holiday beers seem to create as much of a following as this offering, a relatively big (7.4% ABV) mouth-filler that takes on a distinctly more old-school feel than many of this daring brewery's newer creations.

And while I might not put it, say, alone in a pear tree as the top beer of Christmas, it's still a must-have for any holiday party, both for its popular sentiment (both beer snobs and casual beer-drinkers have broken this out at gatherings the Beer Geekette and I have attended this year) and its chewy wintry quality that makes it a great beverage to warm the person who just had to park halfway down the street and trudge back to the party in ankle-deep snow.

Get a dozen, but certainly don't try to drink them in one night.

2009-12-06T19:49:00.000-08:00

My Florida Beer Adventure

Florida is known for many cool things: Bronzed beach goers in bikinis, kick-ass theme parks, lazy Spring Training vacations.

Unfortunately, beer is not one of its notable attractions. And while visiting my father in the Jacksonville area over Thanksgiving, I sought to find out if that non-reputation was warranted.

I can say with limited authority now that it largely is, though if you search hard enough, you can find a few decent offerings. But Florida beers seem to me like beers you find in many hot-weather Central American countries: made to quench thirst, not challenge the palate.

The best of the lot available in most liquor stores seemed to be Key West Sunset Ale, an offering that weighed in somewhere between an amber and a golden but with a sharp citrus taste. Again, this was a nice beer to have when sitting in the backyard on a 75-degree day, but not exactly something you'd choose from the list at the Falling Rock Taphouse.

Hurricane Reef Caribbean-Style Pilsner had similar qualities to recommend it: Smooth, refreshing, nice at the end of a kayaking trip. It's a decent lager with just a little more malt backing than many of its ilk. But it's particularly good for warm weather.

Karibrew Pub in Fernandina Beach had five offerings stretching from a red to a stout to a nut brown that all tasted light for their styles. Maybe it should not have been a surprise that its American Pilsner, full-bodied with a slightly lemon-wheat quality to it, was the most interesting of the options.

And there there was Land Shark Lager, the omnipresent bottle from Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville Brewing Co. that is starting to get national distribution, likely because of its famed maker, not because of its taste. All I could think was that if a shark swallowed a keg of Olympia and then had it pumped from his stomach, this probably would have been the result.

So, Florida, home of great seafood, cliff-hanging elections and Spring Break memories, hasn't reached Colorado levels in its beer-making yet. But, if in Rome - or, in this case, Miami or Jacksonville or somewhere similar - expectations of refreshing beers, if not complex or terribly interesting ones, at least can be met.

2009-11-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

Answering yesterday's question . . .

The Anniversary Ale created by Rock Bottom Downtown is a raspberry porter.

As a reporter, I hate not knowing things, especially in regard to subjects about which I write. So, the Beer Geekette and I made a trip over to RB to find this new ale and discovered something that we both termed as interesting.

A strange scent from the dark concoction is prevalent, but until the helpful bartender identified it for me, it was reasonably hard to determine whether it was a fruit or a spice. The raspberry characteristic is more obvious on the taste, though the medium-bodied porter certainly steals the flavor, with the fruit a pleasant, but not overwhelming, additive on the top.

This is at least the second raspberry experiment coming from the brewery this year, and it is much better than the overly fruited Jazzberry Ale that came out in June. This feels more like a sweet addition to cold-weather beers, and while it won't be mistaken for a classic English porter, it's a noble experiment in the style.

2009-11-06T06:15:00.000-08:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

Oh, it's a good weekend for beer lovers . . . .

Beer Festivals

Saturday: The All Colorado Beer Festival is on for a third year in Colorado Springs at Mr. Biggs' Family Fun Center. About 30 brewers are expected to be dishing out some 70 beers, all for the price of $30. There are two sessions: Noon to 4:30 and 5:30 to 10. Though the festival is certainly a place to indulge in the best that the Springs has to offer, brewers come in as well from all corners of the state as well. I'd suggest the earlier session if you're planning to go.

Beer Events

Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m.: Wynkoop Beers of the Year. This mini-festival features 24 different kegs of the downtown Denver brewpub's offerings, including some rare ones. It's a buck a sample or $25 for unlimited tasting.

Saturday, 2 to 6 p.m.: Upslope Brewing, the plucky Boulder company that took home two medals at this year's Great American Beer Festival hosts its first anniversary party at the brewery. Six beers will be on tap, including two new ones: Pumpkin Ale and First Anniversary Stout.

New Tappings

*Rock Bottom Downtown tapped its Anniversary Ale last night. Try as I can, I can't find a description of what exactly this is. But they've been on a roll lately, so it's probably worth a look.

Beer Construction

Friday: And finally, the strangest e-mail I got this week was an invitation from Oskar Blues for people to come see the installation of two 200-barrel fermentation tanks and a 200-barrel bright tank at its new Longmont canning facility. I can only imagine what kind of thirst this can whip up.

2009-11-04T21:39:00.000-08:00

The Most Colorado of All Colorado Beers

Small Colorado breweries can brag all they want about making homegrown products, but Odell's latest experiment, its Mountain Standard Reserve '09, lays more truth on that claim than anything that's come before it.

Made with 400 pounds of hops from Rising Sun Farms in Paonia, no beer has ever featured more of the locally grown flower than this. As Colorado's hop industry begins to grow, the Fort Collins auteurs have taken advantage of the trend and concocted an ale overflowing with cascade and chinook and creating a truly unique flavor.

This, after all, is a dark brown ale, one that is thick and hearty and the kind that you sip in the dead of winter. But the very first scent released from the corked 750-ml bottle that debuted on Monday is hops, citrusy hops - and the collision is rather stunning.

Here is a heavy beer, one sweet with a caramel cocoa tongue bath, that is also thick with a sweeter-than-usual hop character reflective of the unique taste of a Colorado-grown plant. Every drop is full of a multitude of flavors, and this slow sipper grows just a little sweeter with every rising degree in temperature.

It is one more testimony to the brewing genius that is becoming more and more apparent at Odell. But far from being just a tasty product, this is one that supports the local economy in every way - Colorado grown, Colorado brewed, Colorado sold (at least most of it) - and well worth the $15 you can invest in the many industries of this state.

2009-10-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

IPA - The Really Old-Fashioned Way (Plus a Q-and-A with the Brewer)

BrewDog broke into the malted beverage world with a goal to shake up the stereotype of beers coming out of the United Kingdom. A few heather honey-infused ales and 18.2% oak-aged stouts later and the Scottish brewery can pretty much consider its mission accomplished.

But the latest experiment from the upstart Scots may be their most daring and interesting yet. Co-founders James Watt and Martin Dickie lashed eight barrels (at least originally) of Brew Dog's Punk IPA to a North Atlantic trawler to simulate the voyage that English IPA made on its trip to India in the 19th century, a video that you can see here.

The origins of IPA have been discussed a lot lately, including in an excellent article entitled "Mythbusting the IPA" in the coming November issue of All About Beer magazine. No matter when it was made or why it became so popular in both India and England, however, one thing is for sure: the beer spent a lot of time in rocky conditions in a barrel, and its flavor sprang partly from that.

So, when tasting Brew Dog's experimental Atlantic IPA, which is neither distinctly UK-bred nor distinctly American, you're struck by a few things. First, there really is a barrel-aged quality to the creation, especially the vanilla, almost oak-hewn character that surfaces on the back of your tongue after several sips.

Secondly, though there is an initial push of typical IPA bitterness on your taste buds, the turbulent aging seems to have smoothed out the English hops, making them assertive without being caustic, noticeable without being attention-grabbing. This tastes, frankly, like something that has been stirred up and blended, leaving it complex yet balanced even as repeated sips of the 8.5% ABV beer warm your mouth and remind you of the alcohol presence.

Atlantic IPA is being sold for $25.99 a bottle in very limited quantities in a handful of cities around the globe (sorry Denverites, you'll have to call friends elsewhere in the U.S. to ask them to snag you a bottle).

I had the opportunity to e-mail a few questions to James Watt about the project. Here's what he had to say about big ideas, barrel aging and shelling out a few bucks for a piece of history:

1) Ed: Where on earth did you come up with the idea to age the beer in this way?
James: IPA’s were traditionally made in England and sent to India by sea. Hops act as a preservative in beer, thus these beers were highly hopped which combined with the high alcohol meant they had the best chance of withstanding the sea journey to India. This fine tradition of brewing IPA in the UK is more than 250 years old. However, I was disillusioned with the fact that in modern times IPA had come to stand for nothing more than a scarcely hopped blonde session ale in the UK with people merely using the name ‘IPA’ for the sake of it.

We were determined to bring the style right back to its roots as a response to what we saw as the death of the IPA tradition in the UK. I sail 8 weeks a year a as a North Atlantic Captain and when Martin found a recipe for a 200 year old IPA it just made sense to tie the whole thing up together and make as authentic an IPA as we could.

This IPA is brewed to a traditional 200 year old recipe and then aged in oak casks on the north Atlantic for 2 months making it the first IPA aged in oak at sea for 2 centuries, the first genuine IPA for over 200 years. With a huge interest in the IPA style all over the world we thought it would be great to brew one which resembled the origins of the style as closely as we could, all whilst having a cool little adventure along the way.

2) Ed: What, in your opinion, has this kind of aging done to the flavor of the beer compared to a non Atlantic-sailing Punk IPA?
James: The oak and Atlantic aging has had a huge effect on the beer. The fact the beer was in near constant motion means it has become very oxidised, giving it some sour qualities. The salinity is apparent all over the beer too and you can almost taste the epic waves crashing down on the barrel with every sip. The use of traditional English hops also give the beer a far more grungy, herbal and earthy quality as opposed to the citrus edge of most modern US IPAs.

3) Ed: Where in the world (literally) can you find the limited quantity of this beer for sale?
James: The Atlantic IPA is available in limited quantities and is only available in select markets. Select markets include: New York, Chicago, Boston, Portland, San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles.

4) Ed: Why decide to charge $25.99 American for this, and do you think that will scare away beer enthusiasts who otherwise might want to try it?
James: I do not think the price will scare anyone away. If we want to scare people, we will show them me dangling in a tiny basket, up to my waist in freezing seas on January 2nd trying to recover the lost cask, we will show them the footage of 70ft waves crashing down on the boat and breaking over the casks of beer, we will show them 30 hour stints on deck in the freezing North Atlantic wintertime. All that will scare them. For buying a piece of brewing history, one of only 2,000 bottles, the beautiful hand-drawn label and the first authentic IPA for 200 years, $25.99 should not be nearly as scary as what we went through to make the beer!

5) Ed: Will there be a repeat voyage? If not, do you have a next experiment like this in mind?
James: The BrewDog Team has a history of exciting imaginations, so please stay tuned for the October 21st announcement.

2009-10-08T21:06:00.000-07:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

And in this strange, new post-GABF world, we have to search out events . . .

New Brewery Restaurant

*Monday: Oskar Blues throws open the doors to its new beer joint/restaurant, Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids & Solids, in Longmont. Offering southern BBQ and the live music that for which the still-operating Lyons brewery is known, the eatery will be easily distinguishable by the giant silo-sized rendition of a Dale's Pale Ale can attached to the side of it.

New Tappings

*Rock Bottom Brewery downtown just tapped its Dunkelweizen on Thursday; if it's anywhere near the quality of the beers that it offered during Denver Beer Fest, it will be worth stopping by the restaurant to try some. Also, Rock Bottom Westminster taps its Harvest Moon Rye at 6 p.m. on Thursday.

*Bristol Brewing of Colorado Springs released its Winter Warlock on Friday, which stands not only as one of the earlier release of a holiday beer in the state but as one of the darkest, thickest, finest local Christmastime beers on which you can get your hands.

Beer/Food Pairing

*Wednesday, 5 p.m.: Trinity Brewing, also of Colorado Springs, is having a rare beer dinner at its place . . . with another brewery. Not sure what exactly is involved with the Ska Beer and slow food event, but I do know this: I hope Ska brings its new Merlo Stout #12, an oak-aged (presumably in merlot barrels), dark-as-night creation that was entered in this year's pro-am competition at the Great American Beer Festival.

Craft Beer Education

*Thursday, 6 to 9 p.m.: Scott Kerkmans, who has the dream job as Chief Beer Officer (yes, that's his real title) for Four Points by Sheraton hotels, will offer a class on craft beer education at Cook Street School of Fine Cooking in Denver. The price is $59, but you get to taste six beers.

2009-10-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

A GABF Toast to Colorado

Last week I wrote about what I considered the best beers at the Great American Beer Festival. They were of different styles and from different states, but had one thing in common: Absolutely none of them won a medal. So much for my taste buds . . .

What was exciting was the number of Colorado beers that medalled: 39, plus two overall medals for breweries. (News accounts reported 45 medals, but six of those were for Miller beers, which, as a purist, I still don't consider a Colorado beer.) And while many of the medalists are difficult for local beer geeks to get their hands on, these local ones aren't.

So, in alphabetical order, here are this year's Colorado winners - or, as I like to call them, my to-do list for the year - with commentary where applicable.

A.C. Golden Brewing: Dunkel (Bronze). This Golden brewery celebrated its first birthday with a medal in the European-style dunkel category.

Avery Brewing: The Kaiser (Gold) and Brabant (Bronze). The strongest, hoppiest Oktoberfest beer in America earns a well-deserved blue ribbon, while the Boulder brewing legend's new barrel-aged beer gets some love too.

Backcountry Brewery: May Bock (Silver). This Frisco gem of a brewery only serves this bock in the spring, so plan hiking trips appropriately.

Bristol Brewing: Cheyenne Canon Ale (Silver). Proceeds from the sale of this woody, slightly sweet nut brown ale benefit restoration of Cheyenne Canyon in Colorado Springs.

Colorado Boy Pub and Brewery: Colorado Boy Irish (Silver) and Colorado Boy IPA (Bronze). Tom Hennessy's newly opened Ridgway brewery makes beers that are less assertive but stylistically perfect, and the IPA especially is a smooth treat.

Colorado Brewing Co./Draft House: 44 Pale Ale (Silver). Boulder's former Redfish Brewhouse nabs an award for its American-style pale ale.

Coors Brewing: Keystone Ice (Gold), Coors Banquet (Gold), Keystone Light (Silver), Killian's Red (Silver), Pre-Pro (Silver). Laugh if you will, but this is the 2009 large brewing company of the year, and it virtually swept the American-style specialty lager category.

Dry Dock Brewing: Bismark Altbier (Gold), U-Boat Hefeweizen (Silver), Reines Marzen (Silver). This amazing Aurora success story - it won a World Beer Cup medal less than a year after opening - is now the well-deserved 2009 small brewing company of the year.

Durango Brewing: Durango Colorfest (Gold). Growing in recognition for every medal it wins, it reaped gold with its American-style amber lager this year.

Glenwood Canyon Brewing: Cardiff (Gold) and Carbonator (Bronze). A pair of awards for its strong beer and German-style doppelbock, respectively.

Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant Group: Czech Pilsner (Silver), Dunkles (Silver), Alt Bier (Bronze), Golden Export (Bronze). Bet you didn't know that this national chain's head brewer is located in Broomfield.

Great Divide Brewing: Yeti Imperial Stout (Silver), Hoss rye beer (Bronze), Old Ruffian Barley Wine (Bronze). Nothing surprising about the recognition for Yeti (except that it didn't win gold), but the big kudos go to the terribly drinkable Hoss, introduced just two months ago.

Left Hand Brewing: Smokejumper (Gold). Highly smoked with a heavy body, this is an imperial stout that will leave you thinking about it.

Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery: Temperance (Bronze). A very satisfying American-Belgo-Style Ale that doesn't lean too heavily toward either of its nationalities of origin.

New Belgium Brewing: NBB Love (Silver). My one complaint about New Belgium: This is the second year in a row that it's won a medal for a beer that it wasn't serving on the floor (or at least it wasn't advertised). And I would have loved to try this German-style sour ale.

Rockyard Brewing: Double Eagle Ale (Bronze). A thick American-style wheat beer wins for this underrated brewery.

Ska Brewing: Buster Nut Brown (Silver), True Blonde Ale (Bronze), Steel Toe Stout (Bronze). Brown ale, summer ale, sweet stout: The Durango brewery triumphs in a variety of categories.

The Sandlot: Move Back (Gold), Where the Helles Bill? (Silver), Greenside Up (Silver). Coors Field's brewery is like one of those independent-film producers that flies under the radar and then scoops up Academy Awards every year. This year it won for its German-style Oktoberfest, Munich-style helles and German-style Oktoberfest, respectively. Yes, that's right: two medals in the same category.

Trinity Brewing: TPS Report (Gold). A barrel-aged wild yeast sour beer wins the Colorado Springs brewery a medal in the experimental beer category.

Upslope Brewing: Upslope Dunkel Weizen (Bronze) and Time of the Season (Bronze). Like Colorado Boy, this Boulder upstart is less than a year old. And not only does it medal with its German-style wheat ale, it takes one for its well-balanced Belgian-American ale made with a homebrewer and entered in the pro-am competition.

2009-09-29T21:04:00.000-07:00

Best of the GABF 2009

When beer aficianados look back on the 2009 Great American Beer Festival, they may view the event as a turning point in the way that American brewers like to push their flavors to extremes.

A good half-decade after the hopped-to-the-hilt double IPA boom began hitting a crescendo, and two or so years after it became the hip thing to brew your own Belgian sour ale, brewers veered in another direction this year. It's no longer enough to push the hops and malts, they seemed to say - you have to find that new flavoring that's going to light out taste buds as well.

So, we saw coconut stouts and lemon pepper saisons and acai berry wheats. There was peanut butter and pumpkin and watermelon beers that somehow seemed to taste like Jolly Ranchers. Sure, you could spend the day drinking IPAs as usual, but then you'd be missing something interesting that is just starting its march against American breweries.

And sadly, you'd be missing some really good experimental flavors that lay out there.

Against that backdrop - and now that I've spent two full days letting my liver recover - I wanted to present my annual roundup of one man's opinion of the finest that the American beer world had to offer.

Best in Show: The Great Pumpkin, Elysian Brewing. In a year in which the fruited and vegetabled beers leaped to the head of the conversation, it seemed only appropriate that this pumpkin-flavored style-bending masterpiece was harder to keep on tap than most of New Glarus and Russian River had to offer. Almost soothingly cooling as it asserted its nutmeg and pie tastes, this showed how intricately and perfectly a brewery could blend spice notes with a smooth and well-made ale.

Best Sour Beer: Cuvee de Castleton, Captain Lawrence Brewing Co. New Belgium's La Terroir and Cambridge Brewing's Cerise Cassee were eyebrow-raisers in just how sharp and pucker-worthy a tasty beer can be. But this small New York brewery made the most satisfying and drinkable creation of the genre, one that was smooth and remarkably golden yet wonderfully apple-tinged.

Best Hoppy Beer: Hopnotic Imperial IPA, San Diego Brewing Company. The 2008 gold-medal winner battered you with hop sweetness, then massaged you with its heavy smoothness. It should enter the conversation as one of America's best IPAs.

Best Dark Offering: Coconut Joe, Papago Brewing. This gem of an Arizona brewery blended coconut into a coffee stout, giving it more backbone than many of the new coconut offerings while invigorating the stout with just enough distant sweetness to make it more interesting.

Best Wheat Beer: Mothership Wit Organic Beer, New Belgium Brewing. I tried watermelon, orange, acai berry wheats - and nothing compares to the placid smoothness in this creation that stands above all twists on the classic style.

Best Colorado Offering: Brett Barrel Brown, Odell Brewing. Making Brettanomyces beer is sort of like making chili beer: If you do it badly, it can go very, very wrong. And there were some awkward brett offerings from some good breweries. But this blend of a brown that is not overpowering with the wild yeast and the barrel aging spawned a greatly balanced dark beer that was just the slightest bit sour.

2009-09-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

Notes from Day Two of the Great American Beer Festival

I've been going with my buddy Eric to the GABF since I pulled into Colorado in 2001. His comment after last night's session was that this was the best festival he can remember. I think that testifies well to the depth and variety of beer being served.

*While hitting Colorado booths is not always high on Coloradans' list of things to do, stopping by the Odell and New Belgium booths in particular is well advised this year. Odell is serving rarities like a Bourbon Barrel Stout and a phenomenally balanced Brett Barrel Brown, and New Belgium reached into its vault to crack out La Terroir, possibly the most sour beer ever brewed.

*I confess that the hype over Blue Moon's saison was a bit of hype; it's decent but not a genre-definer. But one of the most fascinating beers of the festival was Blue Moon's Peanut Butter Ale, which really approximated a glass of Jiffy that is tasty and smooth. Get it while you can: I asked a pourer when this would be out in stores, and she laughed.

*The Midwest, once the breeding grounds for water American lagers, seems to be serving better beer every year. Fat Head's Brewery is offering some eye-openers, Bell's is getting even more of a cult following (and running out more quickly) and the variety of offerings is becoming impressive.

*This is the year to go home with free schwag - and good stuff. Filmmaker Anat Baron was handing out copies of her "Beer Wars" to people attending her talk, and the only qualifications for winning free Simpsons DVDs, at least late in the night, seemed to be showing up to the booth and attempting to listen to a TV in the loud crowd. You could furnish a bar and an entertainment collection with everything that's going out free this year.

2009-09-25T06:29:00.000-07:00

Notes from Day One of the Great American Beer Festival

*The extra 33,000 feet or so of space that was added to the hall this year really makes a lot of difference. It was easier to make your way through crowds, there was less bunching even by booths with long lines (New Glarus, Russian River) and the extra bathrooms that were opened up made that experience a whole lot more pleasant.

*The coconut beers were, as expected, flowing from multiple sources this year, and the initial results were very pleasing. Papago Brewing of Arizona crafted a coconut stout, for example, that was thick with java tinges but really accessible with the coconut sweetness. Hopefully, this a trend that will stick around.

*I always believe that one way to tell where you should be drinking is to watch what booths brewers go to on the first night. One place that had a surprisingly large gathering of beer makers was Cascade Brewery of Portland, which specializes in unique sour beers. In addition to its cherry-heavy Cascade Kriek, it featured an apricot ale, a Northwest sour red ale and a lighter sour fermented with the juice of pressed white wine grapes.

*Speaking of sours, there are two things to note this year: You're seeing more of them, and they're, frankly, more sour than they have been in years past. Cambridge Brewing's Cerise Cassee, for example, nearly takes your taste buds off with its pucker worthiness this year. Bon appetit.

2009-09-24T05:49:00.000-07:00

The Essential Beer Guide to the GABF

The Great American Beer Festival - the beer world's combined version of the Olympics, a national political party convention and a super-cool family reunion - begins tonight and runs through Saturday night. But if you're reading this, that shouldn't be a surprise.

Last year, I wrote a general tip sheet on how to attack the event when you have only four hours to do so. But with 453 breweries set to offer up about 1,900 beers this year, I thought about the question: What does a festival goer truly have to try in their time there?

There's no one answer. You want to grab beers that aren't available at your local liquor store but also ones you know you love. You want to try the biggest, boldest brews ever made but also know that if you spend the whole night drinking nothing but imperial stouts, you may forget where you are by 9:30.

So, what follows is one man's opinion on the 28 beers you really, really shouldn't miss as you make your way around the hall. This is just a starter set, as 29 is an extremely low number of stops to make in a night. And I realize there are some fabulous breweries (Lost Abbey, Brewery Ommegang, Avery, to name a few) that are must-hits but aren't included on here. But this is an overview of many different styles - and presented in a way that you can grab your festival program and use it to meander the stations as they are numbered below in the most efficient way possible.

K26: New Glarus Raspberry Tart. Yes, starting here requires you to jet immediately to the middle of the convention center rather than start on the edges. But if you don't get into the giant line forming by this brewery early, you may not get a chance to enjoy it later.

M24: Thirsty Dog Old Leghumper Robust Porter. Every year I drink this beer, I want it to be a little darker. But I keep going back because you just have to honor the best-named beer in the show (and enjoy the bottle label if it's on display).

O4: Cambridge Brewing Cerise Cassee. A wild-fermented sour ale that was hands down the best beer of the festival last year. It can't be missed.

L13: Snake River Zonker Stout. As far as bold and chocolately beers go, there's nothing smoother and more enjoyable than this Wyoming creation.

L8 The Sandlot Goat Rancher. The small brewery inside Coors Field wins a ridiculous amount of medals every year, but you rarely get their medal winners on tap at Rockies games. This bock is an example of why they're so honored.

H20: Great Divide Espresso Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout. You can get many of Brian Dunn's beers on tap year-round, but not this one. It will be one of the most complex flavor patterns you'll taste all weekend.

H12: Pug Ryans Helles Good Beer. Most of the Colorado beers you want to drink are available throughout the state, so you can skip them in a time crunch. This malty, sweet helles is on tap only at the brewery and only during the summer. It may be the best lager you have.

D33: Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout. A ferocious and dark-as-night offering that I've heard more than one brewer call their favorite beer at the show. A rarity that shouldn't be passed up.

H1: Sam Adams Utopias 2009. The truth is that I think the world's strongest beer at 25% ABV tastes more like cognac than beer. But it only gets offered up only a few times a show - when you hear a little bell ringing in the booth - and the lines form quickly to get it.

I8: Russian River Consecration. Currants are added to this strong dark ale that's aged six months inside cabernet sauvignon barrels. Maybe the most talked-about beer of last year's festival, it is a worthy member of Russian River's sour family.

I6: San Diego Brewing Hopnotic Imperial IPA. This is the beer that won the gold medal for double IPAs last year. 'Nuff said.

E14: Six Rivers Chile Beer. Brewed with four kinds of chile, this joyride from a small California brewery will snap your taste buds back to life without burning them.

E36: 21st Amendment Hell or High Watermelon Wheat. Strangely satisfying, this San Francisco concoction puts a new and pleasing spin on wheat beers.

O34: Kona Coco Loco. Browsing through the festival guide, it appears that coconut is the hip new taste being added to a number of beers this year. I haven't tried this particular beverage, but Kona Brewing is to be trusted with crafting a new style.

O24: Moylan's Hopsickle Imperial Triple IPA. Another one that I haven't tried yet, but just look at the key words here: Imperial Triple IPA. I'm not sure how you pass up something like that.

M4: Lone Star. No GABF is complete without stopping to get one of those cheap beers you drank in college and then realizing how far beer has come. Lots of people drink PBR, but you can get that anywhere. And Lone Star won a gold medal in its category last year. No kidding.

J19: Blue Moon Saison Farmhouse Ale: Think you know this Golden brewery? Think again after you taste this exquisite Belgian offering. Then beg them to package and release it.

K16: Bell's Two-Hearted Ale. Few regionally available beers inspire the passion that this giant hop monster does.

K11: Atwater Brewery Vanilla Java Porter. The former Stoney Creek Brewery made a vanilla porter that outshone most of the festival early in the decade. This is its successor.

K5: Vino's Pizza Pub Holidaze: The most complex and unique Christmas beer around - and it comes out of Arkansas.

G8: Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan Nut Brown Ale. It isn't the pecan taste that makes this unique so much as the fact that Lazy Magnolia is Mississippi's only brewery. And you just have to support that.

G31: Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout: Many festival beers are aged in bourbon barrels. This may be the only one that actually mixes bourbon into the brew. And in a one-ounce pour, you can try it and truly appreciate it.

G34: Collaborative Evil 2009. Nine brewers got together to make this golden strong ale. Stop by award-winning Flossmoor Station to try it.

C12: Breckenridge 471 Double IPA. After you've tasted a lot of better-known double IPAs, stop by and drink what I've come to believe is the best one in America.

B18: Dogfish Head Theobroma. No GABF is complete without tasting one of Sam Calagione's crazy historical beers. Made with Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs, this will do the trick.

F34: Elysian Brewing The Great Pumpkin. This will make you actually think you've stuck a straw into pumpkin pie. A remarkable beer for the season.

F38: Alaskan Brewing Smoked Porter 2008. Too few breweries bring cellared beers, and few aged beers are finer than this classic.

F16: Papago Brewing Orange Blossom: A wheat beer that tastes like a Creamsicle. You may think that sounds weird, but just wait until you try it.

2009-09-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

Rock Bottom's Finest Hour

After a slightly disappointing week of Denver Beer Fest events that so far has included restaurants not serving the beer dinners they've advertised and bars blowing special kegs 10 minutes before I walk in, I found the event I was waiting for tonight.

Rock Bottom Brewery in downtown Denver broke out 11 specialty, limited-time beers for the festival, and the featured menu ranks as likely the best ever seen at the restaurant. Several in particular shined as brewmaster John McClure's finest creations.

There were saisons and the infamous Silver Mullet, but the two that deserve the highlighting are a pair of whiskey-barrel aged concoctions with similar backgrounds but definitively different personalities to show off.

One was the 5W30, an 11% ABV barrel-aged imperial stout matured for eight months on Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey barrels. It comes at you with the oaky heartiness you'd expect but offsets any belligerence with a whiskey sweetness sometimes lacking from this style. The scent is of a complex chocolate/oak combination, and the bourbon tinge gives way to a more chocolate fullness as it advances. Rarely are beers this ass-kicking also this drinkable.

Its brother in arms is Woody Bomb, a 10.6% ABV Hop Bomb IPA aged in a Woodford Reserve Bourbon barrel for nine months. This features a more assertive whiskey sharpness, which seems to grow in taste when mingled with the hoppy beer. It's more prominent on the nose and on the tongue. And though it may be lower in alcohol, it comes at you more strongly and sticks around longer as well.

Rock Bottom's offerings have at times been hit and miss. This one's all hit. And it couldn't have come at a better time if you're looking for something to spice up your week while it's on tap.

2009-09-19T11:35:00.000-07:00

Colorado's Newest - and Smallest - Brewery

Heading east out of Montrose, very few people are looking for a brewery on the main highway. But if you cast your eyes quickly to the south side of the road just past a giant Chevrolet dealership, you will see Horsefly Brewing, in its two-week-old splendor, located in the office of a former tractor dealership at 2320 E. Main St.

Former homebrewer Nigel Askew and business partner Melanie Freismuth opened this 1-1/2-barrel brewery after seeing other small shops around the state and realizing they could do it too. By all accounts, Horsefly is now tied with the Ourayle House in Ouray as the smallest brewery in Colorado. It's still open only during limited hours from Friday through Monday and doesn't have a website yet . (Even the picture I posted with this blurb has nothing to do with the brewery; it was just the best shot of a horsefly I could find.) But anyone who happened to stop in last weekend - as the Beer Geekette and I did - could see this is a fully functional place to hang out.

There are three tables and a four-seat bar inside, as well as a couple of places to sit down outside. A giant TV screen has football on most of the time (hence, the reason Horsefly is open Monday night as well). Multiple board games available for playing, and between that and the owner's kids showing you to your table, you realize quickly this is one of the more family-friendly breweries in the state. And - this is the best part - they bring you peanuts to your table and are just fine with you throwing the shells onto the floor when you're done.

The beer selection, as might be expected from a 50-gallon production system, is limited, especially now. A Pale, a Scottish, a Red and a Nut Brown were on tap last weekend and are available in an affordable taster menu. All have a very English feel, befitting Nigel's background as a native Zambian who attended a Scottish boarding school as a child. The pale has a slightly fruity character, while the smooth Scotch is highly malty with a hint of chocolate in the background. The Red is semi-sweet and highly drinkable, and the Nut Brown has a lighter body and medium color.

Horsefly becomes the only official brewery in Montrose (there is a Smugglers Brewpub here, but the beer it serves is made in its main location in Telluride). And while the beer styles aren't breaking any new ground, the brews are pleasant - as are the owners and staff who looked really happy to see the crowds show up the first week. Nigel said about 40-50 people packed the place on its second Friday night in business.

With the comings and goings of breweries these days, it's hard to pinpoint exactly where Horsefly is in terms of the oldest beer makers in the state, though most people guessed it falls around 105th or 106th (and will see fellow brewers in back of it when new brewpubs open in Norwood and in the southeast Denver suburbs in the coming months). Regardless of its standing, though, it's a welcome addition to an industry that is still burgeoning in Colorado despite the economic downturn.

2009-09-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

It Begins: Denver Beer Fest

If you haven't heard yet about Denver Beer Fest, then let's just say this: You may want to clear out the next week of your calendar.

Visit Denver, the city's convention and visitors bureau, has assembled a lineup of roughly 150 events involving beer and food, beer and tappings, beer and trivia, beer and ice cream, hell, even beer and breasts. And between 5 p.m. today and sunset on Sunday, Sept. 27, there's a chance that if you plan things correctly, you may not have to do anything but drink beer for 10 days.

The idea of a celebration of a city's brewing industry isn't anything new: San Francisco and Philly have done it for a couple of years now. But what's impressive about the effort here in Colorado is the number of happenings they were able to set up in such a short time - Philly, for example, had about 60 events at its first beer week, Visit Denver officials tell me - and the variety of them. Brian Dunn, owner of Great Divide Brewing, noted that he's doing six beer dinners as well as about a dozen other events from tastings to meet-the-brewer gatherings before he collapses from sheer exhaustion in a week-and-a-half.

I've written about this several times for my real job (you can see the latest Internet article here but unfortunately have to be a subscriber to see the bigger story I wrote on the success of the Beer Fest and the Great American Beer Festival last week) and it's because it transcends the world of beer geeks. This is a chance for Bobby Blatz-chugger and Marty Miller-drinker who may not have found the full array of beer that is out there to stumble into a great beer and meet its brewer while out for dinner this week.

Rather than try to list all of the events, or even the highlights, I'll just go ahead and post a link to the full schedule here. But rest assured I'll be hitting dinners and new tappings and, yes, even trying some beer ice cream this week and trying to chronicle it (far more regularly than I have been) on this site.

And I've set my watch to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, for the start of the Great American Beer Festival. I imagine many of you have as well.

2009-09-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

A New Bully in Town

It was six months ago today that a new player entered the Colorado beer market, though the change in local liquor stores and at local bars has been marked.

Boulevard Brewing, the 20-year-old Kansas City institution, quietly rolled into the state with six-pack and mix 12-packs and bombers from its Smokestack series. Now, it's hard to stroll into a cooler area without seeing its products lining shelves, nor are you likely to go to too many parties before running into someone who is enjoying the brand.

I admit that Boulevard had an early effect on my beer-snob formation. I don't remember exactly how I got a hold of my first Bully Porter - I think it was from the mix-a-six cooler at my college liquor store - but I remember vividly tasting it and getting hooked on dark beer. Whenever I went to visit friends in K.C., I would search out places where I could have it again.

After running through all of Boulevard's Colorado-available offerings - no small task, considering there have been at least 13 - the overwhelming impression you're left with is this: the porter is still a good beer, as are several of the year-round offerings. But a brewery that sprang up fairly early in the microbrew revolution with an offering of one of the classic English styles has found itself in its new experiments.

Take, for example, the new Two Jokers Double-Wit, which presents a big, sweet nose followed by a thick orange taste that is full-bodied and daring. The orange mellows as you sip, but the acidic citrus finish, tangy but not harsh, stays with you throughout the golden amber ale.

Each time the brewery pushes the envelope, it seems to find a little more within itself. Its Double-Wide India Pale Ale comes on sharp and bitter but warms to a slightly tart, very flavorful grass-scented offering. The Sixth Glass Quadruple Ale presents a smoky, slightly toasted licorice flavor that leaves a toffee caramel impression on the tongue. The Tank 7 farmhouse ale that was one of the hits of the Manitou Craft Lager Festival is a pleasantly strong experience with a slight bitterness on the backtaste.

The seasonal and year-round offerings - there are 11 altogether - are simpler, a little less exciting but more classically representative of their styles, without any major flourish like the big bomber beers. The Irish Ale has a dusty feel of cocoa to it. The Unfiltered Wheat is smooth and drinkable with very subtle citrus. The Single-Wide I.P.A. is for people who like their hops with a bitter bite.

What Boulevard has brought to the state is simply another quality product. Its big Belgians are a joy to crack out with friends and are reasonably priced. Its experimental beers leave the hope of even more to come, in even more styles.

And its porter, well, let's just say it will always be a gateway beer for me into a world that I was just beginning to discover as a 22-year-old. Personally I'm glad to see that the little brewery that hooked me has grown up into something bigger and bolder.

2009-08-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

What? A weekend without a beer festival? . . .

Tapping Parties

Saturday (today), 2 to 6 p.m.: Boulder's newest brewery, Upslope Brewing Co., will break out its Belgian Dubbel at a release party that includes cheap pints and some free eats.

Monday: Fort Collins Brewery taps Common Ground, a collaboration between it and Jackie's Java to create a coffee-infused amber ale.

New Tappings

*Already missing the spate of summer beers that debuted this season? Crabtree Brewery in Greeley just cracked open a Strawberry Blonde to ensure you don't have to drink dark beer before all the kids are back in school.

*Wednesday: Trinity Brewing of Colorado Springs is putting its Flo IPA on cask at the same time it keeps it on its regular tap as well. Crazy.

Beer/Food Pairing

Tuesday, 5 to 8 p.m.: Great Divide holds its latest beer and cheese pairing. Here's a tip that I've learned firsthand: If you're wanting to go, make sure you RSVP at info@greatdivide.com or call Patrick at 303.296.9460 x29. It will be worth it.

Thursday, 6:30 p.m.: Can't get enough of that Flo IPA? Trinity hosts a $55 six-course beer pairing dinner, with a maximum of 20 seats available. Call 719-634-0029.

2009-08-11T21:42:00.000-07:00

Five Things I Learned from the Manitou Craft Lager Festival

The seventh annual Manitou Craft Lager Festival took place this past weekend, and at two full days with 22 different breweries (and one beer made by about a dozen brewers), it was bigger than ever. One is always tempted to use the cliche "bigger and better," and with a bevy of good bluegrass music and host Jason Yester strolling throughout the festival talking beer with everyone, that expression is probably true.

But I'll choose to use the term "bigger and smarter" instead, because that's how I came away from the event. And here's a few of those things to smarten you up that many attendees may have picked up this year:

1) Just because a beer is of a typically light style doesn't mean it is. Ask especially the Sam Adams Double Bock, which was, in the opinion of this one beer geek, the offering of the festival. A dark, malty, ass-kicking beer that weighed in at 9.5 percent ABV, this is the most complex version of a lager that you'll find. Kudos as well to Carver Brewing's X-Rock Bock, whose big alcohol left it with a caramely sweet taste.

2) Even if it is light doesn't mean it tastes anything like (Insert Megabrewery Here) Light. Some of the finest sips on this 85-degree day came from thin, translucent beers with easy malt flavoring - the emphasis being on actual flavor. Left Hand's Polestar Pilsner (which judges named the beer of the festival) was crisp, refreshing and style-defining. Likewise, Del Norte's pale Orale Mexican-style lager was just lightly hopped and sweet enough to pronounce its personality without getting in the way of your need for something less than chewy under the summer sun.

3) Fruit, which soars in Belgian-style ales and adds personality if done right in regular ales, can be intrusive in a lager. Ask Michelob, whose Pear Beer resembled a pushy cider but not a beer. Even Rocky Mountain Brewing, the Colorado Springs envelope-pushers who have added everything but a thick steak to their beers in their first year of existence, demonstrated that a little lemongrass in a lager might intrigue you, but it also can take over the beer.

4) "Bitter" and "lager" no longer are mutually exclusive terms. Shmaltz Brewing, another envelope pusher, opened a lot of eyes with its Sword Swallower, an IPA-inspired lager brewed with eight hops that jolted while most of the other beers poured at the festival soothed. Meanwhile, Boulder Beer rolled out a new Rye't On! Lager that presented a spicy and bitter taste to you.

5) Pug Ryan's needs to find a way to get its Helles Good Beer out to the Colorado market somehow. A sweet and highly malty seasonal bock that somehow finishes with cooling properties, it had the best combination of originality and drinkability of any lager on tap. A number of people said the same thing at the 2008 Arapahoe Basin beer festival. The small Dillon brewpub right now cans just one of its concoctions - its Morningwood Wheat. If you can't wait for the Helles to come to you, I'd suggest getting up to Summit County to try it this summer.

2009-08-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

A quick edition for the beer drinker on the go . . .

Festivals

Saturday and Sunday, 1-6 p.m.: Manitou Craft Lager Festival. One of the best beer festivals in Colorado expands to two days and relocates to roomier Memorial Park in Manitou Springs. Tickets are $35 at the door - but they only take cash. Brewers from more than 20 states will be on hand, and there will even be daily beer education talks.

Fairs

*The Colorado State Fair is like a festival, but really big. And the state fair accepts entries from both commercial brewers and homebrewers. But the entries are due on Aug. 15, so if you've got something good that's done or about to be done, you may want to think about submitting it.

New Brews

*Trinity Brewing of Colorado Springs on Thursday released Libidinous, an unhopped lager brewed with juniper berries, chai and saffron. It is available at the brewery or at the Manitou Craft Lager Festival.

New Releases

Thursday, 5-7 p.m.: Falling Rock Taphouse in Denver is pouring Russian River Temptation, a blonde ale aged in French oak barrels with brettanomyces.

New Hours

*Great Divide Brewery in downtown Denver has extended its tap room hours until 10 p.m. from Wednesday through Saturday. Now, I'll never get home again.

2009-07-31T15:32:00.000-07:00

This Week in Colorado Beer

AHA Rally

Today, 5 to 8 p.m.: Ska Brewing in Durango hosts the event, which is a perfect chance to get free beer and a tour while you're paying to become an American Homebrewers Association member or to just go and drink for free if you're already a member.

Festivals

Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.: The Keystone Blues and Brews Festival offers 30 breweries for 30 bucks at the River Run Events Plaza.

Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m.: The 2nd Annual Great Boulder Beer Festival celebrates eight Boulder County breweries at the Millennium Harvest House. I wish I knew the price, but I don't.

Anniversary Party

Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.: Avery Anniversary Party, at the brewery in Boulder. This is always a beautiful thing. Twenty bucks gets you in and another $20 gives you access to a mid-afternoon vertical tasting.

New Tappings

Today, 4 to 7 p.m.: Fort Collins Brewery releases its 1900 Amber, but not until after you've partied like it's 1899.

Today, 5 p.m.: Falling Rock Taphouse in Denver rolls out Russian River Publication, a britt-singed creation of five of the country's best ale houses (including Falling Rock) and the maestros at Russian River. Each bar gets only eight kegs.

Thursday, 6 p.m.: Rock Bottom Westminster taps a Bottoms Up Kolsch, which will feel more appropriate in the weather we were having last week as opposed to this week.

2009-07-30T20:33:00.000-07:00

Barack and Beer: An Unnatural Combo?

No matter what you think of President Barack Obama's politics, you have to give him this much: He knows that men should settle their disputes with a couple of beers and a hearty talk.

However, judging by the beers that the men involved in today's White House chat - especially the president - were ingesting, this great American tradition may have been a little more forced than it should have been.

By now, everyone pretty much knows the story of Obama inviting recently arrested (and angry) Harvard Professor Henry Gates and heavily criticized (and angry) Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley to the White House to talk about the recent incident that involved them and the harsh words for Crowley from the president. If you don't, here's a story about it that I wrote on Monday for the Denver Business Journal: http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2009/07/27/daily17.html.

The problem was this: When each men was asked to pick their beer, they came up with some strange choices. Gates went for a Red Stripe (a non-American beer at a great American gathering), Crowley passed over fine local options for a Blue Moon and Obama, appearing to flail and grab at the first name he could think of, chose a Budweiser. Seriously. You're the leader of the free world, you could have any brewer in America ship you a couple of cases and you choose Budweiser? Wow.

Here's the way I think it should have gone:

*Gates the professor from the hoity-toity Cambridge university should have picked something from Cambridge Brewing, which is not just an incredible local gift to the beer world but, like most professors, is very environmentally conscious. The barrel-fermented sour wild ale Cerise Cassee was, in this beer geek's opinion, the best offering at last year's Great American Beer Festival, so it certainly deserved a seat at the White House table.

*Crowley's a little more blue collar, so he could have gone with a Sam Adams product. Since he clearly likes Belgian-style wheat beers, we'll give him an Imperial White, something that should both light up his taste buds and take a little bit of the edge off when the professor and the president start to team up against him.

*Obama, meanwhile, is an Illinois resident, so he ought to bring something from his home state to the party. Goose Island is the finest brewery in the Chicago area, and he'd have quite a variety of styles from which to choose. But since he's shown that his beer tastes are, shall we say, quite conservative, we won't give him something too big. The Honkers Ale is an easily drinkable English-style bitter appropriate as a session beer - just what he needs here.

That's one beer geek's opinion. Anyone got better suggestions?