Friday, May 08, 2009
An Elegy for an Up-and-Coming BreweryToday is a sad day. Even as I sit at my computer typing this, John Dunfee may be pouring the final beer at Arctic Craft Brewery.
The up-and-coming Colorado Springs brewery, which opened quietly in an industrial area east of downtown about seven years ago, mixed up a wicked Belgian sour ale, operated out of a former garage and leaped over bottling to begin canning its beers last year. But in the end, what felled it was not its wildly independent streak so much as the same disease that has taken down too many businesses lately: Bad financing.
Earlier this week, I spoke to John, who had closed his insulation business at the end of 2007 to give it a full-time go at the brewery, for an article I was writing on the increasing number of Colorado microbreweries canning their beers. As optimistic as always, he told me right away that the canning of his On-On Ale was going great, then added that business wasn't so good.
The details of Arctic's demise are probably better suited for the pages of the Wall Street Journal than a simple beer blog. Besides, once he started telling me about what was happening, I was too shocked to write down the intricate details.
But the end should never overshadow the great run the little brewery on East Platte Place had.
Walking in there, you might not have known what kind of brewing talent was at work. There were about eight stools at the bar, an occasional game of beer pong going on in the back and a few regulars smoking by the plastic curtains near the open garage door. But after just a couple sips of the beer, you realized John had both a special drive and a special creativity.
Most people will tell you his best work was done in his Milk Stout, a dark, almost chewy production that popped your eyes open with its late-hitting creamy sweet punch. It once won a mock Springs beer bracket at The Gazette, felling even the great Bristol beers.
But that spark of life popped up in a number of other original creations as well. There was the Peach Lager, an admittedly shocking combination that was more flavorful and more refreshing than 95 percent of lagers on the market. There was an experimental Oktoberfest he let me try last summer that actually had strains of sour waking up its slumbering formula. And of course there was the Patientia, a stunning Belgian-style sour ale that jolted your taste buds from apple to sweetbread to dill pickle, never letting you stop thinking about the gift in your mouth.
John had plans for Arctic beyond canning the On-On Ale, wanting to introduce the Milk Stout to a greater audience and eventually, he told me, move to a bigger and more prominent location. Rarely did a friend try one of Arctic's beers and come away unimpressed; I always felt it was just a matter of getting more exposure before the brewery took off.
Instead, John's cleaning out the brewery tonight and then starting a job doing grounds maintenance for a local school district. When I asked him if he was planning to start another brewery or at least keep his professional hand in the game, he replied with a note of exasperation: "I think I'll get out of brewing for a while."
It's a shame. Good brewers do come along, but many of them are by the book, keeping to the tried and true styles and not wandering outside that wall. John saw those styles and then decided to have fun with them, adding tastes and ingredients you don't find in a lot of beers - and succeeding wildly.
Thanks for what you've given the Colorado beer community, John. Here's hoping that we'll see you pouring again some day in the future.
Labels: Arctic
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Thoughts on the All Colorado Beer Festival
No beer festival should be expected to fully come of age in its second year. That said, Colorado Springs' All Colorado Beer Festival, which took place Friday and Saturday, made some positive strides and took a few small steps back this year too. Here's some Monday-morning quarterbacking thoughts on the well-run event, which you really should be putting on your schedule if you haven't yet:
*Because of the new setup of booths, I originally had thought there were less breweries there this year than in 2007. But in checking the programs from both years, I found the number actually grew - from 20 to 24. Some of the additions were very welcome. No festival calling itself "All Colorado" should be without Boulder or Lefthand, for example, and both newcomers added credibility to the show. Also, festival organizer Randy Dipner was wise to incorporate a number of places that either started up or ramped up greatly in the past year, namely Rocky Mountain, Trinity and Trinidad; festivals are times to show drinkers what's out there that they may not know about, and having the newbies on hand is great. However, it still concerns me that a show calling itself "All Colorado" can be without Great Divide once again, can lose Avery and doesn't draw in some of the hidden gems in Colorado brewing, such as Pug Ryan's or Bull and Bush. The Fort Collins festival, which is essentially a drunken keg bash, can get many of the aforementioned breweries; a festival like this that caters more to true beer lovers should be able to as well.
*In my lauding of the ACBF last year, I noted that Dipner should push a little harder to get breweries to bring more experimentals to mix with their standard fare. And while some didn't get the message (ahem, New Belgium), others showed off their lesser-seen sides. Left Hand was gracious enough to break out its recently released seasonal Snowbound Ale, a clove- and ginger-heavy dark beer that is one of the more complex holiday brews of recent years. Trinidad rocked the festival with a 10.5 percent Wee Heavy Lassie that had the heavy alcoholic backtaste without the syrupy consistency of many other such big beers. And God bless the Colorado Springs gem Arctic Brewing, whose lineup included a peach lager, a chili lager and the only sour beer on the floor, all of which were tasty enough to inspire much conversation.
*I'll say this again: The festival has the best booklets that I've yet seen to describe to attendees what goes into these beers. A great idea especially for those geeks like me who tend to write down all of the qualities of the beer but find for this show that we don't have to.
*No two people in the Fearless Tasting Crew agreed on the beer of show. But here are a couple that left a lot of heads nodding: the butt-kicking Wee Heavy Lassie; the eye-opening Snowbound Ale, which tasted more complex than past versions; Arctic's Patientia Sour (though it is so sour that it makes others in the genre look mild); Twisted Pine's Big Shot Espresso Stout, which raises the coffee-beer genre beyond aroma and backtaste of the darker liquid and really feels like you're injecting sharpness and strength into your taste buds; and Rocky Mountain's Smoked Hefeweizen, which has a sweet aftertaste to give a unique compliment to its heavily smoked, almost barbecue-esque front taste.
*Finally, there was one last area of agreement from most of the folks to whom I talked: The music has got to be turned down. The small area at Mr. Biggs is wonderful in that you can survey the whole floor, walk easily in between booths and not lose friends even if you try. But a couple of electric guitars reverberate through the area very loudly and make you raise your voice to a point that you don't want to in order to talk to friends. Please, Randy, go acoustic for the entertainment or just let it go au naturale, as most beer festivals do. Then maybe we can even do more talking about the quality of beers in the room.
Thoughts from anyone else who attended?
No beer festival should be expected to fully come of age in its second year. That said, Colorado Springs' All Colorado Beer Festival, which took place Friday and Saturday, made some positive strides and took a few small steps back this year too. Here's some Monday-morning quarterbacking thoughts on the well-run event, which you really should be putting on your schedule if you haven't yet:
*Because of the new setup of booths, I originally had thought there were less breweries there this year than in 2007. But in checking the programs from both years, I found the number actually grew - from 20 to 24. Some of the additions were very welcome. No festival calling itself "All Colorado" should be without Boulder or Lefthand, for example, and both newcomers added credibility to the show. Also, festival organizer Randy Dipner was wise to incorporate a number of places that either started up or ramped up greatly in the past year, namely Rocky Mountain, Trinity and Trinidad; festivals are times to show drinkers what's out there that they may not know about, and having the newbies on hand is great. However, it still concerns me that a show calling itself "All Colorado" can be without Great Divide once again, can lose Avery and doesn't draw in some of the hidden gems in Colorado brewing, such as Pug Ryan's or Bull and Bush. The Fort Collins festival, which is essentially a drunken keg bash, can get many of the aforementioned breweries; a festival like this that caters more to true beer lovers should be able to as well.
*In my lauding of the ACBF last year, I noted that Dipner should push a little harder to get breweries to bring more experimentals to mix with their standard fare. And while some didn't get the message (ahem, New Belgium), others showed off their lesser-seen sides. Left Hand was gracious enough to break out its recently released seasonal Snowbound Ale, a clove- and ginger-heavy dark beer that is one of the more complex holiday brews of recent years. Trinidad rocked the festival with a 10.5 percent Wee Heavy Lassie that had the heavy alcoholic backtaste without the syrupy consistency of many other such big beers. And God bless the Colorado Springs gem Arctic Brewing, whose lineup included a peach lager, a chili lager and the only sour beer on the floor, all of which were tasty enough to inspire much conversation.
*I'll say this again: The festival has the best booklets that I've yet seen to describe to attendees what goes into these beers. A great idea especially for those geeks like me who tend to write down all of the qualities of the beer but find for this show that we don't have to.
*No two people in the Fearless Tasting Crew agreed on the beer of show. But here are a couple that left a lot of heads nodding: the butt-kicking Wee Heavy Lassie; the eye-opening Snowbound Ale, which tasted more complex than past versions; Arctic's Patientia Sour (though it is so sour that it makes others in the genre look mild); Twisted Pine's Big Shot Espresso Stout, which raises the coffee-beer genre beyond aroma and backtaste of the darker liquid and really feels like you're injecting sharpness and strength into your taste buds; and Rocky Mountain's Smoked Hefeweizen, which has a sweet aftertaste to give a unique compliment to its heavily smoked, almost barbecue-esque front taste.
*Finally, there was one last area of agreement from most of the folks to whom I talked: The music has got to be turned down. The small area at Mr. Biggs is wonderful in that you can survey the whole floor, walk easily in between booths and not lose friends even if you try. But a couple of electric guitars reverberate through the area very loudly and make you raise your voice to a point that you don't want to in order to talk to friends. Please, Randy, go acoustic for the entertainment or just let it go au naturale, as most beer festivals do. Then maybe we can even do more talking about the quality of beers in the room.
Thoughts from anyone else who attended?
Labels: All Colorado Beer Festival, Arctic, Left Hand Brewing
Monday, August 18, 2008
Remember the Lagers
My goodness, do these days go fast. Between elections and Olympics, the past week has passed quicker than a Bud Light through a beer bong. Has it really been more than a week since the Manitou Craft Lagerfest? It's a good thing that Jason Yester and Mike Hall once again created a festival to remember.
First, I want to say thanks to all the people who came up to me and said hello. Though I've been writing The Gazette's beer column for five years now, I guess I never realized that people actually read it until last weekend. With so much interest in good beers, it seems like there's hope for humanity after all.
That said, the aforementioned organizers once made me believe in lagers again too. Sure there were a couple of watery swill clones there. But between spices, malt and alcohol, sweet alcohol, there was also so much more. Here's a rundown of my thoughts on the festival. Please feel free to share yours.
1) With roughly 75 beers on tap, I was ready to be seduced by whatever jumped out and demanded to be the Beer of the Show. But in my opinion, that honor should have gone to exactly the beer that has made this festival famous. This year's Warning Sign Eisbock, a combined brew of 14 of the festival participants, packed more strength and hops than one could have imagined in a smooth beer. It seemed only appropriate that the combined efforts of the best lager brewers in Colorado exceeded the output of one. If you want to learn a little about how this wonderful creation is made, check out my column from Aug. 8: http://www.gazette.com/entertainment/festival_39067___article.html/springs_most.html
2) A few others stood out too. Here's some thoughts:
- Schmaltz Brewing's Coney Island Albino Python had an attention-grabbing light ginger taste that permeated a very satisfying lager.
- Rock Bottom's Goat Toppler may not have been the best beer at the show (though that was the award the organizers gave it), but its full and malty taste may make it the best beer Jason Leeman has ever made there.
- No beer defied its style so well as Arctic's Oktoberfest, a pungent, almost citrusy surprise that still retains the amber feel of fall but breathes life into a style that is often less than stand-out. It goes on tap at the Colorado Springs brewery in three weeks.
- Ska's Pilsner Lager may have been the best classic lager there, an incredibly smooth and tasty summer beer that didn't challenge you.
3) There's nothing you can do about the lines that people were quick to complain about; the festival has just gotten that popular, and that's something to celebrate. Most people I bumped into were there because they really knew beer, not because they wanted to stand around in the sun and get drunk. This was a true aficionado's' gathering. But you could move the event from Soda Springs Park back to Manitou Springs Memorial Park, which just had a little more room.
4) Kudos to the first festival I've attended this summer that seemed to compel brewers to stretch outside their normal offerings. A-Basin and Breckenridge are fine gatherings, but I could walk into most any decent liquor store or local brewery and get everything I found there. When Arctic is sampling new creations, Durango is springing a much debated blueberry wheat ale on patrons and you're bringing in hard-to-find beers from San Luis Valley Brewing, Rockyard and Carver, this becomes a festival where people can actually explore.
5) Lastly, I hate to say anything that could be perceived as critical, but there was one brewery whose omission was very notable to a number of attendees: Bristol. It just seemed odd that Colorado Springs' best beer maker - and one that creates tasty lagers - would not be at El Paso County's premier beer event. I know that some of the festival organizers did not leave Bristol under the best of circumstances. But if you can bring 14 different brewers together to set aside any competitive feelings and make a fantastic eisbock, there has to be some room to set aside any differences and bring everyone into the show. For the sake of all of us who admire great brewers, bring Bristol back next year.
Otherwise, don't change a thing. This is one of Colorado's great beer festivals, plain and simple.
My goodness, do these days go fast. Between elections and Olympics, the past week has passed quicker than a Bud Light through a beer bong. Has it really been more than a week since the Manitou Craft Lagerfest? It's a good thing that Jason Yester and Mike Hall once again created a festival to remember.
First, I want to say thanks to all the people who came up to me and said hello. Though I've been writing The Gazette's beer column for five years now, I guess I never realized that people actually read it until last weekend. With so much interest in good beers, it seems like there's hope for humanity after all.
That said, the aforementioned organizers once made me believe in lagers again too. Sure there were a couple of watery swill clones there. But between spices, malt and alcohol, sweet alcohol, there was also so much more. Here's a rundown of my thoughts on the festival. Please feel free to share yours.
1) With roughly 75 beers on tap, I was ready to be seduced by whatever jumped out and demanded to be the Beer of the Show. But in my opinion, that honor should have gone to exactly the beer that has made this festival famous. This year's Warning Sign Eisbock, a combined brew of 14 of the festival participants, packed more strength and hops than one could have imagined in a smooth beer. It seemed only appropriate that the combined efforts of the best lager brewers in Colorado exceeded the output of one. If you want to learn a little about how this wonderful creation is made, check out my column from Aug. 8: http://www.gazette.com/entertainment/festival_39067___article.html/springs_most.html
2) A few others stood out too. Here's some thoughts:
- Schmaltz Brewing's Coney Island Albino Python had an attention-grabbing light ginger taste that permeated a very satisfying lager.
- Rock Bottom's Goat Toppler may not have been the best beer at the show (though that was the award the organizers gave it), but its full and malty taste may make it the best beer Jason Leeman has ever made there.
- No beer defied its style so well as Arctic's Oktoberfest, a pungent, almost citrusy surprise that still retains the amber feel of fall but breathes life into a style that is often less than stand-out. It goes on tap at the Colorado Springs brewery in three weeks.
- Ska's Pilsner Lager may have been the best classic lager there, an incredibly smooth and tasty summer beer that didn't challenge you.
3) There's nothing you can do about the lines that people were quick to complain about; the festival has just gotten that popular, and that's something to celebrate. Most people I bumped into were there because they really knew beer, not because they wanted to stand around in the sun and get drunk. This was a true aficionado's' gathering. But you could move the event from Soda Springs Park back to Manitou Springs Memorial Park, which just had a little more room.
4) Kudos to the first festival I've attended this summer that seemed to compel brewers to stretch outside their normal offerings. A-Basin and Breckenridge are fine gatherings, but I could walk into most any decent liquor store or local brewery and get everything I found there. When Arctic is sampling new creations, Durango is springing a much debated blueberry wheat ale on patrons and you're bringing in hard-to-find beers from San Luis Valley Brewing, Rockyard and Carver, this becomes a festival where people can actually explore.
5) Lastly, I hate to say anything that could be perceived as critical, but there was one brewery whose omission was very notable to a number of attendees: Bristol. It just seemed odd that Colorado Springs' best beer maker - and one that creates tasty lagers - would not be at El Paso County's premier beer event. I know that some of the festival organizers did not leave Bristol under the best of circumstances. But if you can bring 14 different brewers together to set aside any competitive feelings and make a fantastic eisbock, there has to be some room to set aside any differences and bring everyone into the show. For the sake of all of us who admire great brewers, bring Bristol back next year.
Otherwise, don't change a thing. This is one of Colorado's great beer festivals, plain and simple.
Labels: Arctic, Festivals, Jason Yester, lager, Manitou Springs
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Can-demonium
Colorado breweries are going forth and spreading their message . . . . in cans.
As you will be able to read in my column tomorrow at www.gazette.com, Arctic Craft Brewery of Colorado Springs recently begun putting cans of its On-On Ale, a smooth pale, out to stores and restaurants in the Springs, and the cans should be arriving in Denver stores anytime soon.
But it's not just locally that people can begin stocking up on these more portable potables. Oskar Blues Brewery announced today that it will take its canned goodness - in the form of Dale's Pale Ale, Old Chub and Gordon - to California outlets this weekend. The canning trend that has slowly caught on with hikers and other outdoorsmen here at home has a chance to light up the taste buds of beer geeks in other states too.
I was as skeptical as any beer snob when Dale's first showed up on shelves claiming to be just as rich and hoppy as its bottled brethren several years ago. I'm not anymore. The aluminum vessels hold the taste even better than light-penetrating glass, and the cans are the perfect thing to celebrate, say, a hike to the top of a 14er.
Whether America shares the same view is yet to be determined. But here's hoping that the good people of California pick it up, and those breweries willing to try this old/new style get rewarded for it.
Colorado breweries are going forth and spreading their message . . . . in cans.
As you will be able to read in my column tomorrow at www.gazette.com, Arctic Craft Brewery of Colorado Springs recently begun putting cans of its On-On Ale, a smooth pale, out to stores and restaurants in the Springs, and the cans should be arriving in Denver stores anytime soon.
But it's not just locally that people can begin stocking up on these more portable potables. Oskar Blues Brewery announced today that it will take its canned goodness - in the form of Dale's Pale Ale, Old Chub and Gordon - to California outlets this weekend. The canning trend that has slowly caught on with hikers and other outdoorsmen here at home has a chance to light up the taste buds of beer geeks in other states too.
I was as skeptical as any beer snob when Dale's first showed up on shelves claiming to be just as rich and hoppy as its bottled brethren several years ago. I'm not anymore. The aluminum vessels hold the taste even better than light-penetrating glass, and the cans are the perfect thing to celebrate, say, a hike to the top of a 14er.
Whether America shares the same view is yet to be determined. But here's hoping that the good people of California pick it up, and those breweries willing to try this old/new style get rewarded for it.
Labels: Arctic, cans, Oskar Blues
