Monday, November 16, 2020
5 Colorado Beers and Beer Trends that Have Made Fall Tastier
The time between pumpkin-beer season and Christmas-beer season has been anything but boring in Colorado this year. And while one beer in particular has stood out, there are several brews that are worth discussing while they remain available.
1) Verboten Brewing Not a Speck of Light
Just the second imperial stout offering from one of Loveland's most exciting breweries, this is, quite frankly, one of the best new beers of 2020 so far in Colorado. Aged for more than a year in a combination of whiskey barrels from Peach Street Distillers of Palisade and The Axe & The Oak Distillery in Colorado Springs, the three variants of this beauty each weigh in around 13.5% ABV.
Quite frankly, you would never know Not a Speck of Light carries that kind of strength - and that is one of the reasons why this monster is so impressive. Brewer Josh Grenz used enzymes in the mash to calm the taste of alcohol, leaving you to taste the sweet, chocolate-malt body in all its accessibility.
Of the three versions of the beer that Verboten has made, the German Chocolate Cake is the most impressive, with its combination of cocoa husks, heavy chocolate, coconut and pecans providing a sweetness that makes this dangerously smooth, the chocolate proving to be a taste that envelops the alcohol and makes it a surprising non-entity in the flavor profile. But the basic barrel-aged version of this triumph is one of those imperial stouts that stands on its chocolatey and also sweet-whiskey feel and lets you enjoy everything it is and everything it isn't.
2) Oskar Blues Death by Coconut
Oskar Blues has been making this seasonal chocolate- and coconut-infused Irish-style porter for a number of years, but never has it felt as dialed-in as it does this year. An inviting aroma with substantial coconut sweetness segues into a a body that tastes cake-like but is very smooth. The underlying body here is one of the keys - a solid effort that allows the sweet and solid flavoring to take center stage but gives it something to rest on that is classically excellent.
3) 4 Noses Lotus Rising
Released in September as the first beer the Broomfield brewery has made using Lotus hops, this New England IPA is simultaneously rich with citrus and tropical notes and yet very easy to drink. Just a lick of bitterness jumps up as the beer slides across the back of your tongue and gives this a memorable zing. Comes on juicy, leaves with enough bitterness to remind you it's all IPA.
4) Sanitas Dry-Hopped Sour
Sabro hops, as popular as they are, mar most otherwise impressive hop-focused beers by dulling a sharp impact with their coconut-oil overtones. But in this beer, they're put to good use cutting into the sharp tartness and giving the beer a more absorbing cushion that also makes it feel more laid-back in a still-exotic way. Don't kid yourselves, the hops are the backup singer here. But they act as contrasting flavors around the edges, and this all works very well together.
5) Packaging mixing multiple kinds of beers
When you're doing more of your drinking inside your home rather than trying to run the full menu at your local brewery via 14 tasters, you still need a way to get more variety in what you're imbibing. And over the past few months, breweries have stepped up to provide this, both through the packaging they are putting into stores and the way they are letting people bring their beer home from the tasting room.
Oskar Blues provided the perfect retail example with its mixed IPA pack late this summer, allowing you everything from the Pinner session IPA to a nice Double IPA in the Can-O-Bliss series. Other breweries have been offering these mixed packs for a while, but OB seemed the first to get that the same drinker wants variety in somewhat similar offerings, rather than reaching for a stout and a seltzer in the same pack.
Meanwhile, more breweries seem to allow the mix-it-yourself pack from their coolers, particularly by putting together a quartet of 16-ounce cans that allows the buyer to really dig into different flavors or different styles - but upon their choosing. Just in the examples below, I was able to get everything from an Oktoberfest to a Nelson Sauvin-hopped hazy IPA at Resolute Brewing in Centennial and everything from a Belgian red ale to a tropical sour at Barquentine Brewing of Edgewater - and learn a lot about the breweries in the process.
Labels: 4 Noses Brewing, Barquentine Brewing, Oskar Blues, Resolute Brewing, Sanitas Brewing, Verboten Brewing
Wednesday, March 04, 2020
Say what you will about Barquentine Brewing Co., which opened Saturday in Edgewater Public Market, but don't say that head brewer Kyle Knudson doesn't already have his recipes dialed in coming out of the gate. And that's a refreshing thing.
Knudson spent eight years filming movies and commercials in New York and hanging with a very serious homebrew club that has produced eight commercial breweries. When he and his wife decided it was time to move home and go pro with his fermentation skills, he spent several years brewing at Edgewater's first brewery - Joyride Brewing - before seizing the opportunity to open up just about nine blocks away in the food hall that debuted in late 2019.
Barquentine is not an everything-for-everyone type of brewery. Instead, it's Knudson's exploration of yeast and how various yeasts can flavor a beer. And the initial six beers he tapped (pictured with him below) give an entry-level course on how that one crucial element can spawn so many different tastes.
Sometimes the influence is subtle, like in Sloans Lake Yacht Club, a 5.2% ABV table beer that uses Roquefort yeast to add the slightest citrus touch on the back of a dry and drinkable body and make it what Knudson calls a "gateway to Belgian beers."
Sometimes it's heavier, like in the Leapling, a Kveik pale ale with New Zealand hops and wild Norwegian yeast that serves as the requisite "hoppy" beer at Barquentine but where the bitterness is tempered by an herbal overtone that extols all of the ingredients. Hopheads may not see it as their dream beer, but it's an absolutely unique addition to the Denver beer portfolio.
Nowhere does Knudson show off his delicacy with yeast quite as much as in Sea Bear, a classic saison with a deep nose of orange and Belgian candi sugar that is wetter and fuller than the style has come to be defined by American brewers. It too announces its originality and dares you to try to not drink another.
Barquentine, which will allow people to bring in food from the market as well as take their beer with them in plastic cups while they wander among the dozen-and-a-half restaurant stalls, has 15 taps it can offer, though co-founder Ed Knudson - Kyle's father - believes 10 beers is a good goal. The brewery will move quickly to produce a line of dubbels, tripels and quads. It also will start barrel-aging soon and selling beers to go in both 16-ounce four-packs and corked-and-caged 750 ml bottles.
The debut lineup had only one miss - Mined, Bottled and Sold, an 8.6% Belgian golden ale whose high alcohol and prevalent citrus flavor couldn't fully cover up a burnt-plastic taste that was evident on the back of the tongue. But as patrons filled up the space quickly, it wasn't the flaws that were leading the conversation.
Instead, Barquentine should be celebrated both for having a singular vision in a crowded brew scene and for pulling it off.
Nothing in its debut lineup is likely to be the type of beer that make a brewery's reputation go viral and draw in crowds on its own. But the variety and uniqueness of the offerings show that this is a beer maker both with room to grow and with already-realized talent manning a brewery that we'll likely still be talking about (and drinking at) when less thoughtful craft breweries have come and gone from the scene.
Labels: Barquentine Brewing, Belgian-style beers, Joyride Brewing, Kveik, Saisons, West Side breweries, yeast
