Beer Run Blog

7 Days, 7 Thoughts on the Fort Collins Area Beer Scene

Family vacations are family vacations first and foremost. But when said family vacation is to the Fort Collins area, well, one really has to dabble in the local beer scene to feel they've been there, right?

I took that trip in late July and early August this year, and I managed to hit eight breweries in seven days in Fort Collins, Loveland and Cheyenne. What follows, then, is a series of thoughts on what is happening in this elevated scene.

1) Purpose Brewing has become one of Colorado's star beer makers
Tucked into a shopping area on the south side of town, former New Belgium brewmaster Peter Bouckaert's now-2-year-old project isn't a natural stop on a brewery-row tour, like his old place is. But the limited range of beers he has on tap at any one time — there were five available on a recent Thursday — are as of high a quality as any in the state, laced with experimentation (and barrel aging) and unable to be defined by style. The Smoeltrekker #13 walked right up to the line of sourness but balanced it with a dark body and somewhat woody fell, making it a complex masterpiece.

2) Equinox Brewing is the overlooked genius in this town
Too often overlooked because of its taproom-focused model, downtown brewery Equinox is, at this point, a can't-miss on a trip to Fort Collins because of its mastery of a wide variety of styles. Nothing was more pleasing on this trip than its Liquid Fuel New England IPA, which brought out the tropical nature of the style with a more subtle smoothness that made you want to drink more and more. But from its classic Space Ghost IPA to its cookie-reminiscent Smorter Porter, everything was accessible and still eye-opening.

3) Intersect Brewing is not a lot of radars — but it should be
We went to this brewery in southwest Fort Collins at a friend's suggestion because of its family-friendliness. (That play area you see my daughter in is in the brewery's taproom.)
But our diverse crowd — see the range of ages and sexes in the picture at the top of this page — found a ton to be pleased with there, from a fruity and tart blackberry gose to a rich milk chocolate stout. And if you need conversation starters, all of the beers are named after songs.

4) Do not forget about the excellent work Grimm Brothers Brewhouse is doing
Twenty minutes south of Fort Collins in Loveland, the traditional German brewery has earned a reputation for its spot-on pilsners, dunkels and alt biers, and it deservedly has the longest-running streak of Great American Beer Festival medals of any Colorado brewery. But its experimentation truly puts it in the top segment of Colorado brewers, from its sweet-but-wonderfully-constructed Hare's Bride imperial hefeweizen to Old Brown Shoe, a bourbon-barrel-aged brown ale that soaks up the whiskey flavor in surprising harmony with the big beer. It may have started all-German, but its range now is wide and impressive.

5) Accomplice Beer Co. shows good beer spreads across the border
Located in the Old Cheyenne Depot just 20 minutes across the Colorado-Wyoming border, Accomplice has some distinct merits. Its historic location is just a place that you want to sit and enjoy a beer, and it offers a pour-by-the-ounce system that lets you try whatever you'd like. While none of the beers jumped out as eye-opening, the range from IPAs to pilsners to a Belgium wit offered a variety of decent options, enough for everyone in your party to find something to enjoy.

6) Crooked Stave's Fort Collins taproom is a nice addition to downtown
The Exchange is a family-friendly enclosure downtown where your kids can run around and play cornhole while you enjoy offerings from restaurants, a winery, a distillery and Crooked Stave. The selection of beers is no less wide-ranging than what you will find at the brewery's showroom in The Source. And being able to slowly sip on an excellent Nightmare on Brett Sour Cherry while you wait in the long ice-cream line at Old Town Churn is a gift in itself.

7) Odell Brewing is best when it spreads its wings to a variety of flavors
No trip to town is complete without a stop at Odell for the chance to see what kinds of experiments and one-offs it's cooking up on its pilot system. Last Saturday, however, was two days after IPA Day, and the brewery took that holiday to heart in a big way, as almost everything it had on tap aside from its regular selections was a hazy, a brut, an imperial or some variety of a hop monster. None were as tasty, however, as a regular Odell IPA, and the lack of options made a visitor pine for the days when everything from a kolsch to a creme brulee stout could be found there boasting of the variety that has made this brewery deserving of the national accolades it receives.

Labels: Accomplice Brewing, Crooked Stave, Equinox Brewing, Fort Collins breweries, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, Intersect Brewing, New Belgium Brewing, Odell Brewing, Purpose Brewing & Cellars

6 Moments that Could Only Have Happened at Big Beers

Most festivals are defined by the beers poured at them, and this year's Big Beers Belgians & Barleywines Festival could talk about nothing but its offerings and still rank with any festival in America. But after several weeks of reflection following this year's event, it's become clear that it's not just the outstanding pours that defined what may be Colorado's best beer event.

Instead, it was those moments that you keep coming back to that simply don't happen at other gatherings of brewers and beer connoisseurs. And it is worth noting them to explain why the 2019 version of the festival - the third since its move from Vail to Breckenridge - both jumped over the high bar it set for itself and sent the message that it is absolutely as required a place to be as the Great American Beer Festival that takes over Denver each fall.

1) Great Divide's Marriage Beer
The best festivals inspire brewers to make a new beer for them, or to break out of their cellar something they had saved for a special crowd. But when I asked Great Divide owner Brian Dunn - yes, he pours the beer at Big Beers - where his Maple Pecan Yeti that he was serving had been hiding, his answer floored me. It was something the brewery made for an employee's wedding reception, and he thought this would be a good chance to serve the rest of it.

So, it's not just one-offs that are poured at Big Beers, but one-offs made for a very limited crowd that the brewers then think are worth serving again at a festival because of the intimacy and knowledge of that crowd. And the Maple Pecan Yeti, by the way, was one of the highlights of the day -  a celebration of blending a sweet flavor into a giant imperial stout that made the beer far more craveable and drinkable than one could have imagined it being.

2) Five minutes with James Howat
If there was a beer better than Maple Pecan Yeti, it was Black Project's Stargate Peach Rye: Nectarine Bourbon, a spontaneously fermented sour ale aged on peaches and nectarines in a fresh whiskey barrel. The beer is both pucker-worthy and succulent in its deep flavors, and one might be left wondering just how something so superior would be made.

But at Big Beers, I wasn't left wondering. In fact, I stood there for five minutes talking with brewery founder James Howat about just how the beer came together, when it would be available at the brewery and how he feels about the growth of beer makers around him in the South Broadway. There was no rush to finish the conversation, and there was no feeling that he wanted to move onto the next beer drinker. When the brewers pour at Big Beers, they interact like they're having conversations with old friends. That may be the best part of the festival.

3) Augie Carton and Nile Zacherle
If you're not from New Jersey, you probably don't know much about Carton Brewing; likewise with your familiarity with Zacherle's Mad Fritz Brewing if you don't live in the Napa Valley. But at Big Beers, two maniacal geniuses who don't sell beer outside their home states are at your beckon call to discuss the leading edge of experimentation in the country.

Carton (far left, above) took time in panel discussions to explain how he makes a beer, Decoy, that approximates the flavor of five-spice roast duck (a fascinating and delicious adventure) and then poured at the general tasting his Gilded Lily Tripel that was made with fresh white truffles. Zacherle (seated next to him, sniffing a beer) wowed the morning kick-off seminar with two pale lagers made with water from different springs that had unique tastes, and he popped out a geranium-thyme kolsch that made you want to forage for your own ingredients to add to traditional beers.

4) The "Lines"
At one point early in the commercial tasting, a friend directed me to Casey Brewing and Blending for its Jammy Sour Ale, a blackberry-added, oak-barrel-aged collaboration with Side Project that had a full and bright body. It was the biggest line I waited in all day - a full 10 people long.

Later, I stood in a nearly similarly sized line for the brilliant grape-infused beer at Liberati Osteria & Oenobeers when I decided that I was thirsty enough to step out and go directly to the front of the non-existent queue for Side Project's tart and intriguing Punchdown Pinot Noir Wild Ale. And so it went at a festival where your choices ran the gamut from brilliant brewers to very good ones, all of whom had something to offer that was great.

5) The Advice

A friend whom I attended the show with informed me that Bell's Barrel-Aged Third Coast Old Ale Barleywine was as perfect a beer as he'd tasted; a sentiment I largely agreed with after I tried it. And it was a co-owner of Grimm Brothers Brewhouse who insisted I try his Feisty Fearless, a Fearless Youth dunkel aged in Feisty Spirits barrels that transformed into a batch of orange-peel-sotted, slightly acidic goodness.

But throughout the day, I would set my beer down at a table to take notes, and whoever happened to be there segued naturally into conversation about what I was drinking, what they were drinking and what some of the hidden gems of the festival were. That's just the feeling in the Big Beers crowd. And through these pieces of advice, I found some of the other best beers of the festival, such as Dry Dock Coconut Belgian Dark, /Founders KBS 2018 and Kane Driftwood, an imperial brown brewed with molasses and maple syrup and aged in brandy barrels.

6) The Community
One of the underrated events of the three-day festival - two days of dinners and gatherings preceding the commercial tasting - is the beer and cigar pairing that is held on Friday night at Beaver Run Resort. You don't have to be a smoker to enjoy it, because those who want to pair their tobacco and alcohol are doing so outside on a patio, while everyone else is inside sampling a jaw-dropping supply of beers dropped off for the event by many of the breweries that are in town, and it turns into sampling and conversation that is like a pre-game event to the big tasting.

This year, the conversation was both serious and mournful at times among the attendees, as Big Beers co-founder Bill Lodge had lost his daughter, Megan, in a car accident just weeks before. And the word spread quickly through the crowd that what we all wanted to do was to help in this terrible moment in the only way we knew how - by contributing to a fundraiser for Eagle Valley High School's speech and debate team, which was a passion of Megan's, in honor of both her and Bill and Laura Lodge.

That's what a beer festival can be at its best - not just a random gathering of drinkers but a community of people who are there for the sharing, for the experimentation and for the human emotions that go beyond enjoying a great beer. And that's why Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines proved again that it's an experience much more than it is just the sum of its amazing tasting offerings.

Labels: Bell's Brewing, Big Beers, Black Project, Carton Brewing, Casey Brewing, Dry Dock Brewing, Founders Brewing, Great Divide, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, Laura Lodge, Mad Fritz Brewing, Side Project Brewing

4 Things I Learned at Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines Festival 2017


Colorado's best themed beer festival found a new home in Breckenridge after 16 years in Vail and, frankly, found a new energy. There was vibrancy throughout beer bars in the town and vibrancy throughout the Beaver Run Resort, where most events were held. And brewers clearly tried to raise their games with the beer they were pouring — and, in many cases, succeeded.

Here, then, are four big thoughts about what took place over the past four days, both in regard to the beer and in regard to the good folks who were ensuring the beers were poured.

1) The new wave of imperial stouts will redefine the style.
It may sound obvious, but you can't drink Russian imperial stouts for three-plus hours without them beginning to taste a lot alike. That is why the growing number of brewers adding unique ingredients to these creations — ingredients that go beyond the coffee and chocolate that brewers like Epic already have pioneered so well — were the ones most often turning heads at Big Beers.

Station 26 Brewing stood at the head of the pack with its German Chocolate Bourbon Barrel Aged Dark Star Imperial Stout, which felt every bit like the desert it was named after and flowed so easily at 13 percent ABV that you didn't know whether to be enthralled or frightened. And very close to that creation in its palate-pleasing level was Weldwerks Brewing's Barrel Aged Mexican Achromatic, which bubbled over with cinnamon and vanilla and made Mexican coffee weep at what it could be with hops and barley added.

2) The barrel can make all the difference.
With more breweries trying more ways to age their beer in barrels, the possibilities are almost limitless at the flavor profiles that can come from the experiments. But not every decision to throw a beer into a barrel is a solid one — a truth that could be seen in the number of barrel-aged saisons from very good brewers that felt listless and undefined. (A major exception was the Old Order 6 bourbon-barrel-aged imperial black saison from Solemn Oath Brewing, whose malt backbone allowed the beer to stand up against the barrel).

But there were brilliant decisions with barrels too. Paradox Beer's Trois Ans Anniversary Ale, aged in Spanish Cedar barrels, gave off a wonderful blend of tart and smoky-wood complexity and made you stop to think about what you were tasting. Similarly, the choice by Grimm Brothers Brewhouse to age its Magic Mirror imperial koltbusser in oak barrels turned an adequate malt monster into a tart and challenging beer that showed off its honey and molasses in new and vibrant ways.

3) More chai beers and imperial IPAs are needed.
Two years ago, tiny Altitude Chophouse had maybe the beer of the festival with a chai-infused dunkelweizen, making one ask why more breweries don't use this palate-enlivening ingredient. This year, New Holland Brewing absolutely startled with its Dragon's Milk Reserve Vanilla Chai, which was a full-throttled expression of how bold flavors can make big beers seem like pleasant tea.

But while chai beers remain maybe unsurprisingly rare, it was a little shocking to see the lack of barrel-aged IPA and double IPA beers on display when the style combines the two most popular craft-brewing trends of the past 10 years. And one sip of Steamworks Brewing's 50/50 Barrel Aged Imperial IPA, with its huge whiskey mouthfeel almost perfectly balanced by its big hops, showed why this is a trend that needs to pick up.


4) One never needs to leave the resort to really enjoy Big Beers now.
A primary advantage in moving to Breckenridge was to plop the festival in the midst of a town that could support it with days of special tappings and beer/food pairings around the main event. And while reports where that the gatherings at places like Aprés Handcrafted Libations were phenomenal, you didn't have to step foot into the negative-11-degree weather to truly enjoy the event.

Late-night activities at Beaver Run featured welcoming collections of brewers and beer lovers alike, particularly the Friday night beer-cigar pairing that let drinkers try to combine smoking and drinking if they wanted - or just wander around and sample some of the best beer in the nation, often while talking to the man or woman who made it (without any pouring lines).

The seminars have ramped up throughout the morning and early-afternoon of the main tasting, providing attendees with more knowledge than you could ever want about the brewing process (more to come on that in a later blog about experimental malts). And the resort bar became a place to go by yourself, knowing you'd run into industry friends.

Laura and Bill Lodge exceeded expectations this year. And the festival keeps getting better.

Labels: Big Beers, Breckenridge, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, Laura Lodge, New Holland Brewing, Paradox Brewing, Solemn Oath Brewery, Station 26 Brewing, Steamworks Brewing, Weldwerks Brewing

5 Tips for Enjoying Vail Big Beers

For the first time in 10 years, I won't be attending the Vail Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival this year. The impending birth of our daughter had to trump plans to indulge in beautiful, high-alcohol beer all weekend — though don't think I didn't have to pause at least a little bit before making the decision to stay home.

For those of you lucky bastards who will be headed up Interstate 70 for the festivities, however, a world of tasting and pairing opportunities awaits you over the next two days. And if I might be so bold as to offer a few suggestions, here are the tips from a veteran on how to get the most out of the experience.

1) Start Saturday at the experimental tasting seminar.

One of the best things about the festival is that it allows you to start your day Saturday by tasting beer at 9:30 a.m. without anyone casting aspersions on your character. These seminars — which have ranged from barrel-aged beers to saisons and which this year focuses on Koelschips — feature the best brewers from Colorado and the country expounding on daring ways to make their beer. And, yes, you get to be trying a sour ale at the same time that most people are pouring milk on their Fruit Loops. But it feels less like an early-morning tailgate and far more more like a fine-dining experience.

2) Ask what they made for the show.
Few Colorado beer festivals inspire brewers to create products specifically for that show. But breweries from Great Divide to Grimm Brothers have been known to bust out barrel-aging experiments just to try them out on the crowd. Hell, Crazy Mountain Brewery debuted at the 2010 festival just to get reaction to its first beers. If something doesn't look familiar at a booth, ask about it and try it; it just may be the best thing you find there.

3) One (pseudo)-secret brewery is a must-stop.
Brewers from Sam Calagione to Adam Avery will be the people actually pouring the beer for you, and that is a wonderful perk to Big Beers. You can ask them about their experiments and try the latest thing in their arsenals, and the national places you love should be on your hit list. (See my wife, Denise, above, loving her Rumpkin in 2015.) But the smaller brewers in attendance are there for a reason, and there are some diamonds among them.

It was about three or four years ago at this festival that Three Barrel Brewing of Del Norte stopped being the best-kept secret in Colorado brewing and just became one of the up-and-coming sour makers in the state. Owner John Bricker typically brings up between five and 10 experiments that may involve chili, chocolate or other ingredients not often found in the genre. And chances are that at least one of them will be among the most talked-about offerings of the event.


4) Stop afterward at the Fireside Bar.
The bar at the Vail Cascade, home resort of the event, is one of the great craft-brewing outposts off of the Front Range. Featuring a beer program launched by festival co-founder Laura Lodge (pictured above), it's a place that has a cellar list, taps from mountain craft breweries and a good range of options. Plus, this is where the brewers themselves hang out when not serving up their creations, so it's a good chance to talk beer with the biggest experts in the industry.

5) Attend a dinner.
Beer dinners abound, both those arranged by the festival and more that are just popping up at locations around Vail. If there ever was a festival meant to pair beer and food, it's one that showcases the highest-ABV creations that are not 12-ounce bar beers so much as they are perfect to sample in smaller portions with, say, wagyu beef sushi. The dinners are incredibly chill events and, as this picture from 2015 demonstrates, even infants can sneak in if you're polite to the organizer. But this is a chance to experience and enjoy beer in a new way.

Labels: Avery Brewing, Beer dinners, Big Beers, Crazy Mountain Brewing Company, Dogfish Head, Great Divide, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, Three Barrel Brewing, Vail Cascade

Five Things I Learned from Vail Big Beers 2014


Sam Calagione set the tone appropriately in declaring at Thursday's dinner that kicked off the 2014 Vail Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines Festival that the event was "one of the top 10 beer festivals ... in the country." The next three days proved that, if anything, the Dogfish Head Brewery founder undersold it.

This was the year the Fearless Tasting Crew went big, splurging for a fantastic eating experience and gobbling up pretty much every seminar possible. And around every corner seemed a beer, a pairing, a bit of knowledge that opened more eyes.

The full spectrum of the lessons - and what they reveal about the current craft beer scene - will be played out here in the coming weeks over numerous columns. But it is worth saluting organizers Laura and Bill Lodge and noting a handful of things that stood out with all the subtlety of a Crooked Stave barrel-aged sour (which was on hand and wonderful).

1) Great Divide can still bring it
In a festival where one struggled to identify even a single disappointing beer (zero pour-outs in 3-1/2 hours of tasting for this guy), nothing stood out quite like Great Divide's Barrel Aged Grand Cru Cuvee. Aged in a single Syrah barrel, this creation screamed out all the joys of the festival - experimental, giant (12% ABV), tart (though not too much so) and stunningly balanced and drinkable.

Sometimes at the best festivals, people run to find the newest, hippest tastes - and those, mind you, are great. But 20 years into its life, this Denver legend still produces eye-opening surprises - enough to outdo even all the new kids on the block.

2) Sour is the new triple IPA
Sours have become more common, more clever and mixed with more ingredients in recent years. But now they appear to be going in the same direction that hop bombs went several years ago -  more extreme. The difference is, these results might speak better for the genre than the envelope-pushing hop races did.

Big Beers presented sours that were pleasantly pucker-worthy (Cambridge Brewing's Cerise Casee Solera-aged American Sour Ale) and brimming with fruit that accented the wild yeast perfectly (Grand Teton Barrel Aged Huckleberry Sour). But if that wasn't enough, you could find an intriguingly good smoked sour (Paradox Skully Barrel No. 7) and a tart beer made with local ingredients (AC Golden Gooseberry Colorambic). Amp it up and push the envelope away; it only seems to be getting better.

3) The art of pumpkin beers is not dead
Less than three months ago, I lamented that every pumpkin beer of 2013 seemed to be over-spiced or under-flavored. Then I found at Big Beers that I was just trying the wrong ones.

Fate Brewing's Barrel-Aged Imperial Smoked Pumpkin Ale had all the complexity that its name implied, but the smoke was light enough to be unobtrusive and the pumpkin was pure baked sweetness. Meanwhile, Wiley Roots Brewing's Apumpalyptic Imperial Ale was filled with non-biting spices and alcoholic warmth, just begging to be enjoyed in greater quantities than it should be.

4) Any Fort Collins tour without a stop in Loveland is wasted
Those who haven't visited Grimm Brothers Brewhouse in the past year are missing a significantly evolved beer maker that has moved beyond its traditional German roots to incorporate new styles. At the Vail Cascade, it broke out a complex Devil's Riddle again and supplemented that with a lightly soured Once Upon A Time American wild ale and a Grandfather Grim foreign export stout that was dark like a cookie.

But Verboten Brewing, also of Loveland, showed up every bit as big, especially with a Bourbon Barrel-Aged Mountain Man that had a vanilla underbelly softening the bourbon kick in a way that made it approachable. And Loveland Aleworks didn't slack a bit with an Imperial Stout that was as dark and rich as its 12.5% ABV denoted but surprisingly easy-bodied and pleasant.

5) For the 2015 festival, go big. You won't regret it.
Even at $108 per person, the Tasting Crew walked away from the Avery/Dogfish Head dinner convinced it was a bargain. The chefs at Atwater on Gore Creek crafted five courses of incredible offerings (beef sushi and Gingersnap-crusted venison, to name two) and not only paired them in a spot-on fashion but did so with beers - especially from Avery - that ranged from hard to impossible to find. (The return of the very limited Thensaurum, aged 18 months to tart perfection in rum barrels, may have been the biggest highlight.)


Beyond that, though, the chance to meander around not just for one day but for the weekend allowed good time to learn about nuances, whether it was at Friday night's winter seasonals session with four brewers or at a beer-cigar pairing where non-presenting breweries (I'm looking at you, Epic Brewing) brought their own stashes to share with crowd. And after a weekend of walking through so many treasures, one could treat Saturday not like a rush around the bigger and more spacious tasting area (pictured a few paragraphs above) but a chance to catch up again with brewers and enjoy the scene calmly.

Labels: AC Golden, Avery Brewing, Big Beers, Cambridge Brewing, Fate Brewing, Grand Teton Brewing, Great Divide, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, Loveland Aleworks, Paradox Brewing, Verboten Brewing, Wiley Roots Brewing

Top 10 Colorado Beers of 2013


Thinking back on the best that Colorado had to offer in 2013, I am struck most by the scrappy and transient natures of the honorees.

Just two of my favorite 10 beers of the year was made by breweries — Ska and Epic — that distribute to more than one state outside of Colorado. That's not to say that the giants of Colorado craft brew that usually dominate this list — Great Divide, Odell, Avery, etc. — did not produce great beers; they just seemed to be outshined by some of the creativity emanating from the state's little guys.

Also, my greatest beef with the beers on this list was that many came and went so quickly, available for limited times and sometimes in extremely limited quantities, that the conversation around them was too limited for them to become part of the common beer vernacular. In those cases, I can only hope their brewers realize the gems they have created and crank them up in greater volume so that more people can experience their joy in 2014.

That said, without further ado ...

10. Cinnamon Almond Ale - Colorado Plus
At a time when brewers are becoming bolder about incorporating uncommon flavors, Adam Draeger took two flavors no one associated with great beer and made them sing in one of the most unique concoctions of the year. Allowing the almond to serve as the smooth landing for the spice of the cinnamon made this intriguing and unforgettable.

9. Watermelon Kolsch - Fate Brewing
This was the beer that proved that summer beers don't have to be boring - a light but crisp kolsch with a hearty dose of watermelon that provides huge refreshment at the same time it ups the complexity of this traditional German style.

8. Penitente Hermano - Three Barrel Brewing
One of the most exciting "exports" of the year was the arrival in Denver liquor stores of this creative brewery from the San Luis Valley. Penitente Hermano, a Belgian sour ale with a coriander kick on the back, paved its entrance after being one of the most gushed-over efforts of the 2013 Vail Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines festival.

7. Sentience - Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project
The way this Denver brewery is turning out fascinating sours, you could almost throw a dart blindly at a board of its offerings and put whatever it lands on onto this list. But the Sentience stood out as the "it" beer of the Avery Strong Ale Festival this year, a tart wild quad whose whiskey-barrel aging accented its sharpness perfectly.

6. Snowed In - Copper Kettle Brewing
We're so far into the Christmas beer trend that you don't think anything can surprise you anymore. Then you have a sip of this imperial oatmeal stout aged six months in bourbon barrels with coffee and chocolate and you're not only blown away by its easy-drinking big-alcohol complexity, you have to tell yourself to hang out more at this east Denver brewery.

 5. 4.0 Grapefruit Pale Ale - Bull & Bush Brewery
The idea of hopping a pale ale or an IPA to resemble a grapefruit was a very popular one this summer. But this Denver brewery took it a step further, adding grapefruit juice to the mix and turning out a low-alcohol summer creation that was one of the unique tastes of the entire year. Can't wait for this to come back in 2014.

4. Two Tone Montanya - Ska Brewing
The most impressive Colorado sour of this year was this Belgian dubbel aged in Montanya rum barrels to take on a tart citrus character combined with a big, sweet body. This is arguably the finest beer made by the 18-year-old brewery.

3. Fan Boy - Elevation Beer
At some point, you really believe that no matter how good a new IPA can be, it won't be inherently different than what it out there already. Then you taste this oak-barrel-aged double IPA, filled with a full mouth of hops but also with oak and vanilla and introducing to this market something acutely original - and phenomenal in its flavor.

2. Devil's Riddle Ale - Grimm Brothers Brewhouse
The most unique beer I tried in 2013 was this strong ale aged nine months in Buffalo Trace barrels with Brettanomyces. It was musty, it was big, it was biting me with a strange tartness that came out of nowhere. It was complex. It was great. And it may just signify a new era for these German beer makers from Loveland.

1. Big Bad Baptist - Epic Brewing
Those outside of the Denver area were able to enjoy this monster of an imperial stout (10.5% ABV), made with cocoa nibs and with a tone of coffee. But when Epic opened its Colorado brewery in May, it was a revelation to the rest of us, a darker-than-night whirlwind that could knock you down with its alcohol but somehow was just smooth enough to allow you to drink more than you should. No beer generated more talk this year, whether in its classic form or when it was mixed with Strange Brewing's Cherry Kriek - a combination that shouldn't have worked but somehow did. Few beers were more satisfying. And that's the mark of a beer of the year.

Labels: Bull and Bush, Colorado Plus Brew Pub, Copper Kettle Brewing, Crooked Stave, Elevation Beer, Epic Brewing, Fate Brewing, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, Ska Brewing, Three Barrel Brewing, Top Beers of Year

All Colorado Beer Festival Ascending

With so many beer festivals in Colorado, a lot of them tend to blend together. And for the first six years of its existence, the All Colorado Beer Festival in Colorado Springs fell into that category of fun but unspectacular.

Something was different about this year's version, though - different enough where the ACBF might have to move into that don't-miss category in 2014. And it was a combination of things that elevated it.

First, the sheer number of breweries set the festival apart. Last year there were 37 beer makers pouring their products there. This year the number rose to 68 - all from Colorado, many small, some just barely open. Kudos to organizer Randy Dipner for that.

Second, one of the drawbacks of this fest in the past, like many massive beer gatherings, was that many of the breweries crammed into the space were offering the same beers you could find on any shelf all year long. That wasn't true this year.

From Gravity Brewing's intriguing Belgian Peppercorn Ale to Epic Brewing's fabulous coffee bomb Big Bad Baptist to Verboten Brewing's Good Day to You - a chocolate porter with sea salt - the Freedom Financial Services Expo Center floor was lined with new and different offerings. Even when a  brewery brought something that missed wildly - such as Fort Collins Brewery's overwhelming Mesquite Chili Lime Ale - it missed by trying, not resting on its laurels.

Third, the VIP area continues to shine and is well worth the extra money. It was there that Grimm Brothers poured the tastiest beer of the festival, if not of the entire year, in its Devil's Riddle Ale, a strong ale aged nine months in Buffalo Trace barrels packed with Brettanomyces to complex effect. And it was there where the likes of New Belgium, Three Barrel and Trinity could happily turn an ordinary festival into a sour festival.

Finally, as a "celebrity judge" for the second year, I had the privilege of helping choose the winners in the IPA/imperial IPA category, and I noticed a huge difference in the quality of entrants just from last year. So when we blindly picked New Belgium's Rampant Imperial IPA for the gold medal and Dry Dock's Hop Abomination IPA for the silver (as shown in the photo at the top), it felt like we were honoring about the best in the state, not just the best there.

The ACBF typically occurs about a month after the Great American Beer Festival. If you haven't been yet, it's worth making a trip to Colorado Springs next year to do so.

Labels: All Colorado Beer Festival, Dry Dock Brewing, Epic Brewing, Fort Collins Brewing, Gravity Brewing, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, Three Barrel Brewing, Trinity Brewing, Verboten Brewing

GABF Wrap: Colorado Shines

Labels: CB Potts, Coors Brewing, Copper Kettle Brewing, Denver Beer Co, Dry Dock Brewing, Funkwerks, Great American Beer Festival, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, New Belgium Brewing, Odell Brewing, Oskar Blues