Beer Run Blog

Is This Colorado's Most Improved Brewery?

While the release of any hazy gives you a window into a brewery's quality — Is it really making the hottest craft style well or does it seem like it is making the beer just to try to be in conversation? — that may never have been more true than with Holidaily Brewing's December release of Big Henry Hazy IPA.

Few gluten-free beer makers have tried to make a New England IPA, and some of those that have ended up producing lighter-bodied beers that didn't approximate the appeal of the style. But Holidaily's offering shows not only why it stands out from the group but why the Golden brewery may be Colorado's most improved brewery over the five years since it opened in February 2016.

What jumps out at you the most about this latest gluten-free release is the fact that you can't tell this is a gluten-free beer. Big Henry includes a great deal of pineapple flavor with a touch of passionfruit as well, and it has a touch of an alcohol burn on its nose. It doesn't have any flavors that would tell you there is no barley in here, or that it isn't classically made in any way.

And this is the story of Holidaily, a brewery launched by industry veteran Karen Hertz (pictured above) because she wanted to drink good beer again while dealing with health conditions that required here to go gluten-free. Substituting millet and buckwheat for barley and utilizing yeast raised in a gluten-free environment, it's spent the past few years blowing away the expectations of drinkers thinking that a lack of certain ingredients automatically means drinking beer with a plastic aftertaste.

The brewery launched with just three beers on tap but grew fairly quickly because it showed it could meet a specialty demand. And, as Hertz often has emphasized, it's sought to expand its reach to drinkers who don't need or seek out gluten-free beers but want Holidaily because of its flavor.

One way it's done that is by offering a greater variety of beers than most gluten-free breweries. Walk into the taproom, and you're likely to find something sour, something barrel-aged and unique offerings like a cherry Belgian ale in addition to standard styles.

But the bigger success has been in creating tastes that stand-out, regardless of the consideration of ingredients in them. Patchy Waters, its pumpkin ale that sells out quickly, manages to capture the many flavors of the season without any of the backtaste bitterness that accompanies spice-forward beers. The Favorite Blond is a smooth porch pounder with just enough hop backbone to give it real personality. The Riva Stout is roasty and sooty without being bitter or burnt.

But Big Henry is arguably its most impressive product yet. Yes, the body is a slight bit lighter than some of the style, but still allows the tropical flavors to shine and to give the impression that this is thick and stewy, even if it's actually a bit easier on your palate. The recipe was inspired by Boombastic Hazy IPA, Holidaily's GABF medal winner in 2019, but was given a bill of more classical (and less expensive) hops such as Cashmere, Mosaic and Simcoe, so that it could can Big Henry at a price substantially less than the $24/4-pack it otherwise would have cost.

Even if you don't find yourself in northwest Golden where you can stop by the taproom, it's getting easier to find Holidaily out and about. It is offered on tap in a number of breweries that don't have their own gluten-free options, and Hertz expands to expand retail distribution outside of Arizona and Colorado this year. And the brewery has become a key part of the Colorado beer community, as demonstrated by its announcement that it will donate 10% of all taproom sales on Jan. 28 to Falling Rock Tap House, to help the restriction-battered beer bar stay open.

Labels: Gluten-free beer, hazy IPAs, Holidaily Brewing

7 Colorado Pumpkin Beers to Drink in the Seven Days Before Halloween Ends    

Pumpkin beers to many have long seemed like the hellish figure in the picture above (the guardian to corn maze at Anderson Farms in Erie) - a horror inflicted on the drinking world by a small number of breweries attempting to please  an only slightly larger number of aficionados. But as I, one of those horrible aficionados, discovered when I want in vain to pick up my now-sold-out annual dosage of Southern Tier Pumking on Saturday at my favorite liquor store, they've become so popular during coronavirus that they're flying off the shelves.

With the knowledge that people are diving headfirst into this long-underappreciated trend this year, here then is a very short list of some of the best experiments and tried-and-true offerings that are new or returning from Colorado breweries this season. It's a roundup that not only gives a window into the efforts that make the style worthwhile but also proves that pumpkin beers themselves are evolving and becoming far more diverse in the ways they are presented.

1) Spice Trade Pumpkin Spice Latte

Pumpkin beers rarely, if ever, have used fresh-roasted coffee beans to such the advantage as this mold-breaking offering from Spice Trade Brewing. Used in combination with lactose, vanilla and ample but not overwhelming pumpkin-pie spices, it creates a beer that is both boldly roasted and supremely smooth, and its accessible sharpness is something rarely found in a genre more often defined by more-than-ample spicing.

2) Weldwerks Pumpkin Pie Berliner

No Colorado pumpkin beer comes as close as this to reproducing what makes Pumking so brilliant - creating the liquid taste not just of pumpkin-pie filling but of the graham-cracker crust and the Cool Whip on top - but then, as Weldwerks does, it gives the style its own unique twist. The tart kick at the end of this gem accents the spices in a unique way and also creates entryway into the style for lovers of the sour-beer ascetic. Wickedly creative, it is worth seeking out.

3) Goat Patch Pumpkin Patch Punch

With its silver medal at this year's Great American Beer Festival, the time for Colorado Springs' best-kept brewing secret to remain secrets should be over. This almost glowingly orange offering is another testimony to its skill - an impressively tasty mélange of true gourd taste with spice that is blended into its sweetness and generates no bitter potpourri aftertaste. You could drink this all day.

4) Holidaily Patchy Waters Pumpkin Ale

It took a gluten-free beer to show exactly how much flavor could be gleaned without any of the bitter aftertaste that too often has marked the genre. Brewer Alan Windhausen adds most of the spices here after the boil, giving them a presence without a lingering burn by extracting the flavor without extracting so many of the spices' astringent qualities. A model of big taste and smoothness.

5) Odyssey Beerwerks Fluffy Pumpkin

No beer made in Colorado brings across the quality of marshmallow so well as this, which seems an odd statement to write on a beer blog but nonetheless remains true. The dominant taste of this dark beer is cinnamon, but its bitterness is squished by an almost gooey softness that makes this truly fascinating. Neither overtly sweet nor overtly spicy, this is unique in a very good way.

6) 4 Noses Pump Action

While the bittering spices in this imperial pumpkin ale feel ratcheted up a bit from years past, it remains one of Colorado's standard bearers in this genre - a hugely flavorful beer that is the equivalent of a pumpkin churro in liquid form, with just enough sweetness hiding on the back end to make its flavor profile feel complete even as it's firing at your taste buds from every angle.

7) Twisted Pine Mr. Brown's

If you love old-school, spice-heavy brown pumpkin ales, this offering from one of Boulder's classic craft-beer makers will scratch that itch. But it also carries a sensible blend of darkness and heady malt base that reminds you that good pumpkin beers are, first and foremost, good beers first, even if they don't shy from featuring the flavors of cinnamon and nutmeg, as this does.

Labels: 4 Noses Brewing, Goat Patch Brewing, Holidaily Brewing, Odyssey Beerwerks, Pumpkin beers, Southern Tier Brewing, Spice Trade Brewing Co., Twisted Pine Brewing, Weldwerks Brewing