Beer Run Blog

Top 10 Colorado Beers of 2021

Maybe it was something that Covid did to the tastebuds, or maybe to the collective thinking of Colorado's brewers. But as the world started to segue back to some sense of normalcy this year, the craft-brewing community provided what seemed a soft landing for the state's beer connoisseurs, offering simple pleasures from well-made pale ales to hazies that concentrated on the hops to the best single-year collection of pilsners in memory.

Oh, for sure, there were bulked-up imperial stouts and the occasional multi-fruit sour that were worthy of adulation. But as 2021 passes into memory, what is clearest about the year is that the beers that are most memorable aren't the ones that challenged you so much as those you enjoyed after the long hikes or when gathering with small groups in backyards and talking about each other as much as you discussed the beers. And in many ways, nothing could have been more needed than the gems of this year's class.

So, once again, here is one beer writer's takes on the best new or newly relevant beers of this year, served with a toast to those folks who just kept working while the world worried - and gave us all one more thing about which we could be unequivocally thankful.

10) The Earl — Woods Boss Brewing/Fermly

Of all the beers lost in recent years to brewery closings, few if any had as unique a place in the beer ecosystem as the dearly departed Caution Brewing's The Earl, an English mild ale made with Earl Grey tea that was smooth and eye-opening and as good a session beer as one could imagine. So, when Denver's Woods Boss announced it was bringing it back in collaboration with Caution founder Danny Wang's beer-testing lab Fermly, true fans sounded at least a mild note of trepidation, wondering if the remake could possibly be in the same class as the original. But the multi-faceted brewery nailed the recipe and added a dash of sweet orange peel that kicked up the flavor in a new way. And a true pioneer was reborn, reimagined and enjoyed again in a new atmosphere.

9) Synthetic Substitution - Casey Brewing & Blending/Weldwerks

Ask yourself what kind of beer two of Colorado's best breweries might make, and the "no shit" answer would be: Something very good. And that answer was right. Synthetic Substitution, an 11.5% ABV imperial stout made with coconut and cacao was both as simple as its ingredients suggested and a masterfully smooth big beer, one that was perfectly aligned for sipping on Casey's Glenwood Springs patio. Casey may be known best for its fruited sours, but its showed once again that when it goes big with a handful of ingredients — and in this case, works with another master — it can transform what might just be a "big beer" in some hands into an explosion of flavors.

8) Curator's Kolsch - Coda Brewing

The year's biggest beer surprise came at the Golden History Museum's Autumn Fest, when the simple act of taking a break to grab a beer turned into an eye-popping introduction into one of the crispest yet smoothest kolsches made in Colorado, courtesy of a Golden brewery that is off the beaten track and too often overlooked. It greets you with a snap on the front of your palate that hints at sweetness but quickly envelops your tongue in almost sparkling traditional hops and malts. This is refreshing and simultaneously full of flavor. And it's great year-round.

7) Maple Pecan Yeti - Great Divide Brewing

The variations of one of Colorado's best imperial stouts have been coming at a ramped-up rate in recent years, some memorable and some that one politely might call "experimental." But this year's Maple Pecan Yeti stood out because it took flavors that both blended effortlessly with the big beer and seemed to give it a bit of a new personality. The addition of Vermont maple syrup and candied pecans — ingredients that can crash a beer if used poorly — were welcoming and comforting and made this 9.5% ABV beer possibly a little dangerously approachable. There was no burn at all here, leaving it almost like an aperitif in its personality. Let's hope this makes it into regular rotation.

6) I Just Ryed in Your Arms Tonight — Cannonball Creek Brewing

Revived after a several-year absence, this beer was the embodiment in many ways of the best that 2021 offered in Colorado: A beer that was subtle in its nature — a 5.7% rye pale ale — but packed so full of flavor in that body that it clings to memory nearly a year after it was first consumed. The rye is incorporated perfectly, sweetening the beer just slightly but really backing off and letting the pale hops work their magic. Both tasty and approachable, it serves as another example of why the Golden brewery has the longest-running streak of Great American Beer Festival medals among all Colorado breweries, a streak that isn't likely to die any time soon.

5) Anniversary 9 — River North Brewery

River North has continued to push boundaries as it has aged, even as it also has pushed out a variety of even more approachable beers. But it celebrated the last birthday of its first decade with one of its best experiments, a whiskey-barrel-aged coconut imperial stout that tasted nothing like its foreboding 12.5% ABV label might suggest and picked up in its flavor between its March release and the six-month point of its cellaring. River North often pushes boozier, usually with good results, but rarely does it pull out this much complexity. Hell, the brewery also made a Birthday Cake-flavored beer that showed how talented it is at drawing out flavors. But this beer truly something special.

4)  Redwood Grand - Bruz Beers/Cuvée des Jacobins

Bruz truly burst out of its shell in 2019 when it opened its second location on East Colfax Avenue, growing out from its well-attended home in unincorporated Adams County. But for those who hadn't noticed its maturity before, it sent a huge shot this year with a multi-part collaboration series with Belgium's Cuvée des Jacobins, capped by its jaw-dropping blend of sour beer and its barrel-aged quadrupel. Tart yet fully packed with a deep body enhanced by the huge beer and barrel, this was an eye-opener at its successful Belgian Brew Festival this summer and a reminder of how much the brewery has grown every year. Belgian history courses through the veins of this beer, but its extra bite is a signal that American artistry can blend impressively with centuries-old tradition.

3) In the Steep DDH with Nelson — Outer Range Brewing

This is not the first time that the Frisco auteur has double-dry-hopped Colorado's best hazy IPA with Nelson hops. But something felt more perfectly assimilated, more natural, more ... simply drinkable and admirable about this year's version than maybe anything the brewery has done before. Bursting with tropical flavors tempered enough by the hopping to pull this back into an IPA form lovable by all fans of the style, then tinged with enough hints of white wine to remind you how complex even the most quaffable hoppy beers can be. To sit in Outer Range's taproom and choose beers off the menu to pick up the subtle variations in them is an art. This, however, is maybe the brewery's most artistic work yet.

2) German-Style Pilsner — Upslope Brewing

This limited-edition release was an absolute triumph of beer-making, showcasing the increasingly impressive Boulder brewery's ability to take a subtle style and excite in ways that even barrel-aged beers can't do by combining Old World crispness with new-world crush-ability. The Loral and Tettnanger hops emerge slowly as the spring-runoff-like smoothness runs over your tongue. But when they do emerge, they do so with a boldness that lets you know they truly are the star of this show, maybe more than expected. This is crisp, surprisingly bitter and quite stealthy with its translucent body. It's the product of a mature brewery that knows it doesn't have to shock to be memorable.

1) Double-Dry-Hopped East Coast Transplant with Idaho 7 — New Image Brewing

In a year in which bold flavor burst forth from pale ales and hazy IPAs alike, what stood out about this version of the Arvada brewery's signature beer, double-dry-hopped with Idaho 7, was how much you wanted to drink it, plain and simple. Taking arguably the best hop right now to juice up a beer with, New Image made this all about the tropical richness of the flavor, letting hops gather 100% of the love and creating something that flowed across your taste buds while exciting them in every step of the journey. It absolutely didn't seem like a double IPA so much as a reachable IPA packed with melon and occasional pineapple bursts, yet neither thick or fruity. Describing this version of East Coast Transplant, in fact, takes a back seat to sitting on the brewery's back patio on a summer night, sharing conversation with friend and occasionally stopping to say "Wow, this is good." This is where beer is now: It is refreshing, it is comforting, it is not subtle but not tearing at your taste buds. And the next time you have a chance to order this beer, you won't hesitate for even a second.

Labels: Bruz Beers, Cannonball Creek Brewing, Casey Brewing, Coda Brewing, Great Divide, New Image Brewing, Outer Range Brewing, River North Brewery, Top Beers of Year, Upslope Brewing, Woods Boss Brewing

The Shocking and Fascinating Beers of This Year    

Anyone who expected a return to normalcy by Colorado brewers in 2021 should be surprised and, frankly, a little pleased by what this year has produced so far.

From Czech breweries making Baltic porters to lagers that sing more than the style seems it should to an international brewery intentionally making a "bad" beer, there's been a lot to remember. And as we head into the final third of the year, with (maybe) more beer festivals offering a chance for even more exposure to creative offerings, these trends offer hope that this long last 17 months is giving way to even more creativity.

That said, here then is a few beers that are worth remembering, for a host of reasons:

Seedstock Baltic Porter

Seedstock is a Czech-style brewery that makes old-world beers, and it does that very well - so well, in fact, that it draws you to drink styles that normally might not interest you. But when it put out a baltic porter this spring that was big and bold and yet sublimely drinkable, it showed a versatility of European styles that the Denver brewery hadn't displayed before. And now, quite frankly, it's become a can't-miss brewery, one where you want to head for any new release just to see exactly what it can do with it.

New Terrain North Star Doubly Hazy

Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise to fans of New Terrain's award-winning Suntrip Belgian Wit, but most people who've walked into a local liquor store and asked for a hop-bomb recommendation have rarely heard an answer that began with the name of the Golden brewery. That's why this edition in its North Star series — a hazy double IPA with Barbe Rouge and Azacca hops — was a mind-blower, deeply tropical and yet bursting with vibrant hops that brought this to life as well as any IPA made this year.

Dead Styles Come Back to Life

Locavore Beer Works of Littleton set time back 10 years with a black IPA that made you wonder why the style was so short-lived. Blending true malt roast with a cutting but not overwhelming Northwest IPA bitterness, it felt like a breath of fresh air in the IPA genre, even it was more of a blast from the past.

Cannonball Creek incorporated an ingredient that's lost favor among many brewers — rye — into a hop-heavy 5.7% ABV ale in such an expertly blended way that Ryed in Your Arms made you ask why more people can't do that. The answer, of course, is that the Golden brewery is one of Colorado's masters at taking subtle styles and jolting them to life, and in this case the rye sweetened the beer only slightly, letting the pale hops work the palate to be softened just briefly by this excellent addition.

"Dull" Styles Produce the Most Interesting Beers of the Year

Yes, brewers themselves have been drinking pilsners and lagers for years, but they've had a hard time convincing the craft-beer drinking public to put down their hazies and their stouts to pay attention to the old-world style. If any beers will do that, however, they are two limited releases from Upslope Brewing that may well be the best beers made this year.

The Boulder brewery's Mexican Style Dark Lager is delicious and lasting from the first sip, offering a deeply roasted malt with no burn to it and an underlying sweet-biscuit taste that is tempered with enough hops to give it a slight bite and a lucid finish. Then, last month Upslope may have outdone itself with a German-style pilsner that combines Old World crispness with New World crushability, ending with a bold bitterness on its backbite that seems to put a truly Colorado stamp on a European style.

New Belgium's "Bad" Beer

This spring, New Belgium released Fat Tire Torched Earth, using smoked malt, non-barley grains like millet and dandelions in place of hop extract to approximate what it believes beer will taste like in the event of continued global warming. While it seemed like a gimmick affordable only to a brewery now owned by the ninth-largest brewing company in the world (and delivered in a package with end-of-the-world gear)— and one that it said was meant to send a message to big businesses — the truth was that it actually wasn't awful for a smoked beer and was more enjoyable than some of its efforts in recent years such as the cloying, hideous Juicy Mandarina IPA it rolled out a few years back.

But as tempting as it might be after that to just write off the brewery, a simple visit to its Denver outpost reminds you how much talent it still has. Of particular note this summer was its Strawberry Guava Sour, a beer that blends two strong fruit flavors in a way that allows both to bring distinguishable characteristics and presents them in a tart but surprisingly pleasing and eye-opening fashion.

Sanitas' New Path

For much of the past eight years, Sanitas Brewing has been a bit of a nondescript brewery — one of a significant number of Boulder beer makers that produces a range of good offerings but nothing that slapped you across the face and defined the brewery for you. This year, however, it may have hit on a new path forward, defined by fresh and drinkable sour beers that you want on a hot summer day.

Raspberry Sour, which came out early this summer, was subtly delicious but unchallenging in a way that made you want to down a six-pack on a camping trip or on a porch, offering hints of tart that didn't burn the palate and could extend the genre to a wider audience. Then, this month it reintroduced Deluge, a more traditionally sour ale that had both a bold underlying palate and a feel of pixie-dust sugar that was fascinating without being overly aggressive — a niche that could be welcomed.

Rediscovering a Forgotten Classic

Lastly, I admit that I'm years late to the bandwagon — if one even exists — for Steve's Snappin' Ale, but I just never thought that a chili ale made by a hot-dog restaurant screamed of being a must-try beer. Then a friend bought one on a lark this summer, and what I discovered was a golden ale, bottled by Bull & Bush Brewery, that provides just enough base to temper the hot, hot red and green chili peppers and allow them to shine in the flavor in a way that proved quite tasty.

Don't assume this is an every-day beer; it isn't. But, even if it's a few years older than most everything else mentioned in this column, it's yet another reminder that some of the most notable beer on the market right now may look like it doesn't belong to a certain brewery or even a certain decade but lights up your taste buds when given a chance.

Labels: Bull and Bush, Cannonball Creek Brewing, Locavore Beer Works, New Belgium Brewing, New Terrain Brewing, Sanitas Brewing, Seedstock Brewing, Steve's Snappin' Dogs, Upslope Brewing

10 Best Colorado Beers of 2020

In a year that seemed so dark, maybe, just maybe, it was appropriate that Colorado beer makers stepped up their game particularly in the area of dark ales. To be sure, there was much more that highlighted the year, from barrel-aged barleywines to vibrant hazies to sour experiments that included Japanese citrus-based sauces. But it sure seemed as if the most textured, daring and successful creations of the year that was 2020 were those those turned to the dark side - and made it as enjoyable as possible.

This annual list of Colorado's best beers - at least those determined by one local beer writer - is somewhat challenged this year, as the beer festivals and gatherings that often provide the best look at what the state's breweries are doing did not happen after mid-March. But I tried to drink as much as I could from as many locally sourced creators as I could, and these are the most unique, complex and quaffable beers I found:

10) 4 Noses Lotus Rising

The hazy IPA is, by now, an established beverage, and longer-running gems from Weldwerks' Juicy Bits to Westfax Brewing's Urban Lumberjack made lockdown a lot easier to bear. But the best new addition to the category was this gem from Broomfield's 4 Noses Brewing, simultaneously thick with tropical notes and leaving just enough bitterness on the backtaste to remind you that being hoppy is still an important part of being a delicious hazy IPA.

9) Elevation Beer Montanya

Here is how you make an imperial porter stand out: Add Horchata spices and age it in rum barrels from the distiller of its namesake. This beer never seemed as boozy as its 10% ABV suggested, and every taste produced a bite from a seemingly different spice. But it landed both hugely and pleasantly, particularly if you were camping at the foot of a nearby fourteener, and it reminded you how valuable mountain-town breweries like this Poncha Springs beer maker are to the Colorado ecosystem.

8) Cannonball Creek The Return of the Mackaroon

Here's the other approach to dark beer: Take a traditional stout, made by a brewery known far more for its lagers and pale ales, and infuse it with coconut and macaroon to give it a sweetness that neither overwhelms nor is subsumed by it dark body. Rolled out in the spring, this beer felt like the perfect accompaniment to a brisk spring hike (and paired well with pizza). And it served as a reminder at just how versatile Colorado's most consecutively awarded Great American Beer Festival medalist can be.

7) Spangalang Brewery Ms. Behavin'

Anyone who believes that barleywine is a relic of an earlier time is challenged to drink this beautiful barrel-aged beer from one of Denver's most overlooked breweries and declare that it is anything but a full-mouthed joy. Its body is a like a lightly caramelized, raisins-soaked-in-booze blanket, covering over any sign of it s 12.5% ABV content and presenting a beer so smoothly presented that it forgoes astringency and passes straight to warmth. A masterful update of a classic style.

6) Strange Times Too

Strange Craft Beer has played with its traditional recipes in host of ways for 10 years, but few if any variants have landed as successfully as this Brettanomyces-laced version of its Cherry Kriek, which popped to life with a tartness that added to its fruit base and created enough of an edge to be daring without being at all difficult to swallow. Not all big-sellers should be messed with; this experiment, however, gave a whole new definition to a much-loved beer.

5) Purpose Brewing Itadakimasu #032

The boldest Colorado beer of 2020 was this Fort Collins provocateur's sour ale aged with a citrus soy sauce, creating a taste wholly unlike anything else at the Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival where it was unleashed in January - which is a statement in itself. Both tart and unusually thick, this caused a minor flinch at first taste, followed by a stunned appreciation of how owner Peter Bouckaert (talking here, left, with Black Project co-owner James Howat) can blend such flavors together. A revelation into the possibilities of creativity.

4)  Verboten German Chocolate Cake Not a Speck of Light

Just the second imperial stout produced by the quickly ascending Loveland brewery, this was a masterful effort with three variants, the German chocolate cake version being the one that packed the most flavor into a 13.6% ABV body that was dangerously easy to drink. Aged for more than a year in a blend of barrels, this took on the characteristics of everything that was in it, particularly Ugandan vanilla beans and Ghana cocoa husks, as well as the barrels that gave it more character.

3) Upslope Wild Christmas Ale

After years of producing some pretty sturdy wild-yeast holiday efforts, this Boulder brewery found a whole new dimension by adding Saigon cinnamon to the delicately tart orange flavor, creating a cacophony of tastes that were both funky and strangely sweet on the aftertaste. In many ways, this is the best original Colorado Christmas ale in the past half-decade, daring drinkers to rethink their definition of a holiday beer while still drawing forth a flavor that was spice-enhanced, even if in a radically different way. Let's hope Upslope does not decide to make this recipe a one-off.

2) Wiley Roots Du Hast Cake Imperial Stout

This gigantically flavored beer is everything that the idea of boundary-pushing pastry stouts purports to be - both unnaturally easy despite it big body and adding to the lexicon of flavors that beer, at its best, can bring forward in our taste buds. Here was coconut and chocolate and dessert sweetness layered upon the most solid traditionally dark-beer base that one could imagine. This Greeley auteur has been pushing boundaries for years - creating, for example, a cinnamon sour - but this is arguably its finest experimentation yet, a beer for beer lovers and sweets lovers and anyone who respects liquid adventure.

1) Casey Brewing & Blending No Title

It felt like a stroke of genius to blend three adjuncts that could make this beer un-drinkably sweet - Madagascar vanilla, coconut and almond - with a heavily roasted and slightly bitter chocolate body that turns this imperial stout from Glenwood Springs into a beer that imbues a bolder and seemingly easier flavor with every sip, despite its 10% ABV body. In a year in which tradition flew out the window at the same speed as our expectations of normalcy, this searing rebuke of Rheinheitsgebot laws was like a break from both the past and the present, daring drinkers to imagine a future in which beer styles are not defined so much as cemented by experimentation. From the first pour to the last swig, it was packed with intensely pleasing flavors without any alcohol burn. It was the beer that signaled both an escape from the surrounding landscape of 2020 and from any preconceptions about how much you could add to beer and still, importantly, make it taste like an excellent beer.

Labels: 4 Noses Brewing, Cannonball Creek Brewing, Casey Brewing, Elevation Beer, Purpose Brewing & Cellars, Strange Craft Beer, Top Beers of Year, Upslope Brewing, Verboten Brewing, Wiley Roots Brewing

The 12 Beers of Christmas 2020

Lockdown has its advantages and disadvantages when it comes to beer exploration. On the down side is the lack of seasonal beer festivals (a.k.a. Denver Beer Festivus) that allowed one to explore many Christmas creations in one fell swoop. On the plus side, however, is the fact that little this year is getting in the way of drinking multiple beers every night in the name of, um, journalism.

So, after a month of diving into as many seasonal offerings as could be scrounged, here is one drinker's guide to 12 Beers of Christmas this year, both from Colorado and from afar, that can help you get through the rest of this year in merry shape. Good beers to all, and to all a good night!

12) Shiner Holiday Cheer

This is the "wait, do I like this?" beer of the season - a dunkelweizen swimming in the flavor of Texas peaches that looks more like a dark champagne than a holiday ale. The fruit is so dominant here, and the beer is acutely sweet. But you won't forget it. And you'll realize there's some real talent behind this.

11) Briar Common Amnesia

Released just on Dec. 19, this is a bold concept - a 13% ABV wood-aged imperial stout brewed with tart cherries - that right now tastes a bit premature, with the thick body taking on more of a port wine characteristic than the feel of a stout. But pick up two and cellar one for six months, as this just feels like a budding masterpiece that can grow very well into its own complexity.

10) Avery Old Jubilation

An 8.3% ABV English-style old ale with a boozy enough feel to be mistaken for a light barleywine, this is truly a winter warmer. This is not an easy sipper, but it is multi-faceted and its blend of four malts makes this one of Avery's least hop-forward classic offerings.

9) Sierra Nevada Celebration

The California craft-beer pioneer long has swerved from the norm by dropping its fresh-hopped IPA as its Christmastime entry. And its Northwest hop profile and amber-brown body make this feel very old school. Still, that doesn't change the fact that it is simple and well-made.

8) Odell Isolation Ale

Much like Celebration, this straddles the "almost too familiar" line but then reminds you why Odell Brewing hasn't messed with the recipe. A malty ale in which neither the malts nor the hops are overbearing, it is plan and simple a perfectly enjoyable easy drinker. And that deserves honoring.

7) Strange Craft Beer Gingerbread Man

The American-style brown ale body almost felt a little lighter this year than in years past. But the spicing here is spot on: Ginger mixed with stabilizing malts in a way that truly approximates a cookie in not-overbearing beer form. This is the beer you bring to the Christmas party (whenever those resume) and have everyone smile with appreciation.

6) N'ice Chouffe

A big body that lays out this 10% ABV Belgian dark ale brewed with spices is even more impressive for its lack of alcohol burn. With its thick head, impenetrably dark body and lingering aftertaste, this annual treat from Belgium's Achouffe Brewery makes a bold statement. Be sure to share it with friends.

5) Westfax Cranberry and Sage Smoothie Sour

OK, technically the holiday this beer brings out is Thanksgiving. But the truth is, it's a phenomenal beer to sample with any elaborate dinner. The ruby red body shimmers like straight-out-of-the-can cranberry sauce, the hugely spiced nose calls to mind turkey stuffing and the tartness tones it down in a way that actually works miraculously well together. It may not be the beer you drink by the six-pack, but it's an impressive experiment from this Lakewood brewery that is worth seeking out and trying.

4) New Belgium Accumulation

The surprisingly long-lasting beer of this season is a light-bodied IPA with a late-breaking hop bite that presents such a cold crispness that it almost seems begging to be drunk in cooler climates. A slight hint of peppercorn adds to the unusual bitterness and makes it noteworthy.

3) Little Machine That's My Yam!

The full-bodied nature of this sweet potato stout lets you know that it's a serious beer, not a gimmick. But it's the cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and vanilla beans used in the brewing that combine to give this a taste like an oddly cooling chai stout and make you think more and more about what's in here, even as you simply enjoy this.

2) Great Divide Hibernation Ale

Even in its 25th year of production, this English-style old ale feels surprisingly fresh and relevant. Its body touches the edges of being both woody and smoky but doesn't settle into either of those characteristics. It's all malt, but with a sweet and slightly boozy aspect that makes this incredibly approachable. It doesn't rely on any of the typical Christmas-beer trappings but feels like a slope-side cabin fire in liquid form. It's brewed to a style but remains indefinable. It's just great.

1) Upslope Wild Christmas Ale

These Boulder auteurs have produced impressive versions of their typically tart Christmas ales for years now, but nothing has come close to the 2020 version. Aged in oak barrels with orange juice and orange peel with a Saigon cinnamon addition, this goes way beyond being a "sour" beer and kicks up the body with the cinnamon in such a smooth way that it seems it's what a generation of brewers have been looking to do with spice. The exotic flavor seems almost soothing in comparison to the bitterness, providing a hint of donut-esque sweetness that is a defining last taste to an already impressive complexity. It is a really, really unique effort.

Labels: Briar Common Brewery + Eatery, Great Divide, Little Machine Beer, New Belgium Brewing, Odell Brewing, Sierra Nevada Brewing, Strange Craft Beer, Upslope Brewing, Westfax Brewing

Collaboration Fest: Where the Stories Behind the Beers Matter

Speaking about collaboration beers to Jordan Fink, co-owner and head brewer of Denver's Woods Boss Brewing, is a little like talking about throwing the greatest party you can imagine. It's not an act of obligation, of somehow working with your cohorts to find a shared vision, to him so much as it is an inspired task, one that can leave you giddy with the possibilities of what you can create.

"I can't speak for anyone else. But for me, I have so many friends in the industry. We get together and drink together and talk about what we'd like to do together," Fink shared Thursday night at an industry gathering to welcome Thirsty Monk brewery to town. "It's an official opportunity for us to mind-meld and do things that we'd never do alone ... I love being with other brewers."

If Fink gets you excited about the idea of what can come from brewery collaborations, you're not alone. On Saturday afternoon, 200 breweries will unveil more than 100 beers that are the products of their unions at the fifth annual Collaboration Fest at the Hyatt Regency Denver. The gathering, put on by Two Parts and the Colorado Brewers Guild, is one of the best in the state at showing off the daring and creativity that sometimes only comes when two or more friends masquerading as pseudo-competitors poke each other enough, saying, "Is that all you've got?"

The beers that will be on display are worth mentioning and will be dissected in a column later this week. But the spirit of the festival is more than the liquid that is poured into your taster glass. It's the "why" behind the beers that are going into that glass.

So, after streaming through countless emails and sharing a few beers recently with some of the participants in the event, here are five of the best stories of how collaborations came together.

1) Escaping from a Desert Island
Denverites Baere and Mockery Brewing originally decided to brew together because they opened just a few months apart, but their experiment has turned into a four-year odyssey of beers that tell the story of someone being stranded on a desert island and then working to escape. Following efforts like a smoked pineapple saison, this year's edition, Intercontinental When I Eat French Toast, is a huge pastry stout imagining the story's hero fleeing from the island on rum barrels and floating all the way to France, co-owner Kevin Greer shared.

2) Beer-Crowd-Sourcing 
For its collaboration with organizer Two Parts, Little Machine Beer wanted to let ticket holders to the festival have a say. So, after deciding the style would be a saison, it's been having attendees vote on most of the rest of the ingredients for months, and the result (shown in production above) will be the aptly named People's Beer.

3) Getting the Band Back Together 
Fink began his brewing journey at Tommyknocker Brewery, and to celebrate his heritage, he invited as many former fellow beer makers from the Idaho Springs icon back to craft a collaboration. The resulting baltic porter, 10K Alumni, involved eight breweries and was the 10,000th batch made on Tommyknocker's system.

4) A Cross-Border Experiment
Upslope Brewing of Boulder and Santa Fe Brewing (shown at right) wanted to craft a beverage that showed off the
best of each of their states. Thigh Five, a "southwest common" includes huitlacoche, a plant fungus that grows on the ears of corn and has a slightly smoky flavor. Bet you didn't see that coming.

5) Let the Music Play
Any shared set of interests, from a common neighborhood to a common distributor, can bring about a reason to craft a collaboration beer. But when you are the two breweries in Colorado most closely associated with love of music — the former-punk-rock-promoters-turned-impromptu-concert-hosts at Ratio Beerworks and the guys from Ska Brewing whose name reflects the tunes blaring over their speakers when they began to brew — the Magnetic North Norwegian white IPA can only be a melodious product (as shown in the photo at top).

Labels: Baere Brewing, collaboration beers, Colorado Brewers Guild, Little Machine Beer, Mockery Brewing, Ratio Beerworks, Santa Fe Brewing, Ska Brewing, Two Parts, Upslope Brewing, Woods Boss Brewing

It's the Same Great Pumpkins, Charlie Brown

This set out to be a column about the newest and boldest pumpkin beers on the market, the ones that 12 friends haven't already recommended to you for several years in a row.

The problem is, however, that those particular beers that pair well with black cats and slasher movies have earned their reputations for a reason - they're the ones that are made well, year after year, even as the quality of other beers of this style can vary pretty widely. And at a time when fewer new breweries seem to be attempting to make potables out of hoards of gourds, the chasm between great pumpkin beers and others seems to be widening, leaving the classics on an island of their own.

Is that a sign that the style is losing popularity? Not necessarily, as pumpkin beers always have been polarizing and some brewers have never liked trying to assemble them at all. Not just that, but while some breweries are avoiding the genre, others (see Southern Tier Brewing) are making multiple versions using the same seasonal ingredient, almost single-handedly pumping up the style.

Or does it mean that we've run out of original ideas for how to mix together pumpkins, spices and malts to create something new and interesting? It doesn't have to, although some of the most creative beers at the recent Great American Beer Festival were meant to be year-round pleasers, not those narrowed to an annual release.

 But the best of the style simply remain the best of the style. And it is to those beers that tribute should be paid.

Southern Tier's Pumking Imperial Ale remains the most creative and compelling pumpkin creation out there, a virtual pumpkin pie in a glass. You're struck immediately by the scent of pie crust with just a hint of mixed spices, and the creamy nature of the beer gives a distinct impression of pie filling. Plus, the alcohol is extremely subdued for an 8.6% ABV beer.

Nearly as compelling - but, sadly, not available in Colorado - is Schlafly Pumpkin Ale out of St. Louis. There is a full malty body with both sweet and subtly spice-laced undertones here, and it's a complex adventure for one beer. Pressure needs to be exerted to get it here more than just during GABF.

In Colorado, you can't do better than 4 Noses Brewing's Pump Action, an also not-so-alcohol-apparent imperial pumpkin ale that comes on with a full mouth of spice but less of residual hot back taste than many others of the ilk. It uses its amber body particularly well as a cushion to smooth out the tastes of nutmeg and cinnamon, leaving them pleasing without being acerbic.

Neck and neck with it in Colorado is Upslope Pumpkin Ale, which, like Pump Action, has taken home GABF medals. This cranks up the six spices in the beer a little bit and tones down the sweetness of the pumpkin but settles with a bready, heavy body that zings you without overpowering.

One of the most improved pumpkin beers in the state is Denver Beer Co's Hey! Pumpkin, a smooth and almost creamy offering that goes lighter on the spices and heavier on the pie-like baking sugar. There's barely any bitterness on the back end, leaving it more approachable while still full of flavor.

And maybe the one surprise of the season was Uinta Brewing's Funk'n Patch Brett Pumpkin Ale, a beer that adds enough to perk up the lively, funky characteristics of the beer while pushing it just slightly into the category of sour. The Utah brewery's beers tend to vary wildly in terms of hitting the mark, but this one delivers in a differentiated, put-the-fun-back-in-pumpkin-ales way.

There's a chance that none of that is news to you. But it's worth reiterating all the same that there are breweries, even if a select number of them, that are doing pumpkin beers well and giving you incentive to reach out and try some before the calendar turns to November.

Labels: 4 Noses Brewing, Denver Beer Co, Fall seasonals, Great American Beer Festival, Pumpkin beers, Schlafly Beer, Southern Tier Brewing, Uinta Brewing, Upslope Brewing