Friday, January 19, 2018

 
What does Oskar Blues' new location bring to Denver?

When Oskar Blues announced plans to open a beer bar/restaurant/music venue in downtown Denver, it was met by resistance by some in the craft beer community, most notably folks at Falling Rock Tap House, who said it would compete against entities that had nurtured the brewery's development. Leaders of the Longmont brewery replied that they were growing, not cannibalizing patrons.

That venue, Oskar Blues Grill & Brew, officially debuted last weekend after a month-long soft opening. And as such, it's worth looking at what the facility is, as well as what it isn't.

Those who have come to know Oskar Blues only since its ascension into the 10 largest craft breweries in America may not realize it began humbly as a Lyons Cajun-style restaurant that brought in musical acts from the get-go but took two years to get the idea to make its own beer. Anyone who's visited that original location, still tucked into an outdoor shopping center, will recognize the resemblance right away in this new venue, which in many senses is food and music first and beer as a complement to those purposes.

That isn't to say that the beer is an afterthought by any stretch. Last Saturday there were 48 beers on tap - roughly half from the Oskar Blues family that includes Cigar City and Perrin Brewing, and the other half from craft or European-invested breweries, including smaller local purveyors like Odyssey, Rails End and Odd 13. The only mega-brew on the menu was the original Coors.


So, when it comes to the beer offerings, it would be hard to say that OB Grill & Brew is cutting off the oxygen from other craft-beer purveyors. Its menu, while extensive, isn't as varied as what you'll find at Falling Rock or Freschcraft or even Lucky Pie. This is clearly the place to go in downtown if you want to find Oskar Blues family rarer or seasonal offerings, from the sensational OB Death By Coconut to Perrin's 15 percent ABV No Rules, a porter rife with cinnamon, vanilla and booziness. But no other bar was striving to be the go-to Oskar Blues destination in Denver - other than its already existing RiNo Chuburger location. And having some 25 other offerings on tap hardly makes it unique in the downtown beer scene anymore.

And when it comes to food, OB Grill & Brew also is treading a different path than other beer-focused bars in the area. Euclid Hall has poutine and upscale sausages, Freshcraft has a notch-above-normal wide-ranging menu and Lucky Pie has its pizza and cheese curds. But people who want to get the likes of crab cake, crawfish etouffee or Carolina spicy-mustard ribs aren't going to be considering existing beer bars. The food is quite impressive at Oskar Blues, and it will stand on its own, but it gives beer-focused bar hoppers a slightly more ethnic and full-plated option, if that's what they're looking for.

And a music venue that offers seating for 300
plus 48 taps - well, that just isn't happening in Denver right now. Breweries themselves, particularly Ratio Beerworks and Station 26 Brewing, have become great venues for seeing certain types of bands while sipping beer. But the major concert venues as a whole aren't beer-geek magnets for their selections, and Oskar Blues has a chance to be disruptive and new in that sense.

So, no, existing beer bars shouldn't be worried about what Oskar Blues brings to the table. The high-end Great American Beer Festival tappings are not going to happen there. And the weekend beer-bar-hopping crowds are just going to have one more option, though not one that's going to such the oxygen out of everyone else. I'll still be frequenting the other spots I mentioned, some far more than I'll be hitting OB Grill & Brew.

What the new place truly offers is extensive beer list for the crowds that are prioritizing food or music above their beer and now have a more legitimate option in which they don't have to choose between hearty, high-quality food and hearty, high-quality beers. And for some people just looking for a good rack or ribs or a good concert, it may well introduce them to the idea of pairing said activity with a locally made IPA rather than watered-down swill that's trying to pass itself off as American beer.

So, welcome the new Oskar Blues venue, Denver beer community. Maybe you won't be hanging out there all the time. But it lessens the chances that, in less beer-centric crowds, you'll be forced to hang out somewhere that can offer good chow or tunes but also offers a "craft" beer menu made up entirely of breweries scavenged by Anheuser-Busch.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,


Saturday, January 28, 2017

 
Still Craft After All These Cans?


Last week, Oskar Blues opened a beer bar/restaurant/donut place in Denver. The expansion shouldn't come as a surprise, since the one-time Lyons brewpub has grown already into Longmont (four times), North Carolina, Texas - and soon into Colorado Springs.

But with the multi-state empire, not to mention the two other breweries Oskar Blues has purchased with capital from venture firm that is a part owner of the brewery, one can't help but look at the company that pioneered craft beer in cans and ask: Is Oskar Blues still craft, or has it gone corporate?

The new CHUBurger location at 3490 Larimer Street in the RiNo neighborhood actually presents some good points in pondering this question.

It's the kind of place simple craft breweries don't put up. The burger-heavy restaurant - the same concept the brewery operates in Longmont and at Coors Field - is connected by a walkway and a courtyard to its Hotbox Roasters shop that serves coffee, beer and donuts. When asked why the beer maker started making donuts, Oskar Blues Fooderies executive Jason Rogers, who worked as a baker in college, said it just sounded like something that went well with coffee. That makes sense.

The restaurant opened about 18 blocks west of an 11,000-square-foot restaurant and music venue that the brewery will open in the renovated Market Center development downtown later this year. Two major investments in the same general city area isn't Starbucks-level saturation, but it's not exactly boot-strapping it either.

Then there are the questions that swirl around Fireman Capital Partners, the investment firm that purchased a major share of Oskar Blues in 2015 and then provided the capital for it to buy Perrin Brewing of Michigan and Cigar City Brewing of Florida, the latter of which had been scoped out also by by some major non-craft brewing interests. But before Fireman bought into Oskar Blues, it bought Utah Brewers Cooperative, restructured it and laid off a couple of long-time brewery operators, making some in the industry question if it was just AB-InBev in a craft-brewing disguise.

Then again, I spoke last year with Jarred Sper, co-founder of Perrin Brewing, when the company entered the Colorado market last year about the influence of Oskar Blues. He told me - not surprisingly - that its role with his brewery was the furthest thing he could imagine from an Anheuser-Busch-style takeover. But he laid out some pretty good arguments for why he felt that way.

Oskar Blues and its charismatic founder Dale Katechis changed zero about Perrin's small-brewing culture when it purchased the brewery. Instead, it used its resources to help Perrin scale up and begin distribution outside of Michigan, as Perrin had wanted. It offered its expertise and influence to get into sales channels but didn't change the recipe for beers like its tasty Grapefruit IPA.

"When people talk shit about Fireman Capital, you know what? It's giving us opportunity to do what we were going to do anyway," Sper said. "I really believe Dale has a vision of what he wants to do ... The culture still feels like 'Middle finger up, what the f--k do we want to do?"

And while CHUBurger may be starting to grow like a chain, there are some things that don't resemble any other chain out there.

There are 10 Oskar Blues beers on tap, as you would expect. But there are 20 other taps too - including those from the likes of Call to Arms, Hogshead, Ratio and Wibby, small and local breweries that benefit greatly from the inclusion on a beer list like that.


Rogers said Oskar Blues reached out to beer makers like them because they were in the position it was a decade or so ago - making great beer and looking for their opportunity to get noticed. The restaurant will do burger specials with their beers because they know it will bring in locals who are growing a dedicated following to them.

And while Oskar Blues restaurants may be multiplying like rabbits, it's not an indication of selling out so much as it is a sign of Dale's constantly burning entrepreneurial fire, looking to see what new project or new market he can grow into next, Rogers said. (These are, after all, the folks who became the first craft brewery last year to expand into all 50 states.) The fooderies side of the business has almost 300 employees now, which means more people on a payroll and more opportunities to generate money for charity like its Can'd Aid Foundation that's done things like send pallets of canned water to Flint, Michigan when it was in the depth of its water crisis.

"It hasn't lost that craft spirit. It hasn't," Rogers said emphatically when I asked whether the company had gone corporate. "Obviously, there are efficiencies we have to put on as we grow. But I think we really navigated that and stayed real to who we are."

The venture-fund ownership remains a worry even to those in the industry who are fans of Oskar Blues. But as of now, Fireman Capital has done nothing to change the feel of the brewery and its bold beers - or that of Perrin and Cigar City - and it should be given the benefit of the doubt until it makes a move that runs counter to that.

As far as the growing number of restaurants and breweries and music halls, what they show is that Oskar Blues is no longer the scrappy little craft brewery that it was when people thought it was nuts for putting Dale's Pale Ale in a vessel that was as corporate as the can. And, to be sure, the brewery needs to be cautious as it moves into more and more neighborhoods not only that it doesn't step on the toes of local breweries but that it doesn't step on the toes of the local restaurants and beer bars that have been promoting those breweries since before it came to town.


But a close look at what it's doing at CHUBurger and other locations, I feel, shows you that is hasn't sold out. It's taking full advantage of its increasing resources, maybe in a way that no craft brewery in America other than Stone Brewing has done before. But it's also churning out new beers and doing what it can to give taps at its places to breweries that can reach a wider audience through their association with Oskar Blues.

So, call Oskar Blues the behemoth of the craft-beer industry if you will. But don't call it corporate. There's still too much of the "FIDY" attitude to denigrate it that way. And we can only hope that further growth and success does not change that.  


Labels: , , , , , ,


Tuesday, October 04, 2016

 
The New Beer Bar You Need to Try During GABF


Visitors to Denver this week will stream into the growing number of beer bars that are awash with special events, each adding something unique to the local scene. But those who want to hoist a pint in a location with a special tie to the recent history of craft beer in Colorado must be sure to stop in at Walter's 303 Pizzeria and Publik House - and to honor the couple that's taken yet another chance in launching it.

Though the pizzeria at 19th and Pearl in the Uptown neighborhood has been going since 2010, the restaurant took on a whole new feel in mid-August when John and Stacy Turk  collaborated with owner Mike Kienast to put in a 24-tap bar in the adjacent space, a former ceramics shop. Since then, the now-connected bar and restaurant has been rotating beers nearly as quickly as one is tapped, offering a Colorado-heavy selection that mixes in some national and international favorites from John's career in local brews.

Turk is best known for being a co-founder of the now-retired Colorado Craft Beer Show, the first beer-focused radio program in the state. He continues to work as a sales rep for Epic Brewing, but opening a space where people can enjoy and discuss great beer has always been a dream, he said.

Selections for the taps at the Publik House are evenly divided between John, his wife Stacy and their general manager, but they collectively are meant to represent as many styles as possible. Far from clogging the lines with Epic beer - there are all of two offerings from the brewery on currently - the Turks try to reach out especially to up-and-coming self-distributed beer makers to give patrons a better glimpse at the statewide scene.

"I've been to hundreds of taprooms across the country, so what I've tried to do is pick little things that I love from them," John said. "I do believe I can make this a destination taproom."

That means going beyond the beer selection and filling the bar with beer books and old copies of Zymurgy and Beer Advocate to get people thinking about and delving deeper into the styles that they are trying. Though the Uptown neighborhood is blowing up with different restaurants and bars, there is nothing with this intense a craft-beer focus in the area anymore.

And the tap list the Publik House is featuring before the Great American Beer Festival shows off that approach. Nationally sought breweries such as Russian River, Wicked Weed and 21st Amendment are pouring. So are the Colorado beers visitors might expect, from the likes of Odell and Weldwerks. But those visitors also have a chance to discover a few of the secret-gem libations we Centennial State beer geeks are swooning about, from Comrade's Superpower IPA to TRVE's intriguing Scorn pale wheat ale to the latest surprise from Ratio, which currently happens to be its India black lager.

Yes, there are other tap houses in town with longer draft lists and rarer servings this week. But John Turk has always tried to promote beers in new ways in this state. And to sit inside the casual trappings of the Publik House or at one of its community tables is to salute someone who's trying not just to sling good beer at you but to educate you about it.

"It's the same idea I had when I did the craft beer show - I want to turn people onto craft beer," Turk said. "For me it's not about making a profit. It's about sharing beers with good people."

Labels: , , , , , , , ,


Friday, April 08, 2016

 
How do beer bar chains blend with the Denver scene?


It was both somewhat surprising and slightly predictable to learn in February that World of Beer had shuttered its downtown Denver location after just 18 months.

There was surprise because the location offered more than 50 beers on tap, including an array of impressive local and national offerings and had the on-the-surface credibility of some of the better beer bars in the crowded LoDo scene. Its Sunday BEERunch (pictured below) had a tasty menu extending from breakfast classics to tasty chipotle porter wings.

But World of Beer, which still operates locations in Cherry Creek and Lakewood, also carried in its description a series of words that can spell death to craft-beer enthusiasts — "out-of-state chain." And while I visited the location occasionally until its demise, I also noticed that the crowds never appeared there the way they did at places like Freshcraft or Lucky Pie or Falling Rock Tap House.


It's worth noting that chains were some of America's original craft-beer bars, including the Colorado-based Old Chicago chain that opened its doors in 1976, the same year that the first beers rolled off the lines at New Albion Brewery. But in today's farm-to-pint, uber-local beer-drinking society, it's also worth asking what the place of chains is here in the Napa Valley of craft beer.

One way to do that is to look at two other chains that remain downtown and seem to be thriving, at least by the size of the crowds I encountered there in the past two weeks.

The California-based Yard House chain actually was one of the early beer bars in downtown, finding its way into Denver around the time that Freshcraft and Euclid Hall were opening. At 120 distinct taps of beer, it actually has more flowing from kegs than even Falling Rock, though no one has ever confused the two businesses.

Yard House has suffered rightly from those who take a cursory look at its beer list and note the number of macro beers and "crafty" macro-owned breweries that inhabit its taps - a far higher percentage of its lineup than those previously mentioned beer bars. But at the end of March, it rolled out 25 new beers at the 16th Street Mall location, and they showed its commitment to quality.


Dry Dock, Crooked Stave, Grimm Brothers and Odell's sour series found a permanent place on the tap list. Bigger national craft breweries like Rogue were on there too, but with offerings like its coffee/IPA-hybrid Cold Brew that you can't find everywhere else. And Yard House folks found a few gems, like the flowery and grapefruity Almanac IPA, that would have a proud place in any locally owned beer bar.

Yes, faux-craft breweries like Elysian and Kona still have quite a few taps on the Yard House list. But, despite its corporate nature, one can't walk into the bar anymore and not be able to find enough palate-pleasing originals to keep you busy for the full happy hour.

Two blocks down from Yard House is Henry's Tavern, a Portland-based concept that opened in the Denver Pavilions just before Great American Beer Festival last year. It brandishes a tap list of 100 offerings, including some new-to-market goodies like La Cumbre (the New Mexico brewer that's one of the country's up-and-coming IPA makers) and some atypical locals like Left Hand's Great Juju.

Henry's adds the bonus of a fairly impressive upscale beer-bar menu, featuring goodies like accessible sushi and Gorgonzola fries. And it's got a nice patio, which I discovered yesterday because a friend and I couldn't find a seat inside the bar.

Again, there is more of a splash of corporate beer on the menu than you'd ever find at a place like Star Bar or Hops 'n Pie. But it's clear the owners support more than just the 50 largest craft breweries also and are willing to pick up locals, like Comrade Brewing.

So, yes, it's still OK to prefer the locals. They support even more of the small and rising craft breweries, and keeping 100 percent of the money within the community can do nothing but help the craft beer scene grow.

But at this point, it at least is worth acknowledging that some of these out-of-state chains are making more of an effort to resemble the tap lists of the local joints. And that too is a win for the local beer scene, as we all appear to be Denver-fying the national chains and making them realize how important it is to know your crowd.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?