Because they love me, AC Golden dropped off a sixer of Colorado Native at the office for me to try - with the stern recommendation that I pour it into a glass so I could see the color and get the full experience. Hey, you don't have to tell me twice. I downed two of them and shared the rest with the staff (as far as you know).
Indeed, Colorado Native does pour a rich amber color and it has a fizzy head. While it is certainly a light beer, it's not without flavor. Even better, that flavor doesn't take like Coors - a beer that I've had a love/hate relationship with since the age of, um, 18.
It does smell like Coors - a trait that is likely due to the proprietary strain of yeast that the company has been making in Golden for over a hundred years - but it doesn't have that proprietary sawdust-like taste. It also lacks any real oomph, but Colorado Native is certainly well-balanced and refreshing - perfect for summer. AC Golden president Glenn Knippenberg said I should probably be able to taste some hops in Colorado Native. Maybe my tastebuds have been thrashed by drinking too many Titan IPAs, but I couldn't. I did get some light malty flavors though.Made and packaged with 99 percent Colorado-grown, -made, and -created ingredients (even the marketing campaign is being managed by two Colorado companies), AC Golden is definitely trying to sell the locals-only and locavore-loving angle of this beer - and that's a good thing, even if the parent company is no longer based here.
Of course, there are more than 100 Colorado-based craft breweries around that also use as many local ingredients as they can and pump that money back into our economy.
But as a Colorado native myself, I like the idea of toasting my birth. Cheers.
