Leave it to Uncle Sam to kill a good buzz. Heavenly Daze tapped the first kegs of its Hemp Lager in late March, and the beer quickly become the Denver brewpub’s second-best seller. Credit for that goes to the beer’s exceptional flavor (it’s made with hemp seeds), eye-catching tap handle…
Kathleen Gomendi is preparing for the last supper. For the past ten years, she’s run Grant Avenue Street Reach, which hosts an every-Monday spaghetti meal for the city’s homeless and impoverished. Held in the basement of the First Baptist Church of Denver, right across from the State Capitol at the…
Howard Lahti is a rock-it scientist. Fifteen years ago, the Canadian geologist/geochemist was pondering a stone sample over a snifter of Scotch (single malt) when he was struck by an idea: Why not use a piece of chilled Scottish granite to cool his favorite spirit? Today, Lahti’s bright idea is…
If James and Nate Banker have their way, “Pass the salt and pepper, please” will fade from polite dining-table conversation. The Banker brothers have launched a black-and-white quest for fortune, in the form of Spepper, a blend of salt and freshly ground black pepper. “It has that ‘Why didn’t anybody…
Adam Avery is the patron saint of Colorado’s gonzo beer lovers. As the owner and founder (with his father) of Boulder’s Avery Brewing Company, for the past ten years he’s been making the state’s most assertive, mouth-whomping beers. While much of Colorado’s craft trade has focused on accessible, middle-of the-road…
Haggis is the souse of Scotland, a meaty mystery traditionally made of ground sheep organs, oats and spices, boiled together in a sheep’s stomach. It’s a peasant dish with hundreds of years of history (both pleasant and unpleasant) and a pungent smell that lingers almost as long. “You smell it…
Forget “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” What serious beer lovers crave most is a bottleless brew, kegged suds that flow like the good stuff at the pub down the street. But at-home keg beer has always been too bulky and costly for most beer nuts. Enter the Party…
For about 1,100 Denver shut-ins, Santa won’t drop down the chimney this Christmas. No, he’ll walk through the front door bearing the gifts of a hot meal and caring company, courtesy of a special force of two-days-a-year Samaritans who deliver supper for Meals on Wheels each Thanksgiving and Christmas. Every…
When Bill Hill was first given the gift of music, he didn’t want it. In 1995, while he recovered from hand surgery, a friend gave him a plastic recorder. The instrument, familiar to elementary-school music students the world over, was intended as a simple therapeutic tool to help Hill exercise…
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire… Few lyrics capture the holiday season like those famed words from Nat “King” Cole’s 1946 “The Christmas Song.” But in Colorado, that line gets a big “Bah, humbug” from local vendors. “We do roasted almonds, hazelnuts and peanuts; that stuff goes over real well…
Jose Lara knows what people associate with tequila. “Having a really great time, getting crazy,” he says. “And headaches, throwing up. Everybody has had a tequila nightmare.” Mine is coming back to me: Freshman year in college, I picked up hitchhiker Stanley Claxton, who spied my first bottle of Jose…
When “Daddy” Bruce Randolph Jr. says that “it’s more blessed to give than receive,” he knows what he’s talking about. Randolph’s father, the late “Daddy” Bruce Randolph Sr., was Colorado’s best-known food philanthropist, a down-home Mother Teresa who gave away thousands of home-cooked meals — especially at Thanksgiving — from…
A country artist by both default and fate, Hank III, Thursday, November 7, at the Gothic Theatre with the Shak Shakers and Drag the River, endures a different sort of affliction than that suffered by his grandfather, the legendary Hank Williams, Sr., and father, the almost-as-legendary Hank Williams Jr. While…
When Joe Scherber tells you his pumpkin patch produced just three pumpkins this year, it sounds like his crop was a bust. But together those three pumpkins weigh over 2,220 pounds, making the Wheat Ridge dentist one of the most fruitful pumpkin growers in the nation. Scherber raises massive pumpkins…
This weekend, over 20,000 beer nuts will invade the Colorado Convention Center for the Great American Beer Festival, raising toasts to the brewing artisans who craft their precious drink. But the tippling throng should be hoisting a glass to the unsung hero that most deserves beer-making recognition: yeast. Yeast –…
Born on Georgia soil and bred on Southern music, John Davis is the first to admit that he’s a fish out of water here in the higher, drier land of Colorado. But that hasn’t prevented him from finding a home and a musical career along the Front Range, where he…
When Kevin Daly opened Boulder’s Mountain Sun in October 1993, the brewpub had a small list of ambitious craft beers, an affordable, whole-earthy menu and a Grateful Dead theme. Nine years later, beer fans are very grateful for Mountain Sun, which is doing such a lively business that it’s just…
The annual Kinfolk Celebration is showing signs of growth, as is the increasingly popular Yonder Mountain String Band, which founded it. Named for the group’s rabidly wiggly fans, the camping-and-jamming event has moved from its old Boulder locale to the larger setting of Planet Bluegrass’s event site in Lyons, where…
Depending on your perspective, Rocket Ajax guitarist Todd Schlafer harbors a musical dream that is either of the loftiest or the lowest sort. “I wanna be Korn,” he says. “We’re writing singles,” adds vocalist Dan Miller. “We wanna be on the radio; we wanna be, you know, big!” Whatever your…
It’s Labor Day weekend, and no faction of the local workforce is more worthy of salute than the hardworking (and generally underpaid) men and women who staff the area’s eateries. But save your sympathy: Phill Corbin thinks he has the best restaurant gig in town; he leads the cliff-diving crew…
Hot Club of Cowtown’s latest release is a jaw-dropping, head-shaking collection of stripped-down Western swing, cowboy jazz and saloon send-ups. Ghost Train expertly mines the two extremes of American folk music — joy and despair — while significantly improving upon the group’s three prior recordings. What lifts Ghost Train above…
Ten years ago, Steve Berge set out to make a better barbecue sauce. In the process, he made a better life for himself. This month Berge celebrates his first decade as an independent sauce boss. “I make a whole lot less money than I used to,” says Berge. “But I’m…
