Best Distillery With a Secret 2020 | The Block Distilling | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Distillery With a Secret

The Block Distilling

Molly Martin

Head distiller and co-owner Kraig Weaver is such a nerd about making spirits, it's not surprising that he likes to converse with other enthusiasts looking for something unique and rare. The Block's members-only club, 225, sprang up as a result, offering quarterly bottle releases such as rose liqueur, peach eau de vie and genever, and this year the 225 people lucky enough to snag a spot will get to try an amaro, cask-strength straight bourbon and peach brandy. Membership runs $275 a year, but also includes discounts on all bottles and a leather key chain made by local artisan Clever Luck. The distillery is currently open for to-go orders, whether you're a member or not. Purchase online for pick-up of your bagged or boxed order.

theblockdistillingco.com

Best Distillery

Golden Moon

Courtesy Golden Moon

When Stephen Gould and Karen Knight started their distillery in 2008, they first created an award-winning gin. Twelve years later, Golden Moon produces an array of spirits, from absinthe to dry curaçao to applejack — and that's just for starters. Last year, the distillery moved into a larger space and ramped up production, adding a single-malt whiskey that just launched in 2020. Many of the recipes come from Gould's extensive research into the subject, thanks to his library of rare books on distillation and booze, some more than 500 years old. The distillery is open for bottle sales, as is the Golden Moon Speakeasy, the distillery's tasting room at 1111 Miners Alley in Golden. You can also look for Golden Moon products at the best liquor stores in metro Denver.

goldenmoondistillery.com

Best Virtual Wine Wednesday

Bigsby's Folly Craft Winery & Restaurant

Mark Antonation

Bigsby's Folly founders Chad and Marla Yetka got into the business because they loved wine so much, they wanted to work it into their retirement plan without leaving Colorado. So they're getting California grapes straight off the vine for wines made there and in Denver, where all the wines are aged, blended and bottled. Bigsby's is currently filling growlers to go at 50 percent off. And at 7 p.m. each Wednesday, Marla and Chad are hosting a virtual Wine Wednesday, when different wine-related topics will be shared live on the winery's Instagram feed, @bigsbysfolly.

bigsbysfolly.com

Best Non-Alcoholic Beer

Chicha Morada
Dos Luces Brewery

Are you sober-curious or a teetotaler, or have you just had enough booze for one week, month, year or lifetime? There are more and more non-alcoholic options these days, from N/A beer to sparkling sodas to CBD-infused beverages. One of the most unusual and oddly delicious is chicha morada, a fruity concoction from Dos Luces Brewery, which specializes in pre-Columbian-style beers known as chicha and pulque. Made from malted Peruvian blue corn, lime, cinnamon and clove, the brewery's chicha morada is a little sweet, a little tart, extremely refreshing and very different. Oh, and you'll be able to drive home. Pre-order a growler of chicha morada (or any of the brewery's boozier products) at dos-luces-brewery.square.site for curbside pick-up Thursday and Friday evening and Saturday afternoon.

dosluces.com

Best Way to Find To-Go Craft Beer

CBG Interactive Map

With help from mapping-software expert Megan Bleess, the Colorado Brewers Guild has created an online interactive map to help craft-beer customers connect with the breweries that now need business more than ever. Use the map to find the breweries that are closest to your home, then click on them to see the hours they are open for to-go sales and other specifics about how to buy beer and how to help. It will make you feel good and keep you in beer, which is something we all need.

coloradobeer.org

Best Self-Service Beer Station

Call to Arms Brewing

Danielle Lirette

Craft breweries have been quick to set up to-go "stations" where customers can pick up beer to bring home. Some are in parking spaces or curbside, while others are via garage doors and windows, or at tables inside and outside the taprooms. But Call to Arms Brewing, in keeping with its goofball ethos, set up a ramshackle collection of colored lights at its entrance to help promote social distancing at its pick-up station inside the taproom. If the lights are off, wait outside. Once they flicker on, you are free to come inside and pick up your labeled beer (if you ordered in advance on its website): They'll leave the light on for you.

calltoarmsbrewing.com

Best Toilet-Paper-and-Craft-Beer Promotion

Good River Beer
Briar Common Brewery + Eatery

While some of us are sitting atop homemade thrones made out of hoarded toilet paper — and others are begging for a single square, Elaine Benes-style — restaurants and breweries have found themselves with a surplus, since no one can drink or dine in. Good River Brewing and Briar Common Brewery + Eatery were quick to jump on this sudden situation by offering a roll of toilet paper to go with each to-go order (BYO bag). It's a truly "charmin" promotion.

goodriverbeer.com briarcommon.com

Best Pay-What-You-Can Beer Promotion

Grandma's House

Grandma's House has long been one of the coolest, quirkiest, most creative craft-beer spaces in town, and it's stayed with that style by trying out a pay-what-you-can ordering system for its online to-go beer. "While we hope that our wonderful customers will do whatever you can to help us stay afloat for the foreseeable future, we would also love to provide a little relief to those with reduced financial means right now. In times like these, we all have to stick together more than ever. Denver has been there for us over the past five years, and we're here for Denver as well." Thanks, Grams.

grandmasbeerco.square.site

Best Brewery Bingo

Colorado Craft Crowler Bingo

As a longtime brewery yeast grower and supplier to the local craft-beer industry, Matthew Peetz doesn't like to watch things die. So the owner of Propagate Lab jumped into action after Colorado's breweries were closed for on-site drinking, calling and texting dozens of past and former clients to ask if they wanted to be part of his Colorado Craft Crowler Bingo card. The first 24 to respond are now on board. Print out the card from Propagate's Facebook page, buy a Crowler from every brewery and return it to Propagate: The first one to finish each round will get an item from each brewer, but every participant has already had winning beer.

facebook.com/propagatelab

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