It’s harvest time, and Front Range gardeners aren’t the only ones bringing in their crops. Colorado’s 120 vineyards are about to harvest their grapes, which will be used by the 130 wineries around the state. Unlike last year, the 2015 harvest is expected to be fruitful, since the state had…
Ben Parsons, founder of the Infinite Monkey Theorem winery in River North, just hosted a James Beard dinner on Friday night, but the event felt more like a celebration of the wineries recent achievements than a staid and stuffy formal dinner. Parsons has been busy expanding IMT into new markets…
Gardener’s Collins at Spuntino If you order a drink at the bar at Spuntino, and the bartender disappears, that’s a good thing. Chances are, you’ve ordered bartender Jason Randall’s garden-to-glass cocktail. Filling your order requires him to walk past you and right out the front door — to his street-side…
Le Central is coming to the end, Le Grand is long gone — Heck, even Le Chateau on 14th Street has passed on. Traditional French cuisine, the mother of meals, is becoming hard to find in the heart of the city. My heart beats thick Béarnaise to the rhythm of…
Like an out-of-control locomotive, the Great American Beer Festival is on its way to Denver. But the train is already beginning to jump the tracks at spots all over town, where delicious beers are being spilled with no regrets. Breweries, beer bars and restaurants have lined up all sorts of…
Upslope Brewing, which got its start in 2008 in a tiny office-park space on Lee Hill Road, plans to open a huge new brewpub in central Boulder in 2017, at which time it will also close its original location. The 11,000-square foot facility, at 34th Street and Valmont Road, will…
From Park & Co. to P17 to Ace Eat Serve, a lot of my happy-hour adventures have taken place on East 17th Avenue. Coincidence? Conspiracy? Take a drive through Uptown and you’ll see for yourself the many bus tling patios and dining rooms, all filled with happy hours and their…
Tickets for the sixteenth annual Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines Festival went on sale this morning — and they will be gone quickly! This iconic fest, which takes place January 7-9 at the Vail Cascade Resort in Vail, includes a major tasting of high-gravity beers, along with a couple of intense…
Long before they even considered the fun part — making and serving delicious craft beers — most of the breweries that have opened in Colorado over the past five years began with a physical location, their own equipment and some tables and chairs. But that hasn’t always been the case…
Moulin Rouge at Highland Tap and Burger When Mike Kelly crafted the recipe for what has become the most popular cocktail on Highland Tap and Burger’s drink menu, he didn’t find his inspiration behind the bar. He found it in the kitchen. “It’s just like going into your kitchen and…
Ludicrous rent and breathtaking home prices have driven young creatives and professionals into the arms of Denver’s suburbs. A highway away from expensive coffee and fancy-pants bistros, these folks are making their own urban communities in the style they’ve been accustomed to back in the city. Little Edgewater feels like…
New Belgium Brewing will let a little bit of air out of Fat Tire this fall when it releases a lower-alcohol version of its flagship amber ale in packages for the first time. The beer will be 4 percent alcohol by volume, or 3.2 percent alcohol by weight, meaning it…
Mason Hembree wasn’t exactly surprised when people misinterpreted last week’s announcement that Dad & Dudes Breweria in Aurora planned to brew two beers made with cannabis extract and serve it at the Great American Beer Festival. After all, the Dad & Dudes press advisory was headlined, “Dude’s Brews to Release…
Fate is a funny thing. And in this case, fate it has determined that two companies, both called Fate Brewing, would end up in court. Just days after Arizona’s Fate Brewing opened a second major brewpub in the Phoenix area, Boulder’s own Fate Brewing has filed suit against the company…
When it opened in March 2012, River North Brewery set the pace for what was to come in Denver, not just because of its beer – but with its location and its name. In the three and a half years since then, another eight breweries have opened in the sometimes…
Forty-six years after the brew kettles dried up at the Tivoli Beer Company in Denver, the suds will officially flow again on Saturday, when the new Tivoli Brewing celebrates its grand opening inside the historic Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria campus. The Tivoli taphouse and restaurant will open the…
Say the word “hydroponics” in Colorado, and only one industry comes to mind. But pot’s not the crop that Colin Clark is focused on at his indoor growhouse in Fort Collins. Instead, Clark is planning to use hydroponics for our state’s other favorite vice: craft beer. On Sunday, City Star…
The Nickel lives at the foot of the Tramway Building on 14th Street, roosting in a place with more than a century of rich history. The building was erected in 1911, where the former home of territorial Governor John Evans once stood, and soon became the heart of the city’s streetcar system…
With strong cocktails and well-priced nibbles, happy hour turned out to be my favorite time of day at bubu Lowry, which I review this week. But happy hour isn’t always so happy. Earlier this summer I was meeting a friend for an early dinner at Cho77, chef-owner Lon Symensma’s casual…
Colorado governor John Hickenlooper recently demonstrated the purity of the Animas by slurping from a bottle of river water (with an iodine back). In 2013 he told a U.S. Senate committee that he once drank fracking fluid while meeting with Halliburton executives, describing the experience as “almost ritual-like.” In honor…
When a Minneapolis craft brewer revealed last week that it will make a General Mills-sponsored Wheaties beer, the story made national headlines. But cereal beers are nothing new for Black Bottle Brewery in Fort Collins, which has been working loosely with the cereal giant for the past year on several…
Sativa IPA won’t get you high, but it will almost certainly cause a healthy buzz at the Great American Beer Festival next month. The beer, made by Dad & Dudes Breweria in Aurora, is infused with cannabidiol oil, a non-psychoactive hemp extract. Although there are several hemp beers made in…
