Session Kitchen Bartender Haylee Ortiz Creates a Teargarden

Teargarden at Session Kitchen 1518 South Pearl Street 720-763-3387 When Session Kitchen reformatted its cocktail program last month, lead bartender Haylee Ortiz was charged with the task of creating a specific cocktail. Her guidelines: it must be a sipping cocktail that suggested flowers, and it must contain mezcal. Ortiz, who…

Happy Hour at Tom’s Urban: Last Stop for Late-Night Eats

The “24” at the end of the name of Tom’s Urban has been severed from the Larimer Square eatery’s sign and its identity, shortening the hours and rearranging the furniture for a different crowd. The restaurant now closes before the real creatures of the night come out to play, but…

State 38 Distilling Company Is Taking Your Fallen Fruit

Golden’s State 38 Distilling hates to see fermentable sugars go to waste. Fortunately, owner and head distiller Sean Smiley has an way to fix that: He’s taking donations from your fruit trees through the end of October so that he can make an all-Colorado, community-sourced fruit brandy, which he thinks…

Colorado’s Brand-New Breweries Bring Home the Bling at GABF

For the past couple of years, industry veterans have expressed concerns about the quality of the beer being made by new craft breweries, especially as the number of new breweries — they are now opening at a rate of 1.5 per day across the country — increases exponentially. But the…

Photos: The Great American Beer Festival Brings Joy to Denver

The Great American Beer Festival returned to Denver on Thursday night and continues today and tomorrow. Thousands of lucky ticket-holders invaded the Colorado Convention Center for the first night, sampling more than 3,500 beers from over 750 breweries. We were there and took these photos…

Golden Moon Speakeasy Stirs Up a Bowl of Palisade Peach Punch

Palisade Peach Punch at the Golden Moon Speakeasy 1111 Miner’s Alley, Golden 720-638-1155 Fall is erupting in blazes of orange and yellow in the high country right now, and it’s bubbling in your glass at the Golden Moon Speakeasy. This craft cocktail lounge, located in downtown Golden, opened in January…

TRVE and The Bruery’s Patrick Rue Collaborate During GABF week

One of the benefits of having the Great American Beer Festival in Denver is that innovative brewers and craft-beer royalty make their way to town at least once a year, where they interact with Colorado’s movers and shakers. The result are friendships, collaborations and other connections that usually end up…

Happy Hour at Park & Co.: Hungry for Action

There’s nothing more frustrating to your humble correspondent than a happy hour without food. Yes, liquor discounts are truer to the original spirit of happy hour, when folks would go out for pre-dinner drinks with little more than pretzels to sustain them. Now, most people eat around cocktails and beers,…