January 1, 2014. America wakes from its fitful slumber to a splitting headache. With their rallying cry of “Urrrghhh,” these brave and lonely souls troop to their temples of coffee and corned beef. Some chase espresso with chorizo to burn out the devil spirits playing field hockey in their skulls…
There are roughtly thirty breweries in the city of Denver alone and nearly that many in Boulder. There are dozens more in the surrounding towns and suburbs, and that doesn’t even include Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Durango and the mountains. I’ve been to a lot of them, but I’ve missed…
There were 23 breweries inside Denver’s city limits at the start of 2013 (depending on how you count them), and by December 21, when Station 26 opened in North Park Hill, there were 29 (again, depending on how you count them). But by this time next year, there could be…
The last twelve months have been amazing ones for Colorado’s craft brewers, both old and new, and 2014 is shaping up to be even better. Two highly-anticipated brewpubs have already announced that they will open in the first month of the new year. Denver’s Lowdown Brewery + Kitchen, the brainchild…
Station 26 Brewing opened Saturday afternoon in a beautifully renovated old Denver firehouse in northeast Park Hill that was vacated several years ago when the station was moved further east into the Stapleton neighborhood. Owner Justin Baccary had been planning to wait one more week, but when he received his…
No- and low-alcohol cocktails have started cropping up at the bottom of drink menus — and bartenders say they’re surprisingly good sellers. But while these drinks may be a little easier on the wallet (and the liver), they’re not short of creativity. (And yes, a bartender will usually mix in…
When Left Hand Brewing Company changed the shape of its labels, the Longmont-based brewery had a lot of leftover material. Rather than throw it away, artist Donald Wilson suggested a charity art show. You can see the result tonight, when work by more than twenty local artists who used the…
There are cocktails and beers we call winter warmers, the kinds of drinks we associate with warm nights by the fire with snow blowing outside. Steaming Irish coffees and hot toddies ward off hypothermia and sobriety at the same time, while beers like Great Divide’s Hibernation Ale and Samuel Smith’s…
Last night Caution Brewing opened its second brewery, a Lakewood spot called Caution West, and became the first Denver-based beermaker with two metro locations. Founded in April 2011 by Danny Wang and Betty Fey, Caution’s original brewery is situated in an industrial park in far northeast Denver. It includes a…
Odell Brewing, which just completed a major expansion of its Fort Collins brewery and taproom, has also made a change to one of its seasonal offerings. Odell Red Ale, a hoppy red beer available in the first few months of each year, has become Runoff Red IPA — a switch…
In case there was any doubt about how big the craft-brewing industry has become — or about its impact in Colorado — the industry’s trade group said today that small and independent craft brewers contributed $33.9 billion to the U.S. economy in 2012. Colorado’s craft brewers contributed $1.6 billion to…
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (Park Hill), there lived two craft-beer lovers who had to travel across town almost any time they wanted to try a new brewery. So the couple, Ryan and Christa Kilpatrick, decided to open their own brewing palace, Fiction Beer Company,…
As Westword’s Ask the Bartender columnist, I’ve talked with many bartenders for Cafe Society’s “Behind the Bar” series, posing numerous questions to Denver’s top bartenders…and often receiving the same answers: “I love chartreuse,” or “I’m really into smoked cocktails/barrel aging/bottled cocktails.” See also: A bartender by any other name…is still…
Hall Brewing, which has been operating out of a production-only barn outside of Parker for the past eleven months, will open a new taproom for the first time today in town. See also: Grist Brewing is the first of many new breweries in the southern suburbs…
“Every brewery gets negative feedback, so I don’t worry about it too much, but I think we drifted off into middle-of-the-road beers,” says Cary Floyd, who opened Arvada Beer Company in October 2011 with his wife, Kelly. “We were tending more toward the masses rather than toward the craft beer…
In a baseball stadium named after a brewery, you can understand why conversations about other beer brands might seem a little, well, out of left field. Coors (and its parent company) is a fiercely competitive conglomerate that has paid millions and millions of dollars since 1995 for the rights to…
Things don’t always go as planned, as would-be restaurant and brewery owners find out on a daily basis in Colorado. Case in point: only five of the breweries listed in our August blog post, “Ten breweries that will open in metro Denver before the Great American Beer Festival,” have actually…
Stephen Gould, proprietor and distiller at Golden Moon Distillery, began producing spirits in 2012 and distributing earlier this year. And while Golden Moon might seem like yet another distillery in an expansive collection of stills that have spawned throughout the state this year, Gould and his team chose the road…
Breckenridge Brewery’s Colorado Craft location in LoDo celebrated the release of The Women of Colorado Craft Breweries pinup calendar with a party on last night, December 9. A handful of the models — employees of some of the state’s most-loved craft breweries — made appearances in full regalia (don’t they…
Boulder Beer Company, which invented Colorado’s craft brewing industry in 1979, is planning to stop bottling Planet Porter, one of its three original beers. While the brewery will make Planet Porter occasionally on its three-barrel pilot system, the decision ends the sale and distribution of what has been the longest…
A recent trip to Puerto Rico, aka America’s funky Latin cousin, inspired me to take a crack at the drinks of the Caribbean. Especially the mojito, the drink of Cuba — aka America’s brother-in-law who never gets invited to the baby showers. At Cuba Cuba Cafe & Bar in the…
Today marks the eightieth anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition — reason to drink! Sadly, the Teller House Bar in Central City — which was open on that great day in 1933 — is not pouring right now, but other longtime watering holes definitely are, just as they were on…
