UPDATE: We have a winner of our Chef & Brew Festival contest, in which we asked Cafe Society readers to answer this question: How many gallons of Tunnel of Trees IPA did TRVE brew during the month of October? Congrats to PerfectlyFlawed, whose guessed 150 gallons. The actual number is…
Hops Grill and Brewery, a restaurant in Littleton that’s a link in a Florida-based chain, closed its doors yesterday. See also: Ska Brewing bottles (and cans) Modus IPA in Colorado; discontinues Ten Pin Porter…
“We’ve always been a little fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants,” says Dave Thibodeau, co-founder of Durango’s Ska Brewing. “So, Modus was different. It was the most we had ever worked on a beer recipe and a style… It was the exact beer that we wanted to brew and it just blew up right out…
Last night, following the Denver Bacon and Beer Festival, eight local bartenders — Ryan Conklin (St. Ellie), Todd Mayville (Asti D’ Italia), Stuart Jensen (Green Russell), McLain Hedges (the Proper Pour), Kevin Burke (Colt & Gray), Melissa Durant (Acorn), Holland Rock-Garden (Roosevelt) and Anika Zappe (Star Bar) — gathered behind…
Dancing Pines Distillery was one of the first twenty licensed distilleries in Colorado, opening in Loveland and selling its first bottle in September 2010. Now, three years later, husband-and-wife team Kristian and Kimberly Naslund, and partner Chris McNay, distribute their spirits, rum in particular, in 25 states. Kristian had been…
Last night, at the Omni Interlocken resort, ten local chefs, along with former White House toque John Moeller, competed in the Pairsine culinary showdown, an annual battle that’s part of the Denver International Wine Festival, a five-day wine-and-food-intensive soiree that spotlights Colorado chefs and more than 350 wines from around…
Jeff Atencio brewed his first batch of beer in 1987 while he was a student and a fire fighter living in Vail. Now, 26 years later, he and business partner Todd McClure, are ready to go pro. They’ll open Three Freaks Brewery in Highlands Ranch this winter. “I’ve been hemming…
Over the past few months, I’ve enjoyed breakfast drinks, sophisticated French cocktails, erudite winter warmers and a desperate cry for help in liquid form. All this fancy mixology stuff is well and good. But to quote Liberace by way of De La Soul, for my next number I’d like to…
Jagged Mountain Craft Brewery opened this week with plenty of horse power — and not just because it’s located in a building that once served as a horse stable for a local carriage company. Rather, the Jagged Mountain’s high-octane beers — designed by brewmaster and former Mountain Sun brewer Wayne…
With new breweries opening in Denver seemingly every month, it’s amazing that there is nothing yet in the Platt Park neighborhood near the University of Denver — especially since South Pearl Street is such a hotbed for restaurants. That will change next year when Denver Pearl Brewing opens its doors…
As Denver snow lovers gets ready to strap on their bindings for the ski and snowboard season, a couple of ski-town breweries are heading in the other direction, sending their beers to the big city. The first is Aspen Brewing, which purchased a canning line from Boulder’s Wild Goose Engineering…
The craft-brewing industry’s troubles with beer and brewery names aren’t going away any time soon, as the latest example shows. Former Future Brewing, which won’t open in Denver until later this year, has already been served with a cease-and-desist order over the names of its beers — beers that it…
Lagers sometimes get a bad rap from craft-beer drinkers. They’re often lighter and less flavorful than ales, and since America’s big three commercial beers are all lagers, beer geeks often lump them in with the macrobrews at the bottom of the tap list. Chris Phelps, the co-owner and brewer at…
I vaguely remember the first time I went to the Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant in Boulder in 1989. Though I don’t remember much about the evening, I am sure I had three margaritas. How do I know I had three margaritas back in 1989? Because I have never been to…
Grist Brewing Company, 9150 Commerce Center Circle in Highlands Ranch, will celebrate its grand opening at noon on Saturday, November 2, the first in a wave of new breweries opening in Denver’s southern suburbs over the next few months. Grist will be the first independently owned craft brewery to open…
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…
When Black Shirt Brewing opened just over a year ago, it had limited hours, a glorified homebrewing system and three owners with fulltime jobs elsewhere — but plenty of ambition. One year later, the RiNo brewery, which only makes red ales, has become an integral part of Denver’s ever-expanding craft-beer…
Yes, indeed, just as Christmas commercials have already begun overlapping Halloween spookiness, winter beers are fighting for tap and shelf space with the fresh hop and pumpkin beers of fall. And in addition to some of the usual suspects, there will be a few new ones this year, including Accumulation,…
Lance and Anna Hanson moved to Hotchkiss, Colorado, from California with the original vision of planting grapes and making wine. Since they began doing that in 2001, Jack Rabbit Hill has expanded to include eighteen acres of vineyards, ten acres of hops, a loyal following of national and Colorado restaurants,…
When chef Max MacKissock and several members of his kitchen crew exited the Squeaky Bean in August, Stephen Gallic, the Bean’s superbly gracious front-of-the-house showman, departed, too, landing, as did MacKissock, along with other former Bean alums Blake Edmunds and pastry chef Matthew Thompson, at Williams & Graham, the Highland…
Grand Lake Brewing has announced via Facebook that it is closing its tap house in the town of Grand Lake and moving closer to Denver. The brewery, which has been making Wooly Booger Nut Brown, Stumpjumper IPA, and Plaid Bastard Strong Scotch Ale, among other beers, since 2002 said on…
Before Kassia Koukari parks Roberto, the three-wheeled delivery bike for Kassia’s Pasta Farm, for the season, she wheeled him to the Infinite Monkey Theorem on Thursday night for the kickoff of Operation: Turkey Raisin’, a food/fundraiser for Denver Rescue Mission’s Thanksgiving Turkey Drive. Through November 23, a portion of all…
