After four years and a pile of red tape, Vine Street Pub (and Brewery) is getting ready to brew beer on site for the first time this Sunday. The restaurant, part of the Boulder-based Mountain Sun group, has had its equipment set up since last fall, but just received its…
We might all be Manhattan and martini connoisseurs now, but not even ten years ago, properly made classic cocktails were a lot more difficult to find not just in Denver, but in any city. And cocktail bars — at least the trendy cocktail bars that keep proliferating today — were…
Remember a couple of weeks ago, when we systematically broke down the entirely undeserved bad rap (pun intended) on moscato? That put us in the mindset of another, equally beleaguered wine that we now feel compelled to turn you onto. We already know this one’s gonna be a tougher sell,…
Craft brewers sold $8.7 billion worth of beer in 2011, up more than 9 percent over the previous year, according to the Boulder-based Brewers Association. That’s a lot of suds. The total amount of beer they made rose 13 percent, or roughly 1.3 million barrels, to nearly 11.5 million barrels…
Standing in front of the beer cooler in Colorado, the Napa Valley of Beer, can be a little overwhelming. Okay, it can be a lot overwhelming. There are dozens of styles — from IPAs, stouts and sours to Belgian saisons bocks and barrel-aged brews — from a confounding number of…
Ken Kodys is no stranger to victory. In 2009, the Boston native, who was then tending bar at Bacaro, in Boulder, created a memorable cocktail ironically called Amnesia that took the whole kit and caboodle in the DeKuyper Mix Master Bartender contest at the Denver Food & Wine Festival. Earlier…
Centro Latin Kitchen chef Ian Clark was on a bus from Sayulita, Mexico, over the holidays when he got a phone call from work. “Someone in the company asked me if I wanted to go back down to Mexico,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Sure, why not?'” A few weeks later,…
A serious bartending scene in Denver has culminated in dozens of cocktail contests, many of which propel our local bar men and women to a national spotlight, where they go up against the country’s best. And tonight, one of the biggest contests of 2012 is going down at Green Russell:…
Just a month after opening its doors, River North Brewery on Blake Street has bottled thirty cases of its double IPA and plans to start selling it within two weeks. The move is unusual among the wave of small breweries that has opened in the Denver area over the past…
Changes have been at the works at Pizzeria Basta, the Boulder-based restaurant that has served Napolitano-inspired — but American-sourced — pizzas paired to a wine and beer list for the past two years. A couple of months ago, chef/owner Kelly Whitaker rolled out a menu of housemade pastas to supplement…
Happy Place:Irish Hound, 575 Saint Paul Street, 303-996-0709. The Hours: Monday through Friday from 3 to 7 p.m. The Deals: $2-4 beer specials; $3.50 well drinks, house wines, and Jameson; $3.50 appetizer specials. Were we happy? Flip the page to find out…
When Sudhir Kuva and his business partners took over the Orange Cat Studios underground-arts space at 2625 Larimer Street last year and transformed it into the Matchbox, Kuva was concerned about how a non-music bar would do in an area with three live-music venues within a block. But now he…
Cap the week off with a free tour of Roundhouse Spirits, 5311 Western Avenue in Boulder, from 3 to 7 p.m. today and tomorrow. See how booze phenom Ted Palmer and crew craft and bottle their award-winning spirits — and then taste them. No RSVP required, and make a note:…
Breckenridge Ballpark Pub is undergoing its first renovation since it went into business in 1992, three years before Coors Field was built. The pub, which served as Breck’s primary brewing facility until 1996, closed March 18 and will reopen by April 9, Colorado Rockies Opening Day. “She’s twenty years old…
As you may have noticed, spring has been threatening to commence here in Denver for the past several weeks. In spite of the fact that our split-personality-disorder-of-a-weather-pattern may at any moment revert to what we should have been subjected to since February, our seasonal wine drinking habits don’t seem to…
On Tuesday, beer-makers from five Colorado breweries gathered at Funkwerks in Fort Collins to whip up a special beer to commemorate the late Danny Williams and to raise money so that his family can keep his one-of-a-kind gold mine beer cellar. “We pow-wowed on the recipe, and it came together…
Great Divide Brewing will release its second new beer of the year in July, Wolfgang, a big, malty dopplebock that will replace Smoked Baltic Porter in the brewery’s seasonal lineup. Wolfgang is the first beer that was designed and tested on Great Divide’s new seven-barrel pilot brewing system, which was…
You’re gonna need a scorecard to identify your almost-all-new Colorado Rockies this season, but the team isn’t the only entity shaking things up at Coors Field. During the Rockies’ April 9 home opener, Blue Moon Brewery @ the Sandlot will debut Farmhouse Red, a sour-style beer that may challenge the…
Dating back to the time of the Egyptians, beer has benefited man (beer was prescribed as a medicine, naturally.) Through the modern age, beer was an economic driver behind railroad development, commercial refrigeration, and yes, the automatic (and hypnotic) bottling process. Below is an infographic on other high points in…
In this interview, Freshcraft’s Adam Dunbar weighs in on the night of the Beast, his go-to beer and where he heads for a perfectly made Manhattan…
Happy Place: The Wine Loft, 1527 Wazee Street, 303-284-3493 The Hours: Monday through Friday, 4 to 7 p.m. The Deals: All wines by the glass $10 & under are $5; $11-$15 are $10; $16-$20 are $15. $15 red sangria pitchers; $5 sangria by the glass; $8 signature cocktails; discounted small…
Saturday is Ian Clark’s day off. Instead of getting out of the kitchen, however, the Centro Latin Kitchen chef has been using some of his favorite ingredients to brew beer. He was doing it so much, in fact, that he decided to start his own commercial brewery. Clark is creating…
