Michael Cerretani, barman at Boulder’s Bitter Bar, has been bartending off and on for about a decade, but he didn’t start down the craft-cocktail path until he landed a job at Bitter Bar a few years ago…
Happy Place: Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge, 930 Lincoln Street, 303-839-5100. The Hours: Daily from 4 to 6:30 p.m. The Deals: $2 bottled beer; $3 draft beer; $4 martinis and well drinks; $5 wines by the glass, $5.75 appetizers. Were we happy? Flip the page to find out…
Denver’s West Highland neighborhood is one of many hip parts of town that has been ripe for a brewery for years. Now that time has come. Hogshead Brewery, serving English-style beers, plans to open in March in a renovated service station at 4430 West 29th Avenue. The four owners, all…
Great Divide Brewing puts on some great throw-downs, especially during the quarterly release parties it typically holds to fete its seasonal beers, three at a time. But the brewery will take a time-out this month even as it puts its first quarter seasonals — the new Nomad pilsner, Espresso Oak…
The Wynkoop Brewing Company is in the midst of expanding its brewing capacity for the first time in thirteen years — since the days when brewery co-founder Mayor-turned-Governor John Hickenlooper was still slinging suds at the LoDo landmark. In November, the brewery moved its four original twenty-barrel fermenters to the…
Something’s been bugging the hell out of us lately. We can’t understand why, come the first frost, people suddenly become allergic to drinking white wines. While you might think it horribly uncool to wear white after Labor Day, there is absolutely zero reason to stop drinking white wines once the…
You could say that 2011 was the year that Denver’s men and women matched its mountains when it came to beer culture. Seven new breweries opened in the metro area and stayed so busy that all seven have already expanded — or are considering it. But good beer can also…
Over the last few months, I went from the worst shape of my life to the best while continuing to eat like a food critic. Don’t punch me in the face; instead, read how I did it in part ten of this series: Ow, every single part of my body…
Upslope Brewing will answer the prayers of some its loyal drinkers this week when it releases a limited quantity of its Foreign Style Stout in a can. The dark beer, at 6.9 percent ABV, had previously only been available on tap in Boulder and Denver. It is the first limited…
The owners of Denver’s Caution: Brewing Company plan to add a tap room to their existing operation this summer by expanding into the space next door…
Happy Place: Stoney’s Bar and Grill, 1111 Lincoln Street, 303-830-6839. The Hours: Daily from 4 to 7 p.m. The Deals: Two-for-one draft beers, well drinks, margaritas and house wine; $5 appetizers. Were we happy? Flip the page to find out…
If you’re looking for a proper tiki drink in Denver — you know, a Polynesian-themed sour rum cocktail that soared to popularity in the 1940s and 1950s — Matty Durgin, barman at Madison Street, is your man. He’s built a fan following for his tiki drinks, which he showcases once…
“Treat everyone right, because you never know who’s sitting at your bar,” says barman Joshua Smith, who currently commands the beverage program at TAG in addition to slinging drinks at Williams & Graham a couple of nights a week. That lesson was hammered home for him a few weeks ago,…
Like Colorado, Wisconsin has a long beer tradition and a new breed of craft brewers. The most well-known is probably New Glarus, a brewery that has reached cult status nationwide because of unusual fruit beers like Wisconsin Belgian Red and Raspberry Tart — and because it only distributes in Wisconsin…
Like a fine-art collector, Euclid Hall’s Ryan Conklin has been gathering up special, rare or unusual examples of his muse over the past nine months and secreting them away. But this month, Conklin, a certified beer Cicerone, is ready to put on a show. Euclid Hall will tap one of…
Actually, let’s stay away from the word “resolution.” Because we all know how well those New Year’s resolutions tend to work out, don’t we? For 2012, we’d like to recommend you take a radical yet stunningly simple approach when it comes to drinking wine: Make it a lifestyle…
We’ve seen a lot of beer cocktails make best-beverage lists over the past year, and they range in complexity from a glorified michelada — a classic Mexican blend of lime juice and lager — to the Naughty Girl Scout, a drink on the list at Euclid Hall that uses a…
Have you run the gauntlet at Star Bar? If not, you’ve got through February 6 to try and drink thirty Avery Brewing beers available at the hip Larimer Street beer bar. For starters, you’ll need to drink all of these: IPA, White Rascal, Ellie’s Brown, Joe’s Pilsner, Out of Bounds…
Ryan Conklin, certified Cicerone and head barman at Euclid Hall, doesn’t think his reasons for going into bartending were very different from what motivates other professionals in the industry. “Like a lot of bartenders, you just kind of have some sort of drive to it, whether that’s getting behind the…
While downtown yesterday afternoon, we thought we’d stop by Chloe for a happy-hour drink and start the new year out right. Opening the unlocked front door just before 5 p.m., we found what looked like the remnants of a very big New Year’s Eve party — but not a soul…
This year will be my 25th New Year’s Eve behind the bar. My last post of 2010 was an amateur’s guide to navigating New Year’s Eve successfully, and those tips are still relevant for anyone planning a night on the town. But this year, I have a half-dozen tips for…
On Wednesday, I laid down my picks for the best new Colorado beers of 2011 — a group that had to meet certain qualifications to make the cut. Then, on Thursday, I posted pictures of seventeen new Colorado beer labels we’ll be seeing in 2012. Oskar Blues wasn’t on either…
