Chocolate is sweet and sultry and delicious. Chocolate tastes great, smells great and looks fantastic. Chocolate is supposed to be fun. But Bill Beymer of Odell Brewing wasn’t having much fun in late 2012, when he was trying to figure out how to melt hundreds of pounds of chocolate into…
Golden is defining its place in the spirits market this year — first with the debut of Golden Moon Distillery, and now with the opening of State 38, a distillery that is focusing on agave-based spirits, with a name inspired by Colorado’s status as the 38th state to be admitted…
New Belgium Brewing has always represented a dichotomy. The Fort Collins company is the nation’s third-largest craft brewer, and yet it has held on to the independent-minded ethos of a garage-bound start-up. Its flagship, Fat Tire, is often seen as an entry-level example of a craft beer, and yet it…
In a city with a burgeoning craft beer and spirits landscape, craft (hard) cider continues to surface as a thriving addition to the mix. On Friday, Eric Foster and Phil Kao, co-founders of the newly-minted Stem Ciders and board members on the Rocky Mountain Cider Association, will hold a grand…
New Belgium Brewing is rolling out its new look on a wide scale this month, after having introduced bits and pieces of it last year. The “portfolio-wide packaging refresh…reimagines New Belgium’s iconic and playful watercolor imagery from the past 22 years through a modern lens,” the Fort Collins company says…
Since beer is made from grain and hops, it makes sense that Christine Wares picked Kokopelli, the Hopi god of agriculture and fertility, for the name and logo of her new brewery. But Wares, who will run Kokopelli Beer Company, 8931 Harlan Street, with brewers Todd Williamson and Rick Holt,…
It’s surprising that it took this long, but a Colorado craft brewer has finally linked a beer tapping to the legalization of marijuana sales here, which went into effect January 1. West Flanders Brewing in Boulder has changed the name of one of its its beers from Woodshed Smoked Porter…
After pulling out of some states in 2011 in order to concentrate on others, Longmont’s Oskar Blues has recently begun expanding aggressively again. This week, the brewery, which has a second production brewery in North Carolina, said it plans to launch beer sales in Idaho, Minnesota, Kansas, Nevada and Delaware,…
Colorado breweries made and packaged hundreds of amazing new beers in 2012, expanding their range and proving once again which state is the center of the craft beer universe. And although thousands more were brewed and sold on draft in tap rooms, bars and breweries, this list — like the…
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…
