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…
Halloween is associated with three things: monsters and ghosts wandering the streets, bags and bags of candy, and alcohol poisoning. That’s because once we grow past trick-or-treating age, Jaeger and Miller replace Hershey’s and Reese’s for many of us. But your oh-so-clever Jersey Shore costume doesn’t mean you have to…
New Belgium Brewing makes lots of big news — for instance, it’s about to resume construction on its massive new plant in North Carolina; it just introduced a new winter seasonal called Accumulation White IPA; it will begin distributing beer in Ohio, its 35th state — but the Fort Collins…
Paige Schuster loves beer, but her heart is in philanthropy, specifically in the family foundation that she and her mother started seven years ago as a way to remember her father, who was killed in a plane crash when Schuster was seventeen. Now, Schuster and her husband, Marcus Christianson, have…
Denver Beer Co, which opened in August 2011 as one of the pioneers of Denver’s third major brewery wave, will take a major step up next year by adding a large new production facility that will immediately make it one of the city’s largest breweries. Owners Patrick Crawford and Charlie…
The owners of Zephyr Brewing tell an increasingly common story: The crew of Colorado natives wanted to start a brewery in Denver, but couldn’t find a good spot in Washington Park or Capitol Hill, so they headed to River North. “We were looking for up-and-coming neighborhoods,” says Brian Wood, who…
Three popular breweries, two of them in Denver, announced expansions this week, meaning more delicious beer for their fans in the coming months. In Denver, Black Shirt Brewing has added a new brewhouse and replaced some equipment that should allow greater distribution, new beers and more barrel-aging. Wit’s End Brewing,…
The Colorado Rockies’ season came to a merciful end at the end of September, but the Sandlot brewery inside Coors Field plans to stay open to the public through the winter for the first time in more than a decade — something that will allow it to showcase its recent…
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…
Brad and Kathe Page, founders of Colorado Cider Company, are celebrating the second anniversary of their tasting room this weekend, and it couldn’t come at a better time. “We just put the expansion in,” explains Brad, “so we’re tripling our capacity. We have seven brands in the market, so things…
Denver has just come off the high of the sold-out Great American Beer Festival and a week’s worth of equally beer-geeky events, but that doesn’t mean the town has run out of brews. In fact, quite the opposite. There is still a ton going on. If you’re a brewery, though,…
Colorado returned to form at the 2013 Great American Beer Festival, taking home a whopping 46 medals — spread out across breweries of widely varying ages, sizes and locations. The medal count was also up significantly from 2012 — when the state won only 35 medals as part of a…
There may have been a few too many beer events this past weekend as part of the Great American Beer Festival. And Oskar Blues may have suffered from the excess, given that its two-day concert, Fuh-can Beer and Guitars, benefiting the Love, Hope, Strength Foundation and victims of the recent…
At 10 p.m., when the drunken revelers began stumbling out of the Colorado Convention Center, a woman grabbed her crotch and started twerking. Her partner in crime lunged as consumers, most of whom were already weaving, futilely attempted to stay out of his path. And so went night two of…
