Sean Kenyon has issued the very last call for entries in the Colorado Cocktail Contest: Your entry must be received at bartender@westword.com no later than midnight tonight. Once again, the rules: * The base spirit (at least half of the spirit in the cocktail) must be a Colorado spirit –…
Like many other Colorado craft brewers, Boulder’s Upslope Brewing has grown exponentially over the past year. And so Upslope has shut down its tasting room for the next three weeks so that it can knock out walls and expand into space next door. When it reopens on April 26, the…
We tasted a lot of house margaritas in preparation for our Best of Denver 2011 issue, and the marg at El Camino was hands down the Best House Margarita, as well as one of the most simple, true to the classic roots of this Mexican cocktail. At most American Mexican…
Happy Place: Forest Room 5, 2532 Fifteenth Street, 303-433-7001 The Hours: Monday through Saturday from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The Deals: $2-3 beer; $5 wine and sangria; $5-6 specialty cocktails; $5-8 appetizers. Were we happy? Flip the page to find out…
Craft brewers and craft beer fans have a particular fondness for April’s Fool Day. Here are some of the good jokes we’ve seen so far. From CraftCans.com When [Oskar Blues’s] newest offering, Twen Teny Triple Imperial Stout, hits shelves it will be far and away the strongest canned beer in…
Kelly Floyd has been dreaming for seven years about opening a brewery. Today, she will unveil her dream, the Arvada Beer Company, and show off the work that has been done inside the building in Olde Town Arvada where she will open in June. “I love the beer industry. It’s…
Last summer, Denver’s Sean Kenyon was named Bartender of the Year by Domaine de Canton after he bested a handful of his peers from across the country in the final competition in St. Maarten — and he took home a $10,000 check for his work, too. This year, Noah Heaney…
Ale House at Amato’s, the latest venture from the Breckenridge Brewing Company, opened at 11 a.m. today with a gorgeous view of the Platte Valley, the Denver skyline and the Rocky Mountains. The highly anticipated LoHi-area beer bar and restaurant is located in the former Amato’s statuary store, at the…
No, you’re not hallucinating: Avery Brewing is flirting with the green fairy. After more than a year of trying, the brewing team at the Boulder beer maker has gotten their hands on a couple of empty absinthe barrels from Leopold Brothers, the Denver micro-distillery known for its local version of…
Pour a little liqua’ out for Goose Island: The famed Chicago brewery was purchased this week by Anheuser-Busch for $22.5 million. And although the mega-brewer will probably try to keep things the same, gigantic corporations aren’t usually very good at that. Goose Island beers are lightly distributed in Colorado, and…
One of the biggest oddities in the Colorado beer-drinking world will be remedied on April 2 when The Pub at the Boulder Beer Company finally opens for business on Saturdays. Until now, the pub, which is located in a Boulder business park and serves sandwiches, salads, burgers, burritos and the…
Sean Kenyon knows how to pour out both drinks and advice. A third-generation bar man with almost 25 years behind the bar, he is a student of cocktail history, a United States Bartenders Guild-certified Spirits Professional and a BAR Ready graduate of the prestigious Beverage Alcohol Resource Program. You can…
Last week I threw down a challenge: taste an old-world wine next to its new-world counterpart and judge for yourself whether old world wines truly deserve their reputation as best in class. Even though I screwed up and included tasting notes from a Rhône wine instead of the Burgundy I…
Friday is opening day at Coors Field, and that means the return of Colorado’s most unusual brewery, the Blue Moon Brewing Company @ the Sandlot. Open only during Colorado Rockies home games and only during baseball season, the Sandlot is celebrating its sixteenth year of serving baseball-themed beers like Right…
The headlines screamed across the beer-drinking world on Monday that AB InBev was buying Chicago-based Goose Island brewing for a delicious $38.8 million. Double-secret sources in St. Louis have leaked very rough drafts of a new Goose Island logo and marketing strategy that blends the best of the party-friendly 1980s…
Steeped in tradition, Jack Daniel’s doesn’t debut new liquors often, but the famous Tennessee distillery is rolling out a new whiskey in April: Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey. We were sent two bottles and quickly went through one. How does it taste? Well, really, actually pretty good. Dangerously good, in fact…
Happy Place: The Lobby, 2191 Arapahoe Street, 303-997-9911 The Hours: Monday through Saturday from 4 to 6:30 p.m. The Deals: $3 Colorado microbrews, Miller Lite, and well cocktails; $5 house wine; $6 specialty cocktails; $4-8 food specials. Were we happy? Flip the page to find out…
Friends, neighbors and bartenders: Since early last year, I’ve made it my mission to discover a cocktail that is truly representative of our great state, much like the Manhattan is of New York City and the Sazerac of New Orleans. Along the way, I’ve been joined on this mission by…
Sean Kenyon is back from one of his many trips as this state’s premier alcohol ambassador, pulling together the final details of the Colorado Cocktail Contest and offering some advice about making margaritas — just in time for the warmer weather. Who makes a great margarita in Denver? Here’s Mantanot’s…
Sean Kenyon knows how to pour out both drinks and advice. A third-generation bar man with almost 25 years behind the bar, he is a student of cocktail history, a United States Bartenders Guild-certified Spirits Professional and a BAR Ready graduate of the prestigious Beverage Alcohol Resource Program. You can…
Seattle has a beer week. So do Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. San Francisco’s and Philadelphia’s are famous world wide. Hell, even Eugene, Oregon; Louisville, Kentucky; and the entire state of Alabama have beer weeks. Denver has the Great American Beer Festival and the surrounding Denver Beer Fest events, but…
You won’t find many of Colorado’s brewers around Colorado this week as most of them have taken off for the annual Craft Brewers Conference, taking place in San Francisco. But that doesn’t mean you can’t toast them — and the industry as a whole — which reported retail sales growth…
