An illuminating evening at the Candlelight

Once a seedy, smoky biker bar where rides (and ride-throughs) were welcome inside, the fifty-year-old Candlelight Tavern (383 South Pearl Street) now rocks higher-watt lightbulbs, stocks higher-shelf booze and attracts a higher-profile clientele — if you can call the swarms of University of Denver kids and alum who flood the…

A Crush on Cans: Wynkoop vs. Breckenridge

It’s American Craft Beer Week – seven days that even the United States Congress felt should be set aside for drinking micro brews. But Colorado’s beer culture is worth a deeper look, since 100 craft breweries operated here in 2008, producing 75,000 barrels of delicious beer. Of particular interest is…

It’s World Cocktail Week! Drink up with Jared Boller

World Cocktail Week ends today. So let’s raise a glass to Jared Boller, the award-winning mixologist who represented Denver in a recent article in USA Today that profiled a handful of alcohol alchemists around the country. Boller will be behind the bar at TAG, Troy Guard’s restaurant that opens in…

A Crush on Cans: Ska Brewing

It’s American Craft Beer Week – seven days that even the United States Congress felt should be set aside for drinking micro brews. But Colorado’s beer culture is worth a deeper look, since 100 craft breweries operated here in 2008, producing 75,000 barrels of delicious beer. Of particular interest is…

Drink beer out of a bowling pin. No, really!

A recent trip to Elitch Lanes, at 3825 Tennyson, for a friend’s surprise birthday party turned up another (totally awesome) surprise: bowling pin-shaped Budweiser bottles. They’re appropriate, curvaceous and refreshing, three things you may or may not expect to find at a bowling alley. Manager Frank Rangel says Elitch Lanes…

Colorado beer drinkers have a crush on cans

It’s American Craft Beer Week – seven days that even the United States Congress felt should be set aside for one purpose and one purpose only: drinking micro brews. (To find out about tappings, food pairings and other events, click here or here.) But Colorado’s beer culture is worth a…

Party down with Bob Schaffer’s margarita

Did you miss this weekend’s Cinco de Mayo festivities in Civic Center Park? You can still get a taste of them by picking up a bottle of Coyote Gold Premium Margarita — the margarita that former U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer’s wife, Maureen, is marketing along with her Fort Collins…

Stranahan’s leaves LoDo for old Heavenly Daze Brewery

Stranahan’s has become Colorado’s best-known distilled spirit – a favorite of locals and national whiskey connoisseurs alike. And now the micro-distillery will be able to meet that demand, even if it means leaving the neighborhood where it was born. On May 6, the company bought the old Heavenly Daze Brewery…

Home, sweet Second Home

Who knew? Who knew that on the first warm Thursday of spring, the hot place in Cherry Creek would be Second Home? I started the evening with what was supposed to be one drink at Cucina Colore. That turned into appetizers at Elway’s and more drinks at North. And then…

Eat Your Beer With Old Chub Bread

Maybe you know Old Chub because you’ve had it on tap at Oskar Blues or bought a six-pack of this canned Scottish Ale at the liquor store. Or maybe you’ve heard the name because you took a momentary leave of your senses and purchased a tube of Old Chub chapstick,…

Take your best shot at Arap’s

For nearly 35 years, Arap’s Old Gun Shop (3866 South Broadway in Englewood) — better known to passersby as Eatin’ Drinkin’ Darts, thanks to its signature red-and-yellow sign — has been an old-timey saloon for billiards and dart enthusiasts. For many decades (some say a century or more), it was…

New Belgium Rolls Out Sunshine Wheat in a Can

As we reported in March, New Belgium Brewing has rolled out its second canned beer – Sunshine Wheat — in Colorado only (the trucks hit the road on Friday on their way to liquor stores). But if sales are strong – as they were when the Fort Collins brewery introduced…

White Sangria at Sketch

I love a challenge, and as soon as I saw the “limit 3 per customer” advisory on the menu for the Bar Sketch White Sangria ($7.50), I knew what I had to do. From the first sip, I knew I would not be taking on a traditional “sangria” made from…

Mix it up at Trios Enoteca on Sunday

The state’s best mixologists will be pouring it on — and pouring out the drinks — Sunday, April 26, at the first Colorado Cocktail Classic competition, sponsored by the Colorado Bartenders Guild. Go to Trios Enoteca,1730 Wynkoop Street, at 6 p.m. to cheer on your favorite bartenders and enjoy some…

Great Divide introduces three new beers — and a patio

I hate windows during the summer. I hate them because when I’m at work, I can see the sky and the sun and the birds and all the people who aren’t at work strolling merrily by. Thankfully, I don’t work near Coors Field anymore, because the smell of food and…

Down and dirty on Colfax

While two totally separate establishments, Roslyn Grill (504 East Colfax Avenue) and Nob Hill Inn (420 East Colfax) nonetheless comprise a flaming binary star of degeneracy around which many of Denver’s down-and-out orbit. Because they’re less than a block apart and both cheap as hell, they attract the same crowd…

A spirited plan for Buchi Cafe Cubano

Buchi Café Cubano (2651 West 38th Avenue, 303-458-1328), which has already made a name for itself with stellar coffee drinks and sandwiches, is hoping to add beer, wine and speciality drinks to its menu this summer – pending approval of a liquor license application. Owner Emmett Barr doesn’t plan on…

Denver’s Leopold Bros. distillery gets mad props

The Leopold Bros. distillery in Denver got a shout-out in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. Columnist Eric Felten, author of the weekly column “How’s Your Drink?”, called its gin the best of the new, craft-distilled American gins trying to give well-established British gins a run for their money. Here’s an excerpt…

Down some Liquid Poetry at the Wynkoop

Does your pale ale go down better with some Poe, your stout with some Silverstein and your lager with some Longfellow? If so, then you and your favorite iambic pentameters might want to try Liquid Poetry, a special beer that goes on tap today at the Wynkoop Brewing Company in…

Mayor Hick drives the bung at Stranahan’s

Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey celebrated the corking of its 1,000th barrel on Wednesday, April 8 — which means that the five-year-old micro-distillery has produced 52,800 gallons of whiskey at its facility in the Ballpark neighborhood. And who was on hand to drive home the cork, or “bung,” as it is apparently…