Bars & Breweries

Oskar Blues takes credit for being the first craft brewery to can its own beer, way back in 2002. While canned cocktails have a considerably longer history (are you old enough to remember cans of Purple Passion in the 1980s?), Oskar Blues is jumping into that market too, with its…

Summer is over, but the canned beers never stop rolling off the lines in Colorado. Over the next few weeks, you’ll be able to try at least five new canned beers from three breweries: Spice Trade, Good River and Lone Tree. The first two are canning their beers for the…

Brewers have always loved to hang out together, to travel, to talk shop, to raise a pint — and another. And in the morning, those same brewers will often lend each other equipment, ingredients, advice, even employees. It’s part of what has made the craft-beer industry special for so long,…

Fish N Beer sits on the same RiNo block that also holds Hop Alley, our pick for the Best New Restaurant of 2015. But this restaurant brings a very different menu to the table — seafood, both in the classic fish house style and in more modern interpretations.

Skiers and snowboarders think about snow all winter and fall, and they know when its’s getting close because there are gear and season-pass sales all over the place. Beer lovers think about rich, high-gravity treats all winter and fall, and they know when they’re getting close because labels like these…

The Welcome Inn was one of those places I’d always been meaning to go but had never managed to check out until just recently. It’s on the edge of what many now call RiNo, but is still known by long-time regulars as the East Side, and it’s a friendly and casual spot…

If you’ve seen a photo of a brewery on Facebook anytime in the past two years there’s a good chance that it was captured by Dustin Hall, the creator of The Brewtography Project. Hall has been traveling the state, taking pictures — behind the scenes and in front of them…

A keg is more than just a large vessel for holding beer; it’s a valuable piece of property that makes its way from a brewery to a distributor and then on to a liquor store, restaurant, bar or even your back patio. But kegs belong to the breweries that fill…

If you like light beers, then great ready to be thrilled. Or irritated. Or maybe just confused. Dive Bar Brewing is making a light American lager for Denver, and the owners will knock it out of your hand if you try to sniff it. “The whole idea is to drink…

Confession: I avoided wine in a can out of shear snootiness. I’d gotten used to wine in a box and plastic corks, but wine in a can was a step too far down the path to wine in a 40-ounce with a side of Cheez Whiz. I was wrong. Wine…

I love pumpkin beers. There, I said it. I love a sweet, malty, gourd-based ale layered over with cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice, ginger and maybe some honey. Ramp up the alcohol content and put the whole thing in a rum barrel, and I’ll wait up all night in the pumpkin…

I’ve been meaning to stop back into the Abbey Tavern for a while, and not just because it’s super-near my house and a good place to hit up when it snows a lot and I don’t feel like driving anywhere. Although, if we’re being honest, laziness and the desire to…

Colorado’s biggest little beer festival returns to Breckenridge for the second time on January 4-6, 2018, with some upgrades and improvements. Tickets for the Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival go on sale today at 10 a.m. at bigbeersfestival.com — and they will sell out very, very quickly. Here’s a…

The owner of the Stockyards Saloon says his bar has to close. But Fred Orr, who owns the building that houses that bar, says the news reports are all wet: the bar should be able to keep pouring through the next Stock Show.

Did you feel that? It was a slight breeze on a hot day, but it carried with it just a tiny hint of cold temperatures, and it made you shiver. And that shiver set off a chain reaction in your brain that let you know fall is on its way…

Brian O’Connell has never been a big fan of pumpkin beers, a popular but polarizing fall beer, and he hadn’t had time to brew a New England-style IPA, which has become one of the most controversial, most talked-about new styles to hit the craft-beer world in a  while. But the…

Maybe it’s because the United States only imports foreign holidays that involve a lot of drinking. Maybe it’s because there’s now a direct flight between Denver and Munich, Germany. Or maybe it’s because craft-beer drinkers are tired of relying on pumpkin brews for their seasonal fall treats. Whatever the reason,…

I’m not sure how I’ve never been to the Highland Tavern before. It’s at the corner of West 34th Avenue and Navajo Street, right down the block from the Bug Theatre, one of the places I used to frequent back when the local comedy show the Grawlix was still around…

A moose head on the wall, a creek out back, a biker out front: Colorado bars aren’t all about craft beer and mixology. Metro Denver boasts thousands of watering holes, but sometimes you thirst for a downhome saloon where getting there is half the fun…and the rest is all setting, history and, yes, alcohol. Here are Colorado’s ten most iconic bars.

As competition for shelf space heats up in the world of craft beer, bigger breweries are endeavoring to stay nimble, trying new things — and occasionally throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. Odell Brewing, which is Colorado’s third largest craft-beer maker, has released a slew of new…

You probably haven’t heard of the second-largest brewery in Denver, but you definitely know the beers brewed there: Station 26 Brewing’s Citra IPA, Black Shirt Brewing’s Stringbender Saison, the Post Brewing’s Townie Ale, and the brand-new Weldwerks Brewing’s Alpha Bits New England-Style IPA, among others. Sleeping Giant Brewing, which was…