Turn the page to see all of this week's craft-beer events.
Wednesday, July 16The Pairsine Chefs Fine Food and Beer Pairing, hosted by Wine Country Network, Inc., takes place from 6 to 9 p.m. today at the Omni Interlocken Resort in Broomfield. This year's edition pairs gold medal award-winning beers from the Denver International Beer Competition with culinary creations prepared by ten Colorado chefs. A professional panel of judges will choose the "Best Chef" and "Most Creative Chef." Attendees will select a "People's Choice Chef." Guests will be able to sample twenty different gourmet food and beer pairings. Tickets are $50 and available at eventbrite.com.
Saison cask month continues at the Copper Kettle, which will tap a new firkin each Wednesday. Today's is Brett Saison. Ckrepes will be serving food at 3 p.m.
Thursday, July 17
Our Mutual Friend Malt & Brew will release a beer today on which it collaborated with Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar -- part of the Big Red F restaurant group. Big Red OMF is a red ale made with hibiscus and tangerine. It will be served along with "all the Jax food you can put away," between 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. at the brewery. Entrance is $60.
It's Christmas in July! at World of Beer in Belmar, which will count down the Twelve Beers of Christmas (in July) with Left Hand Brewing and Epic Brewing. The event, starting at 6 p.m., was created by WOB's Neill Boyd, Left Hand Brewing's Nick Cassaro and John Turk of Epic Brewing (and host of the Colorado Craft Beer Show), and will include a toy drive for the Mount St. Vincent Home, pictures with Santa (Cassaro) and his Elf (Turk), and Christmas cookies. The beers on hand are supposed to meet the red-and-green theme. They include Left Hand's Sawtooth, Chainsaw, Safety Round # 3, 400 Pound Monkey, Stranger Pale and a Mint Milk Stout Firkin, and Epic's Sour Apple Saison, Brainless Raspberries, Imperial IPA, Imperial Red, Utah Sage Saison and an Escape to Colorado IPA Firkin with Kiwi.
Boulder's Upslope Brewing is launching a new series of limited-release canned beers that will only be available at its original Lee Hill location. The quarterly Lee Hill Series will begin with Barrel Aged Brown Ale, which will go on sale today in 19.2-ounce cans during a party from 5 to 9 p.m. (Cans are $10, limit of four.) The Bumper Crop food truck will be serving food, Aaron Russell will perform live music. Upslope opened a large production facility in 2013 on Flatiron Court, and has turned its Lee Hill spot into a small-batch brewery focused on experimentation and creativity. The 7.6 percent ABV Barrel Aged Brown Ale was aged in Leopold Bros. Maryland Rye Whiskey barrels for four months. It will , will be available for purchase in 19.2-ounce cans at Upslope's original Lee Hill tap room in North Boulder beginning July 17.
Former Future Brewing and its neighbor, Maria Empanada, will offer a beer and empanada pairing tonight beginning at 7 p.m. Try four of each for $18. Tickets are available at either location in person.
Saturday, July 19
Wynkoop Brewing Company will hold its annual United Tastes of Belgium event from 12:30 to 4 p.m. today featuring Belgian and Belgian-inspired beers from more than thirty breweries. There will be everything from higher-gravity one-offs to barrel-aged wild and sour ales to traditional dubbels, tripels and quads. And because the event celebrates all things Belgian, there will also be Belgian chocolate and cheese. Tickets, $30 in advance, and the full beer list are available at wynkoop.com/event/Belgium or www.imbibedenver.com/belgium. Breweries include: Duvel, Achel, Kwak, Brasserie Blaugies, Hof ten Dormaal:Great Divide, Grand Teton, Kannah Creek, Elevation, TRVE, Crazy Mountain, Oskar Blues, Perennial, Crooked Stave, Odyssey, Stillwater, Yak & Yeti, Tommyknocker, Trinity, Wynkoop, Stone, Epic, Upslope, Strange, Verboten, Avery, New Belgium, Caution, OMF, Left Hand, Wasatch, Squatters, Denver Beer Co, and Wynkoop.
Firestone Walker will celebrate three years of distribution in Colorado today at Hops & Pie by bringing out co-founder David Walker, who will be hanging out and pouring some of the California's best stuff, including 2013 Bravo XVII Anniversary, Stickee Monkey, Sucaba, Velvet Merkin, Agrestic Wild Ale, Lil Opal, Union Jack, Pivo Pils and more. The party runs from noon to close. No tickets are needed.
The Stapleton Beer Festival takes place today from 5 to 8 p.m. at The Green in Stapleton, featuring beer from thirty breweries and food from more than fifteen food trucks. General admission tickets are $35, and VIP tickets are $60. There will be live music from Matt Nasi and the Austin Young Band.
Sunday, July 20
Copper Kettle Brewing will bring its third annual A Night to Remember fundraiser to the Four Mile Historic Park today from 4 to 8 p.m. The event was created to commemorate Alex Teves and the other eleven people who were killed in the Aurora theater shootings in July 2012. Teves, then 24, was one of the first members of the Copper Kettle's Brew Club. There will be beer from twenty Colorado breweries, along with food from Biker Jim's, El Toro the Tot, Crazy Good Food and Basic Kneads. There will also be live music from Dusty Rider of The Railsplitters and Brad Murphy from Slipstream. Teves's family, as well as his fiance and friends, will be on hand, along with the families of some of the other victims. There will be a silent auction and prize giveaways throughout the night. Tickets are $25 and available at eventgrid.com. All of the proceeds will be donated to the Alexander C. Teves Foundation, which is part of the Humanex Academy, helping students who have learning disabilities and emotional and behavior disorders (Alex was a counselor who helped with the Humanex Academy).
Keep reading for more events later in July and August. Wednesday, July 23
Saison cask month continues at the Copper Kettle, which will tap a new firkin each Wednesday. Today's is Raspberry Rye Saison, brewed with rye grain and fresh raspberries. Ckrepes will be serving food at 3 p.m.
Friday, July 25
California's Sierra Nevada Brewing will take its show on the road this summer for Beer Camp Across America, an unprecedented series of festivals in several cities that will go along with a twelve-pack of twelve different collaboration beers. The nation's second largest craft brewery has invited every other craft brewery in the country (all 3,000 of them) to attend and pour their beer at one of seven stops on the tour: Chico, California (where Sierra Nevada is based)' San Diego; Denver; Chicago; Portland, Maine; Philadelphia; and Mills River, North Carolina. The Rocky Mountain/Denver edition takes place today from 5 to 10 p.m. at Civic Center Park and will include food trucks, live music and beer from more than 100 Colorado and regional breweries, as well as the twelve who are involved in the collaborations. Tickets, $65, are available at SierraNevada.com/BeerCamp (only 5,000 per venue). As for the collaboration beers, the Beer Camp Across America variety twelve-pack features collaborations with a dozen of the darlings of craft beer: Allagash, Ballast Point, Bell's, Cigar City, Firestone Walker, New Glarus, Ninkasi, Oskar Blues, Russian River, 3 Floyds and Victory, plus a beer from the Asheville Brewers Alliance. It's the first ever to contain both bottles and cans.
Saturday, July 26
Sanitas Brewing will host its own music festival beginning at 2 p.m., featuring performances by Mountain Standard Time, West Water Outlaws, the Drunken Hearts and DJ Mikey Thunder. Taking place in the brewery's backyard, there will be booths from area vendors, five food trucks and plenty of Sanitas beer. Tickets to the family-friendly Sanitas Fest, $8 in advance, are available at sanitasbrewing.com and include one free beer. VIP packages, including access to Sanitas' deck, exclusive beers, a free taco bar, will be available for $55 at the door or $45 presale.
Grimm Brothers Brewhouse will celebrate its fourth anniversary beginning at 11 a.m. today with a BBQ Competition (open to anyone; go to lovelandbeerbq.com for more information about categories and registration) and a beer garden. Grimm will tap several specialty beers to celebrate the event. A limited edition anniversary stein will be available to purchase (last year's sold out minutes after the event started).
Sunday, July 27
Avery Brewing will release the latest beer from its Barrel-Aged series (No. 22), an intriguing, 19.4 percent ABV Belgian-style beer called 5 Monks. Although the brewery says the beer started off as a quadrupel, Avery is calling it a "quintupel," because it is so high in alcohol. "The term 'sextupel' seems inappropriate alongside a congregation of monks," the brewery adds. "So quintupel, it is." Bottle sales begin at 1 p.m., although the line will form much earlier. Each twelve-ounce bottle is $12, with a limit of twelve per person, cash only. There will be other rare beers on tap starting at 11 a.m.
Tuesday, July 29
Members of the Brewers Association and American Homebrewers Association may buy tickets to the Great American Beer Festival, which takes place October 2-4, beginning today at 10 a.m. They sold out last year. They are $75 each.
Wednesday, July 30
Great American Beer Festival tickets go on sale today at 10 a.m. to the general public. They cost $80 this year and are available at Ticketmaster.com. They sold out within minutes the past two years. GABF takes place October 2-4.
Saison cask month continues at the Copper Kettle, which will tap a new firkin each Wednesday. Today's is Hibiscus Saison, brewed with fresh Hibiscus flowers. Ckrepes will be serving food at 3 p.m.
Saturday, August 2
The Colorado Brewers Guild and Imbibe Denver will present the second event in their "Lovibond series" of festivals today when they host Sesh Fest from 3 to 7 p.m at Sculpture Park in downtown Denver. The event highlights "session beers," which are typically 5 percent ABV or less. The concept of session beers was created by the British, who don't like to get hammered when they're taking a lunch break. Tickets start at $20 and are available for purchase at seshfest.com. Participants include: Black Bottle Brewery, Breckenridge Brewery, CAUTION: Brewing, Crooked Stave, Dad & Dude's Breweria, Denver Beer Co, Epic Brewing, FATE Brewing, Former Future Brewing, Great Divide, Kannah Creek Brewing, Kokopelli Beer, Left Hand, New Belgium, Odell, Pateros Creek, Ska Brewing, Station 26 Brewing, The Old Mine Cidery & Brewpub, TRiNiTY Brewing, TRVE Brewing, Upslope, Vine Street Pub & Brewery, Wonderland Brewing, and the Yak & Yeti. The Lovibond Series includes three separate events: Collaboration Fest (which took place March 22), Sesh Fest and the Fresh Hop Festival (which will take place on September 27). Each Lovibond festival focuses on a specific aspect of the brewing process and industry, according to the CBG.
Sunday, August 3
Avery Brewing will celebrate its 21st birthday -- and it's last at the brewery's original location on Arapahoe Avenue -- today from noon to 5 p.m., when it will be serving up rare and vintage beers -- including strong ales and sour/wild ales -- along with all of its flagships. There will also be live music and a commemorative glass. Tickets, $40, are available at eventbrite.com. "Our alley has served us well for 21 years. We've gone from making 800 barrels of beer a year to 50,000, from three annual beer styles to 22 and counting, from three employees to 93 and counting, and from a six-car-garage brewhouse to a series of six-car-garages," the brewery says. "We will love our alley forever, but we need to keep following our dreams." Avery will move to its massive new brewing campus in north Boulder in the summer of 2015.
Saturday, August 16
Crazy Mountain Brewery will host its fourth annual Ed Fest today from 3 to 10 p.m. at the Freedom Park soccer fields, 0450 Miller Ranch Road, in Edwards. There will be more than forty craft breweries (find the full list at edfestbeer.com) on hand, including those from inside and outside of Colorado. There will also be gourmet bites from local restaurants and food trucks, wares from Colorado purveyors, and live music by the North Mississippi Allstars. Tickets, available at edfestbeer.com, are $39 in advance, while VIP tix are $79. Proceeds benefit the Eagle Valley Land Trust, a local nonprofit.
Follow Westword's Beer Man on Twitter at @ColoBeerMan and on Facebook at Colo BeerMan