Vine Street Pub taps its first beer, Number One, for American Craft Beer Week

The Vine Street Pub & Brewery will release its first-ever beer brewed on location in Denver today as part of American Craft Beer Week (get all your ACBW info here). Number One, a Belgian-style Trippel made with Golden Naked Oats and Belgian candy sugar, was brewed in early April. The beer, at 9 percent ABV, will be tapped at 4:20 p.m.

After four years, Vine Street finally got its brewing license on April 4 and brewed Number One the following week; Vine Street also started selling beer to go that day.

On Thursday, Vine Street and its sister locations in Boulder — the Mountain Sun and the Southern Sun — will tap Fruit Cake, a Belgian Strong Dark Ale brewed with dried mission figs and Turkish apricots. The 9.2 percent ABV beer was aged in rum barrels for three months; it will be released at 4:20 p.m., also as part of ACBW.

And on Friday, the three pubs will tap the first batch of 2012 Prime Time Pilsner, a pre-Prohibition-style pilsner brewed with flaked maize and Hallertau and Saaz hops. This one “is a light- to medium-bodied lager with with an assertive floral and spicy hop character,” the brewery says. It will be tapped at opening.

Vine Street’s new brewery is located in a 3,500-square-foot space behind the dining room. It can crank out 5,000 barrels of beer a year (at capacity), about 50 percent more than its sibling locations combined. That capacity will also allow Mountain Sun to offer kegs of its beers to outside accounts on a regular basis for the first time.

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