Best New Brewery With Old-School Traditions 2019 | Dos Luces Brewery | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best New Brewery With Old-School Traditions

Dos Luces Brewery

When it comes to corn, the past year has been the best of times and the worst of times for beer. The worst came with Bud Light's disastrous Super Bowl commercial blasting corn syrup in its competitors' brands...and the #corntroversey that followed. The best came with the elevation of chicha — a pre-Columbian blue-corn-based fermented beverage — into the national spotlight, thanks in part to Dos Luces Brewery and the corny focus of owner Judd Belstock. The brewery itself — and, yes, it is a brewery, because chicha and its cousin, the maguey sap-based pulque, are indeed beers — is one of the most beautiful and interesting spaces in Denver. And the liquid? Let's just say you need to try it to understand it, and once you do, it's hard not to be a fan. The chicha varieties are light and fruity, as they are brewed with everything from passion fruit, strawberry, lime and pumpkin to chile, cacao nibs, cloves and cinnamon.

Best Brewery in an Italian Restaurant

Liberati Osteria & Oenobeers

Liberati Osteria defies classification. It shrugs off convention and laughs at categorization. Is this an Italian restaurant in a brewery or the other way around? Are the beers themselves also wines? Is this traditional Italian cuisine or a modern twist? Oh, and who makes savory cannolis filled with fish rather than ricotta, anyway? Luckily, the answers don't matter — only the experience does. Liberati not only turns out its own housemade fresh mozzarella, bread, salumi, sausage and gelato, but it's also turning brewing on its head with beer/wine hybrids that owner Alex Liberati calls oenobeers. And they will trick and delight all of your senses as you smell and taste these creations, all of which are brewed with both grapes and grains. But don't let it bother you: By the end of the evening, you won't care about the difference anymore.

Best Brewery in a Coffee Shop

Novel Strand Brewing Company

Novel Strand Brewing Company

With its big windows, potted plants and laptop-toting customers, Novel Strand feels more like a community center/coffee shop than a brewery. And it actually is a coffee shop for most of the day: Queen City Collective Coffee turns out steaming mugs from this adorable corner location in the Baker neighborhood all morning and afternoon. But in the back, the beating heart of the new brewery pumps out beer — really good beer. Balanced and elegant, with an easy likability, Novel Strand's brews are mostly hoppy (though there are some other styles) but very approachable. In the evening, the brewery turns into a cozy neighborhood spot, complete with food trucks.

Best Brewery in a Sandwich Joint

The Grateful Gnome Sandwich Shoppe & Brewery

Molly Martin

Beer is America's workhorse beverage, and sandwiches are its workhorse meal. Both have been taken apart, deconstructed, reconstructed, improved on, and sometimes over-thought and overwrought. But not at the Grateful Gnome. At this casual brewery/deli/sports bar, you'll find solid, straightforward beers like a blonde, a brown, a weiss and an IPA, along with a few simple variations like the session stout, the petite barleywine and the hibiscus saison. You'll also find a massive list of classic sandwiches — chicken parm, Taylor ham, turkey club, capicola and ham — done so perfectly that they'll end up in your sexy food dreams. The Gnome is Gno joke.

Best Brewery in a Strip Mall

Baere Brewing Company

You can find breweries in just about any kind of building in Colorado — big and small, a century old or just a few weeks new. There are former hotels, auto shops and churches, an airplane hangar and a Buddhist temple. There are farmhouses, firehouses and schoolhouses, business parks, and, yes, strip malls. Probably no brewery has embraced that strip-mall ethos quite like Baere Brewing, however. Squarely in the middle of what is, sorry, a pretty ugly retail strip along Broadway, Baere tongue-in-cheekily brews a beer called Strip Mall Pale Ale and describes its location thus: "Next to Dunkin Donuts; across from 7-11. A great place to hang out while: doing laundry at Cycles; getting your car washed at Waterworks; preening at Paris Nails; having coffee at Sugar Bakeshop." Baere's beer, though, is anything but nondescript. While you can order traditional styles, like a brown, a saison, a dunkel and an IPA, give some of the more exotic beers a try, like the mixed-culture saison, the wild ales and the Berliner weisse.

Best Beer in a Bag...in a Box

Primitive Beer

Matt Peck @hopternal

Passion projects are typically full of vim and vigor, coming in fully carbonated and ready to bubble over. Brandon and Lisa Boldt's project is certainly full of vim and vigor, but carbonation is not in the equation — which might be considered a little strange in the beer world. Last April the couple, who both have full-time jobs at other breweries, opened Primitive Beer, a small blending facility and taproom that turns out uncarbonated sour lambic-style ales. Most of these unusual Belgian-style beers are aged in wooden puncheons for nine months to three years, and you can drink them by the glass or by the pitcher — or you can take them home in plastic bags secured inside a box. Yep, that's weird, too, but delicious, and also part of an old Belgian tradition. Wanna get really wild? Take the bag out of the box and give it a slap before drinking right from the nozzle. The gorgeous taproom is only open four days a month, so plan ahead.

Best Vegan-Friendly Brewery

Alternation Brewing Company

Alternation Brewing takes the cake for best vegan-friendly brewery without even serving food. Even though Alternation doesn't have a kitchen of its own, Wong Way Veg, Vegan Van, Migration Taco, Veggie Yeti and other plant-friendly food trucks are always around serving meat-free grub. Vegan events, such as dairy-free-cheese and beer pairings, beer dinners and vegan meetup groups, are hosted here as well. For its For the Animals milk stout, Alternation swaps in almond milk for the traditional lactose that gives the style its creaminess; the vegan-friendly twist has been done in many variations, including candy cane, gingerbread, Oreo, s'more and salted caramel.

Best Cidery

Haykin Family Cidery

The Unfound Door

You don't need a fancy tasting room to produce good cider. You just need good apples, a press and the patience to polish your craft over years of fruit harvests. Daniel and Talia Haykin learned about making cider from Colorado apples first, perfecting their recipes at home and winning awards along the way. Since opening their Aurora cidery in 2017, the couple has continued to win fans with single-apple varietals and blends from specific growers that have the complexity of wine and the terroir of Colorado's orchards. Visit the bare-bones Haykin tasting room to experience flavors ranging from butter to banana to rich tropical fruits and from tart to semi-sweet, or pick up a corked bottle at a specialty liquor store to pair with your favorite home-cooked meals. Even some of Denver's most lauded eateries are catching on, so you can sip Haykin cider along with food from a growing list of chefs.

Readers' Choice: Stem Ciders

Best Colorado Distillery

Leopold Bros.

Although being nominated for a James Beard Award two years running already speaks highly of Leopold Bros., it's the careful creation of its products that's behind the Denver distillery's consistent excellence. No matter what kind of booze you crave, there's something for everyone, from gin to whiskey to fruit spirits. Brothers Scott and Todd Leopold even make an absinthe, an alpine liqueur and an aperitivo, and they use local ingredients for many of their products. For over a decade, Leopold Bros. has continued to elevate the Colorado spirits scene, and we can't wait to taste what the future brings.

Readers' Choice: Mythology Distillery

Best New Distillery

The Block Distilling Co.

Molly Martin

When brothers Kraig and Kameron Weaver opened the Block Distilling Co. with co-owner Michelle Flake at the end of 2017, the focus was on bringing seasonal gins and a three-grain vodka to the market. Each small batch gets handmade right in the industrial-meets-artsy RiNo space, and while the lineup is small so far, it's growing. Aside from gin and vodka, Block also plans to release a vermouth-style spirit made with grape skins from the neighboring Infinite Monkey Theorem. As warmer weather approaches, think about trying the Summer Gin, a citrus-forward tipple perfect for hot days and lounging by the pool.

Best Of Denver®

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