See also: - Denver Beer and Bacon Festival slideshow - Justin Brunson will open Old Major -- a swine, wine and seafood restaurant -- in Highland - Do bacon and beer really go together? Find out at the Denver Bacon and Beer Fest - Top five reasons why bacon will never be over
Last night, nearly 900 bacon barons and baronesses get slabbed...with swine at Denver's first Bacon and Beer Festival, a blow-out bash, organized by Eat Boston, Denver off the Wagon and Forkly, that sizzled at Mile High Station. The porkorific bonanza, which also included craft beers from some of the state best breweries -- Crooked Stave, Strange, Ska, Avery, Prost, Hogshead Brewery, Wynkoop/Breckenridge, Oksar Blues and several others -- pimped bacon in every guise imaginable, not to mention elaborate bacon-centric table displays, some of which would make a pig snort rainbows and unicorns.
Some of the culinary highlights: Uncle's Chinese bacon ramen, tucked into take-out containers and served with chopsticks and plastic baggies of spice powder; Blackbelly Catering's bacon and pork belly Reuben; Oskar Blues Brewery's caramel bacon studded with pralines; Euclid Hall's smoke confit pork belly with bacon-infused whiskey and eggnog whip; the bacon and goat cheese tart from the Corner House, slated to open before the end of the year; and the fantastic dry-cured, thick-cut bacon strips from Denver Bacon Company, the new company that Justin Brunson, owner-chef of Masterpiece Deli and the forthcoming Old Major, recently launched after nearly two years of pig dreaming.
Brunson, who formed the company with his business partner and friend Eric Clayman, is currently pimping his bacon at Masterpiece, and, he told me, King Soopers is also interested in carrying it -- and it's easy to see why: This isn't just bacon; it's Godly bacon, sweet, smoked with peachwood and effervescently porky.
I was part of the swine-centric crowd last night, stuffing bacon down my gullet like a heathen, and, of course, took a pig's pen worth of photos, which you can view on the following pages. In addition, we've also got a bacon-and-beer slide show up to rub your snout in the revelry.
Bring on the bacon!
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