Telluride Brewing will bring its gold medal-winning beer to Boulder/Denver

Telluride Brewing, which just won back-to-back gold medals for its Face Down Brown at the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup, plans to start distributing its first canned beer, Bridal Veil Rye Pale Ale, in the Boulder area in early November and in Denver by the end...

By Jonathan Shikes

October 26, 2012

[
        {
          "name": "Air - MediumRectangle - Inline Content - Mobile Display Size",
          "component": "12017618",
          "insertPoint": "2",
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "2"
        },{
          "name": "Editor Picks",
          "component": "17242653",
          "insertPoint": "4",
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "1"
        },{
          "name": "Inline Links",
          "component": "18838239",
          "insertPoint": "8th",
          "startingPoint": 8,
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "7",
          "maxInsertions": 25
        },{
          "name": "Air - MediumRectangle - Combo - Inline Content",
          "component": "17261320",
          "insertPoint": "8th",
          "startingPoint": 8,
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "7",
          "maxInsertions": 25
        },{
          "name": "Inline Links",
          "component": "18838239",
          "insertPoint": "8th",
          "startingPoint": 12,
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "11",
          "maxInsertions": 25
        },{
          "name": "Air - Leaderboard Tower - Combo - Inline Content",
          "component": "17261321",
          "insertPoint": "8th",
          "startingPoint": 12,
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "11",
          "maxInsertions": 25
        }
      ]

Telluride Brewing, which just won back-to-back gold medals for its Face Down Brown at the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup, plans to start distributing its first canned beer, Bridal Veil Rye Pale Ale, in the Boulder area in early November and in Denver by the end of 2012 or early 2013. That will be followed by Face Down Brown, which is still getting federal label approval, and then Tempter IPA.

Not bad for a brewery that's only one year old.

"Originally we planned to make Tempter the second beer we canned, but then after winning, we thought it would be crazy not to do the Brown with all the attention we got for it," says Telluride co-owner Chris Fish, who began his brewing career in 1999 at the Mountain Sun in Boulder. "I have a lot of friends and family in Boulder and I've always wanted to see my beer in Liquor Mart and other stores up there."

Fish describes Face Down as a hybrid between a hoppy American-style pale ale and an English brown. "It's a bold balance between the two. It was one of the beers I had in my head and it turned out to be right where I wanted it to be when it first came out."

Telluride Brewing, which Fish opened last October with Tommy Thacher, had been manually canning its beers until recently, when they bought an automated system from Boulder's Wild Goose Engineering. "There weren't enough hours in the day to keep up," Fish says.

Elite Brands of Colorado will handle the distribution of the cans and of kegs of beer to liquor stores and restaurants in Boulder and then in Denver.

Follow Westword's Beer Man on Twitter at @ColoBeerMan and on Facebook at Colo BeerMan

KEEP WESTWORD FREE... Since we started Westword, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Denver, and we'd like to keep it that way. Your membership allows us to continue offering readers access to our incisive coverage of local news, food, and culture with no paywalls. You can support us by joining as a member for as little as $1.