With strong cocktails and well-priced nibbles, happy hour turned out to be my favorite time of day at bubu Lowry, which I review this week. But happy hour isn’t always so happy. Earlier this summer I was meeting a friend for an early dinner at Cho77, chef-owner Lon Symensma’s casual…
Colorado governor John Hickenlooper recently demonstrated the purity of the Animas by slurping from a bottle of river water (with an iodine back). In 2013 he told a U.S. Senate committee that he once drank fracking fluid while meeting with Halliburton executives, describing the experience as “almost ritual-like.” In honor…
When a Minneapolis craft brewer revealed last week that it will make a General Mills-sponsored Wheaties beer, the story made national headlines. But cereal beers are nothing new for Black Bottle Brewery in Fort Collins, which has been working loosely with the cereal giant for the past year on several…
Sativa IPA won’t get you high, but it will almost certainly cause a healthy buzz at the Great American Beer Festival next month. The beer, made by Dad & Dudes Breweria in Aurora, is infused with cannabidiol oil, a non-psychoactive hemp extract. Although there are several hemp beers made in…
Wanna catch a buzz? There are now 309 active brewing licenses in the state of Colorado, according to the latest study released by the Colorado Brewers Guild. Although some are owned by breweries that haven’t opened yet, the numbers represent an incredibly robust scene. Add to that the fact that…
Crazy Mountain Brewery, which has grown extremely quickly since opening in the Vail Valley in 2010, has taken over Breckenridge Brewery’s former headquarters at 471 Kalamath Street – a location that has been a brewery for nearly two decades. For the time being, owners Kevin and Marisa Selvy decline to…
Chile Vodka Avocado at The Terminal Bar “It’s really important to pair cocktails with the season,” says Rae Raymond, bar manager at The Terminal Bar, located inside the newly renovated Union Station. “That’s what people want to drink at the time, and our bodies just sort of crave certain things…
Western Europe? That’s so 2006, darling. Everyone’s thinking Scandinavia these days, thanks to Frozen, sexy Nordics cropping up all over pop culture, and the trickling infiltration of Scandinavian cuisine into American dining culture. The invaders have staked their claim in Denver for close to four years now at Chef Ryan…
No one will forget the historic floods that ravaged Colorado’s Front Range in 2013 — particularly not the owners of Spirit Hound Distillers in Lyons, where three feet of water inundated the distillery that year. But at least one good thing came of the floods: Spirit Hound is celebrating the…
You’re familiar with the story: a young but powerful wizard, born with magical powers, wakes up to find out he’s in a life-and-death battle with He Who Must Not Be Named. In this case, though, we’re not talking about Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. Rather, the story is about Hogshead…
Kim Jordan, who co-founded New Belgium Brewing and turned it into the third-largest craft brewer in the nation, announced this week that she will step down as the CEO of the industry-leading Fort Collins company. Christine Perich, a New Belgium exec since 2000 and the current chief operating officer and…
So, I didn’t want to have to write this post, but there’s no way around it at this point. It is now pumpkin-beer season. This isn’t how it should have been. No, pumpkin-beer season shouldn’t start until September 1 at the earliest. But there are already a couple dozen gourd…
The Heart Beet at the MCA Cafe Visitors to MCA Denver are greeted by a striking work of art, even before entering the building. An enormous, sparkling heart, stuck through with a silver sword, rotates atop a pole jutting up from the sidewalk in front of the building’s main entrance. The heart,…
Kelsey Riley is an herbalist with her own line of skincare products, and Nick Andreson has a background in chemistry and business, but the two share a passion for gin — to the extent that they decided to start a business together. Riley and Andresen formed Strongwater last winter with…
Plonk! I went into Ace Eat Serve hoping for a nice casual meal, but soon feared that one of the hundreds of ping pong balls around would sail right into my drink. That didn’t happen, thanks to some deft wrist work, but Ace is definitely the place to expect the…
When a crew of social beer drinkers all flew into Denver from Portland earlier this summer just to taste one specific beer at Black Shirt Brewing – a beer that no longer happened to be on tap – there was only thing that co-owner and brewer Chad Miller could do:…
Denver new-brewery scene continues at a quick boil, and there are several breweries-in-planning ramping up construction for 2015 openings. One of those is Cerebral Brewing, which took possession of its beer-making equipment last week and is building out the taproom now. To get the word out, Cerebral has kicked off…
Peak 9 at the Crimson Room Many bartenders, upon dialing in a new cocktail recipe, name their drinks after things they love, with music and movies being the most common inspirations. Like many Colorado bartenders, A.J. Snowhite makes cocktails on busy weekend nights while slipping away to the mountains for mid-week…
It might seem strange that Oskar Blues, which is known mostly for its big, hoppy beers, has never offered a mainstream IPA as part of its canned lineup – and that’s not changing. Because although the Longmont-based brewery will roll out a brand-new beer, called simply Oskar Blues IPA, nationwide…
The Rio Grande margarita is a liquid Colorado landmark, along with Pike’s Peak and the Barrel Man. Frozen or on the rocks, it’s the drink that always comes up first in any discussion of the Colorado chain — including this one. Founded in 1986 as a party paradise in boozy…
Craft Beer. It’s just a fad. Or maybe not. Earlier this week, the Boulder-based Brewers Association reported that American craft breweries sold 12.2 million barrels of beer during the first half of 2015, up from 10.6 million barrels during the same period last year. In addition, as of June 30,…
A few years ago, craft canned beers were more of a novelty: Any time a brewery decided to can a new one or can one of its existing offerings, it was worthy of a news story. These days, canned craft beers are the norm, especially in summer, and new ones…
