Have you seen a lot of natural-wood tap handles recently? So has Adam Draeger, the brewmaster at Arvada’s Yak & Yeti Brewpub, which is why he decided to replace his handmade wooden Ys (rep the double Y’s in the Yak and Yeti) with one-piece molded urethane-based handles finished with a…
Ten years ago, after Avery Brewing founder Adam Avery and Russian River co-owner Vinny Cilurzo discovered that they were each making a beer called Salvation, the two decided to shake hands and brew a collaboration beer rather than fight in court. The result of that Colorado-to-California handshake was Collaboration Not…
Last year, at the inaugural DSTILL, an event that celebrates American craft spirits and cocktails, revelers — and there were hundreds of them — quickly compared it to the Great American Beer Festival, high praise for a first year event. And now DSTILL, a joint partnership involving the Colorado Distillers…
New Belgium didn’t become the nation’s third largest craft brewer without exerting a stiff competitive punch, but the Fort Collins beer maker has always been more than just another company, imbuing everything it does with a playful spirit and a high level of conscientious thoughtfulness. In fact, that ethos is…
James and Sarah Howat will launch the past into the present when they open Former Future Brewing tomorrow on South Broadway’s Antique Row. The spot will specialize in “futuristic interpretations of historical styles,” both in its look and feel and in its beer recipes, which will incorporate both the old…
As part of its legal settlement with a similarly named homebrewing shop in Massachusetts, Denver’s Strange Brewing Company got its Facebook page back today. Strange had been using another page that it created, the cheekily-named That Brewery on Zuni, since last June when a trademark dispute between the brewery and…
Is there any liquor with a reputation as misleading as absinthe? Sure, it may be a hip, edgy cocktail ingredient today, but not long ago it was blamed for everything from Van Gogh slicing off his ear to Ernest Hemingway moving to Idaho to the L.A. Rams’ 1992 season. America’s…
Lone Tree Brewing unveiled plans last week to begin canning two of its best-selling beers, Lone Tree Peach Pale Ale and Mountain Mama Golden Lager, beginning in April. The brewery bought its own canning line and plans to distribute the beers throughout the Denver metro area, along with the bomber…
Fort Collins is home to two of Colorado’s five largest craft breweries, but there are about a dozen other breweries or breweries-in-planning there as well, a sign of a growing depth and breadth that makes Fort Collins one of the best beer towns in the country. One of those, the…
Craft beer has made major inroads in restaurants and bars over the past few years, but the industry has had trouble breaking into other venues, including sports stadiums and airlines, which need to sell huge amounts of beer very quickly. But last weekend, Southwest Airlines joined Frontier and Alaska by…
Bill Eye, an award-winning brewer who became a part owner at Prost Brewing when it opened in the spring of 2012, has resigned as brewmaster. Eye specialized in brewing German-style lagers and gained attention at Dry Dock Brewing when the Aurora company won a series of Great American Beer Festival…
Colorado has become home to a flourishing craft culture — first with breweries, and now with an increasing number of distillers. From potato vodka and botanical-packed gins, rye whiskey and whiskey made with experimental grains, to the more niche spirits like absinthe and creme de violette, the range of offerings…
A new year brings new beers, and Colorado’s breweries have already released or are just about to unveil many of them. They include: Breckenridge Brewery Ophelia, a hoppy wheat ale; Great Divide Lasso, a low-ABV IPA made with Columbus, Centennial and Cascade hops; New Belgium Rewind, an IPA brewed with…
Avery Brewing broke ground yesterday on a $27 million, 68,000-square-foot campus in north Boulder that it hopes to move to around this time next year. The brewery first submitted plans to the City of Boulder in fall 2011 — and wanted construction to be under way in 2012 — but…
Feisty Spirits is the first distillery in Fort Collins, operating a still (named Aphrodite) that produces an interesting, often experimental lineup of whiskeys (and more) on “fermentation row,” as Feisty team member Alex Mackewich affectionately calls it. After all, Funkwerks and Fort Collins Brewery are only a stone’s throw away…
Dry Dock Brewing, which opened a new, 30,000-square-foot production brewery and packaging facility in Aurora last January, said today that it had nearly quadrupled in size over the past twelve months, going from 3,273 barrels in 2012 to 12,000 barrels in 2013. It also managed to can more than two…
Everyone’s on the Denver Broncos bandwagon right now, but West Flanders Brewing in Boulder (which made news last week for naming a beer in honor of pot legalization) manged to find the line between enthusiasm and over-enthusiasm after it named a beer for the home team — only to have…
Gardiner Hammond, a former brewer at the Old Mill in Littleton, plans to open his own brewery this spring in a space that once housed Independent Records, next to the Ogden Theater on East Colfax Avenue. Part of the space was taken over by Angelo’s CDs in August, but the…
Distilleries are popping up all over Colorado, to help quench the thirst of drinkers crowding craft cocktail bars. But smaller distillers can face a challenge as they try to get their products into the hands of the bartenders who live, breathe, mix and drink booze every day. Now a new…
One of the few cocktail innovations that Italy has managed to squeeze out in the past century, the Negroni is a proud member of the select group of iconic cocktails. Like the Martini and the Old-Fashioned, it’s now mandatory in any bar’s recipe book, and a talisman of Old World…
The Denver Bicycle Cafe — which has specialized in fixing bikes, serving coffee and pouring locally-brewed beers – will put a little less emphasis on the coffee and little more on the beer starting this week when it changes its structure and its hours. Beginning on February 1, the cool,…
Are Denver’s dives an endangered species? Over the past year, two of the dives featured on last year’s list of the dozen best dive bars have lost their divey status — one, the Hill-Top, closed and just reopened this past weekend as the Rocky Top Tavern, and the Squire, while…
