Pumpkin beers. Love ’em or hate ’em, they are becoming more prevalent every year — and hitting liquor store shelves earlier and earlier. In fact, there were several varieties available in mid-July despite the fact that people were still lighting up leftover fireworks. Now that it’s September and the cool…
It’s harvest season, and pumpkins and peaches aren’t the only things making their way into beers. Breweries are putting together and releasing their annual fresh hop — or wet hop — beers using hops from both Colorado and Washington. The point of these beers is to capture the flavor of…
Benjamin Dallas has been an artist for most of his life — working in what he calls the “dirty modern impressionistic” vein, to be exact. He loves the gratification he gets from using heavy paint knifes to produce landscapes — and from watching people take in his work. One Western-themed…
Former Future Brewing, which will open its doors on South Broadway this fall, is the latest small Denver brewery to offer paid memberships as a way to raise money and build support from locals who are willing to pay to be part of an exclusive beer club. But the brewery,…
Longmont is already one of Colorado’s craft beer meccas. The town is home to two of the state’s biggest breweries, Left Hand and Oskar Blues, as well as the Pumphouse brewpub and two suds-centered restaurants operated by Oskar Blues. But over the next few months, the Boulder County burg will…
The Great American Beer Festival is the biggest and best sudstravaganza in the world. This year, the sold-out fiesta will take place October 10-12 and feature 626 breweries pouring an astounding 3,159 beers. But GABF is just the start. Beginning on Monday, and continuing all week, breweries, bars, restaurants and…
Two well-known out-of-state brewers are invading Colorado this month. Speakeasy Ales and Lagers, a sixteen-year-old brewery from San Francisco started pouring at a few bars around town this week and should follow up with bottles of some of its flagship beers, like Big Daddy IPA and Prohibition Ale, sometime soon…
As Westword’s Ask the Bartender columnist, I’ve talked with many bartenders for Cafe Society’s “Behind the Bar” series, posing numerous questions to Denver’s top bartenders…and often receiving the same answers: “I love chartreuse,” or “I’m really into smoked cocktails/barrel aging/bottled cocktails.” See also: A bartender by any other name…is still…
Epic Brewing, which started making beer at its huge new Denver facility in July, has even more good news for fans of its brainless and off-kilter beers. The Salt Lake City-based brewery will use three 60-hectoliter wooden barrels — called foeders — that it just bought from New Belgium Brewing…
The British have invented many things that keep us cool: a Scotsman named William Cullen designed the first artificial refrigeration system; our friends across the pond continue to send us the bone-chilling English breeze; and a delightful, red-tinted drink called Pimm’s Cup has been a summer refresher since the 1800s…
So many breweries wanted to be a part of the Great American Beer Festival this year that all of the spots filled within two hours on July 9, a rapid sellout that stunned both organizers and the brewers, leaving 375 would-be attendees on a waiting list. But the Boulder-based Brewers…
New Belgium Brewing, which has been making beer in Fort Collins for 22 years, plans to update the look of its beer labels beginning in 2014. The new designs will take some of the “iconic and playful watercolor imagery” that the brewery has used and update it “through a modern…
Marty Jones, who has been one of Colorado’s foremost craft beer ambassador’s for more than a decade and the chief idea man for the Wynkoop Brewing Company since 2009, will leave the brewery this week to pursue a career as an independent consultant. “I had a lovely time at Wynkoop,…
Great Divide Brewing, which has grown so much over the past five years that it is bursting at the seams, is targeting a new spot in the River North neighborhood where it can continue to brew the boundary-pushing beers it has been making since 1994. The brewery has asked the…
Update: Crooked Stave owner Chad Yakobson says the What the Funk festival isn’t intended to compete directly with GABF, but is merely a way for some of the breweries who were on the festival waitlist — or who don’t make enough beer to serve in the hall — to be…
As Westword’s Ask the Bartender columnist, I’ve talked with many bartenders for Cafe Society’s “Behind the Bar” series, posing numerous questions to Denver’s top bartenders…and often receiving the same answers: “I love chartreuse,” or “I’m really into smoked cocktails/barrel aging/bottled cocktails.” See also: A bartender by any other name…is still…
UPDATE: We have a winner of our Fermentation Festival & Market contest, in which we asked Cafe Society readers to answer this question: How many pounds of Napa cabbage did Dae Gee Korean BBQ turn into kimchi during the month of July? Congrats to D.M.C, who guessed 365; the actual…
Diebolt Brewing opened last weekend as Denver’s newest small craft brewery, serving up beers and camaraderie in the Sunnyside neighborhood. The brewery plans to hold a grand opening event during the Great American Beer Festival, which returns to town October 10-12, but it will have some company by then when…
Peaches aren’t the only Western Slope product heading east over the mountains these days. Kannah Creek Brewing in Grand Junction has just begun distributing two of its bottled beers, Lands End Amber and Standing Wave Pale Ale, to Denver for the first time. Eventually Republic National Distributing will help Kannah…
Since opening the Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project in 2010, Chad Yakobson has done things his own way, pushing Colorado’s craft-beer scene forward with his brewing technique, his chosen style of beers, his collaborations and his brewery-less taproom. But his latest innovative leap will actually be a step into the…
Welkome to the Party. That’s the slogan for Comrade Brewing, which plans to open in southeast Denver next year with “back-to-basics” beers and a tongue-in-cheek nod to Communism. “People talk a lot about the camaraderie in the craft-beer industry. It’s a very friendly community, so that is actually the theme,”…
By choosing to start up a new brewery in River North, Zach and Rachel Rabun are either crazy or brilliant. “We’re not sure about that ourselves,” Zach says. The couple recently announced plans to open Mockery Brewing at 3501 Delgany Street in a neighborhood that already has five operating (or…
