More than 175 years ago, Jean-Baptiste Combier, a French confectioner, and his wife were making liqueurs to inject into chocolates when they began getting requests from local residents to sell the liqueurs straight. So they began bottling an orange liqueur that was, really, the world’s first triple sec. “The distillery…
James and Tina Pachorek, who own the Cheeky Monk Belgian Beer Cafe, have quietly bitten their lips over the past two years as they watched new breweries, one after another, open in Denver. Now the couple plans to jump in themselves by taking over the space next door to their…
Over the last few months, I went from the worst shape of my life to the best while continuing to eat like a food critic. Don’t punch me in the face; instead, read how I did it in this new series. It’s my job to eat out four times a…
Happy Place: EDGE Restaurant and Bar, 1111 14th Street, 303-389-3343. The Hours: Daily from 5 to 7:30 p.m. The Deals: $3 draft beers; $5 domestic bottles, wines by the glass, and well drinks; $5-8 appetizers. Were we happy? Flip the page to find out…
Last Friday night, at a pop-up speakeasy on the rooftop of Ghost Plate & Tap, Denver wine lovers had their first opportunity to sample the latest cool-kid offering from the Infinite Monkey Theorem: Monkey Shine, the winery’s brand-spanking-new keg wine. IMT certainly isn’t the first to join the burgeoning wine-on-tap…
One of the biggest bummers about the Great American Beer Festival being over is that it can be hard to find — and drink — the medal winners: Some were one-off brews that are no longer available. Others are on-draft-only options in towns a couple of hours away. Luckily, a…
So, who’s the best local startender (okay, bartender) on Twitter? The annual Denver Web Awards are right around the corner, on Wednesday, November 16, at Casselman’s, where we’ll honor this year’s creative, funny, tech-and-social savvy people of the restaurant and bar world. And, yes, we will get someone a lot…
Earlier this year, Michael Olsen tried to open another version of Hush, the nightclub he used to have in the Larimer Square spot now occupied by Wicked Garden, but Cherry Creek residents lined up in opposition to his plans to put a club in the basement of 250 Steele Street…
When the Kitchen [Next Door] opened in Boulder earlier this year, it didn’t have a single bottle of wine on the beverage list. Instead, the restaurant installed a keg system from which it pours three whites and five reds. Frasca Food & Wine’s Bobby Stuckey and Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson pursued a…
Happy Place: Highland Pacific Restaurant and Oyster Bar, 3934 West 32nd Avenue, 303-477-6644. The Hours: Monday through Saturday from 5 to 6:30 p.m. The Deals: $3 Bud Light drafts, well cocktails and wines by the glass; $1 oysters; $3-$11 appetizers. Were we happy? Flip the page to find out…
In a presentation before a group of journalists in town for the Great American Beer Festival last Friday, Tony Simmons, the owner of Pagosa Springs Brewing Company, pointed out that brewpubs often get short shrift. Since most don’t package their beers in bottles and cans, beer writers — and sometimes…
The announcements highlighting Colorado’s big wins at the Great American Beer Festival have been coming fast and furious from local breweries since the three-day event ended on Saturday. But nothing was as entertaining as the correction/clarification issued by Oskar Blues concerning its three-medal performance. Here is the correction, sent by…
Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey has asked the Colorado brewers who buy its sought-after barrels for the purposes of aging certain beers to stop using its name on their labels, and the distillery, which was bought out by New Jersey’s Proximo Spirits late last year, will no longer sell any of its…
It’s finally October, and our crisp, cooler weather serves as a harbinger of harvest season. This time of year also has our mouths watering for fall’s more luxurious, soul-satisfying menus. And you know what that means, right? Richer food calls for wines that can step up to the challenge. If…
Master Sommelier Brett Zimmerman, who took over at the Boulder Wine Merchant just over a year ago, was recently consulting on a customer’s cellar when a conundrum led to a new activity. “The client said, ‘I want to reload with a bunch of Burgundy, but I don’t get a chance…
Colorado breweries won fewer awards at this year’s Great American Beer Festival (39) than they did last year (41), but the bling was spread out more evenly between corporately owned companies, big-name independents and small or new breweries. But the biggest winner was Longmont-based Oskar Blues, which won three awards:…
I just returned from a week in Manhattan (New York, not Kansas), where I worked at the BAR 5-day program. The BAR 5-day is a masters’-level spirits and mixology course taught by six men — F. Paul Pacult, Steve Olson, Andy Seymour, David Wondrich, Doug Frost and Dale Degroff –…
As GABF parties hit full stride downtown, a small crowd gathered at Falling Rock Tap House on Friday afternoon last week, and everyone was buzzing with excitement for the main event: the reemergence of a once-iconic beer that hasn’t been made since the early 1990s. That beer was the Courage…
There are the cute (“Smokey the Beer,” Blind Tiger Brewing in Topeka, Kansas), the mysterious (“Hoodoo Voodoo IPA,” Three Creeks Brewing in Sisters, Oregon), the sexy (“Sexual Chocolate,” Foothills Brewing in Winston-Salem, North Carolina) and everything in between when it comes to beer names spotted and drank at this past…
Happy Place: Wyman’s No. 5, 2033 East Thirteenth Avenue, 303-996-0842. The Hours: Daily from 3 to 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. to midnight. The Deals: Half-priced well drinks, wines by the glass, and draft beers; half-priced select appetizers. Were we happy? Flip the page to find out…
At an extra $55 on top of the $60 you spend to get into the Great American Beer Festival, the additional cost for the ticket to the Farm-to-Table pavilion is a little hard to swallow. But each year we attend, we’re more convinced that it’s worth it: It’s a meal…
Left Hand Brewing will make a big splash tonight by becoming the first craft brewer in the United States to release a nitro beer in a bottle. Milk Stout Nitro pours like a draft beer, complete with a thick, billowy head and bubbles that cascade up from the bottom, similar…
