On another venture into the suburbs of metro Denver, I checked out Sideways Sports Lounge in Arvada with a friend who lives pretty close to the bar, which is at 9134 West 88th Avenue in a nondescript strip mall next to a liquor store and “Dog Spa” (so next time my dog needs…
Things are little quiet on the beer scene this week. That’s because hundreds of Colorado brewery owners and representatives are in Washington, D.C. for the annual Craft Brewers Conference, which takes place in a different city each year. Because of its location this time around, the trade show and conference,…
The makers of Budweiser and Coors have been coming after independent craft breweries for years, turning out beers that compete in the “craft” category without saying who brews them. Head to just about any Major League ballpark, for instance, and you’ll find Shock Top Belgian White or Blue Moon lurking…
Williams & Graham has long hosted some of this country’s cocktail kingpins for bar takeovers, letting them change the menus, music and door policy for a night to give Denver a taste of what’s happening on the beverage front in other cities. But this year, Sean Kenyon, who also owns…
With a thundering noise that will strike fear into the hearts of small beer makers in the River North neighborhood, Fort Collins-based Odell Brewing, the state’s third largest independent craft brewery, will take a King Kong-sized step into Denver next year, opening a huge, two-story taproom and pilot brewery at…
Oskar Blues, which was founded in Lyons and is now headquartered in Longmont, has been looking for a spot in Boulder for at least five years. The state’s second largest craft brewery thought it had found one in 2012 in a historic Union Pacific train depot there, but the deal…
Before LoDo-sized crowds came to RiNo, Sudhir Kudva stumbled upon an interesting opportunity to open a bar in the now-booming neighborhood. At the time, the 2600 block of Larimer Street and most of the surrounding area was home only to warehouses, liquor stores and a few outposts of nightlife at…
As competition heats up in the craft-beer world, medium-sized and large breweries continue to look for ways to stay relevant and to ring up sales. Sometimes that means producing beers that you might not expect. Such is the case with two new beers that were revealed in the past few…
Rohit Mukherjee owns a couple of local liquor stores, and late last year, he began thinking about a boozy gap in the market; namely, there was no brand of alcoholic ice cream available on liquor store shelves. “I’d seen the idea done in a shopfront…but we wanted people to be…
While the rest of the Señor Bear restaurant team went to Peru to study food, barman Shawn Williams (formally of Sarto’s and El Diablo) hit up Nicaragua and Cuba to garner some cocktail inspiration for the soon-to-open Highland restaurant. His takeaway? Rum — lots of rum — as well as…
It’s mud season — that awkward time of year between skiing and camping when the skies don’t know whether to snow or shine, and locals keep a pair of flip-flops next to their boots by the front door. But don’t be fooled: April is a great month to drink craft beer in the Denver. Here are your ten best bets.
The Capitol Hill Tavern is definitely a neighborhood bar in the sense that it is almost hidden in a residential part of Capitol Hill, on a quiet block of Logan Street between 12th and 13th Avenues. Despite being in the heart of one of Denver’s most popular, classic neighborhoods, it’s…
Andres Gil Zaldana is a beer enthusiast, but hasn’t worked in the beer world. He’s been commuting back and forth to Colorado over the past year but hasn’t lived here. He knows how to work with people, but doesn’t know most of the players in the state’s craft beer industry…
Last month, we shared the news that the former Kitty’s South adult theater had been purchased with the goal of turning the 100-year-old building at 119 South Broadway into Archetype Distilling. The redevelopment of the building is now underway, and artist renderings have given us a glimpse into what the…
The craft-beer industry has begun feeling the effects of a long-awaited competitive shakeout — layoffs, mergers, declining numbers — but the Boulder-based Brewers Association, which represents the nation’s small and independent craft breweries, was still able to report mildly encouraging numbers for 2016. Also encouraging: the events in our beer calendar.
Beer gets the majority of boozy attention over wine here in Denver, possibly because there’s very little wine made in Colorado — and Coloradans love their locally made products. But some local business owners have wine on their minds and are trying to showcase boutique wines from around the world…
Big beer fests aren’t easy to pull off. They require enormous logistical coordination, adherence to strict alcohol regulations, management of a huge number of people and deep understanding of a niche audience. Over the years, the granddaddy of these events, the Great American Beer Festival, fought with these issues as…
Nick Rellas and Justin Robinson founded Drizly in Boston in 2012 with the goal of making booze shopping easier by partnering with liquor stores to have beer, wine and spirits delivered straight to the homes of Drizly app users. Denver, apparently, has embraced the concept with gusto; numbers over St…
I’ve spent a fair bit of time at the Horseshoe Lounge. My old roommate is a regular who invites me there for a drink frequently, and I’ve been there on dates. I also once found myself there for a Meetup group that my friend was a part of — I…
In previous years, the Colorado Brewers Guild had asked the breweries participating in Collaboration Fest to hold off on tapping their beers until after the festival — in order to keep the surprise. But in its fourth iteration, the nonprofit, which represents more than two hundred Colorado craft breweries, decided…
Seven months after longtime Colorado Brewers Guild director John Carlson stepped down in the midst of a dispute among its brewery members, the nonprofit organization has hired a new leader. Washington, D.C. attorney Andres Gil Zaldana will take over as executive director of the Guild, which advocates for and represents…
With an amazing depth and breadth of breweries, Fort Collins is one of the oldest and best craft beer towns, not just in Colorado, but anywhere in the United States. There are roughly twenty breweries in operation there, including New Belgium and Odell, which are among the top fifty largest…
