Best Beer Visits Outside Denver

For half a day while on my GABF Beercation (which I recapped my GABF session here, and another day we visited just Denver city brewers here with Beer Tasting in Denver: Great Divide, Crooked Stave, First Draft), we took a beer visits outside Denver excursion. We drove from Denver to the Longmont area to visit two brewery tasting rooms, and then on the way back went to Boulder area for a brewery to have lunch and more beer. Our stops for beer visits outside Denver were

Left Hand Brewing

Left Hand Brewing is best known for their Milk Stout, which is a creamy (especially here from their taps) chocolate coffee beer flavors. They have been around for quite a while – more than 20 years as they started in 1993.

What I also know them for is I think being one of the most thoughtfully designed beer tasting rooms I’ve ever visited. Their tasting room includes a patio area that faces out into their parking lot near the food trucks (Left Hand does not offer food but the food trucks too) and if you face the right way and it’s clear, a glimpse perhaps of the Rockies.

There is also a small area by that patio showcasing local artwork, a small merchandise store, and then it opens up into a long main bar that proudly displays certificates of various bartenders who have gotten beer cicerone status and has two areas to pull taps, plus that’s where the cask conditioned beers are in the back of the main bar. The TV displays upcoming events, varying from their monthly free yoga session to celebrating/promoting women in beer with Ales 4 FemAles.

Go past the main bar and find another backroom with more taps and seats by a stage area,

There is a lovely back outdoor patio that also looks out into some cornhole too.

I love the detail of the “handy” custom fence, as well as the left hand in other design motifs throughout the tasting room. It really says something to me that a brewery puts this much attention to detail to their environment.

When you get a flight of beer, they thoughtfully provide laminated cards to help mark which beer is which as well as provide descriptions.

You can order sampler sizes in a flight of 4 or individually.

In the restroom, there is a little handle so you can open the bathroom door with your foot instead of having to use a dirty door handle. I like the way they still celebrate beer even in their bathroom stalls with their stalls showcasing grains.

At only a 45 minute drive from Denver, Left Hand is definitely worth a visit, and while you’re out here and making your way back to Denver, there are 2 other stops I recommend…

Oskar Blues

At only a 10 minute drive away from Left Hand, it makes sense that if you’re out here, you might as well visit Oskar Blues Brewery. There are two possible places to visit- either their restaurant/foodery locations, which offers beer and food (Home Made Liquids and Solids offers Cajun and Creole food as well as burgers, bbq, and pizzas, while the other Longmont location of CyclHops focuses on a celebration of bicycling as well as tacos and tequila with their beer, and third foodery CHUBurger specializes in burgers and their beer) or you can go to the brewery and canning location and tasting room, the Tasty Weasel.

We went to the Tasty Weasel as we were saving lunch to be at our next stop. All these locations have their attitude of laid back casual.

At the Tasty Weasel, as soon as you walk in to your left you can watch their can production, and some skeeball.
 

Meanwhile, the main long bar area with lots of tables and huge patio area (you can see a glimpse behind the sampler tray) expresses their attitude of completely laid back, like a mix between industrial hard working brewery and canning facility but the bro-ness fun of a friendly frat house. Notice the tons of stickers in support of their fellow brewery friends, and the creepy mannequin in the window looking into their tanks.

Make sure you check not just beers listed on the main board, but the smaller Specialty Beers board on the right side.

You will also see that they are really proud to totally use cans instead of bottles – even their tap handles proudly showcase this.

As always, I suggest getting tasters of beer in order to sample the most. You will also notice they have big bins of peanuts for you to enjoy for free as you drink their beer. My favorite here is the Ten Fidy, with second place going to Old Chub.

Tasty Weasel doesn’t serve any food themselves, though they will often have a tent from a food vendor onsite grilling up sausages for instance – if you want food with your Oskar Blues beer visit one of their foodery locations as Tasty Weasel is focused more on being a tasting room.

Avery Brewing

With 30 some taps, Avery Brewing has the biggest and nicest facilities of the 3 beer visits outside Denver.

They just opened a new facility earlier this year which now features two giant tasting rooms – one on the first floor outside where you can sit on the grass and patio furniture enjoying the outside. It has lost some of the coziness of the smaller original brewpub all wood location, but greatly expanded the space in the new grander warehouse-like building.

Or go upstairs past the merchandise store to where there is a full fledged brewpub restaurant with food created with matching their beers in mind.
    

Their offerings of beer are a large variety from German style to Belgians to sours and tarts with Brett or aged in barrels that include for instance

• Seducer – a sessionalbe apple-beer hybrid
• Liliko’i Kepolo – a witbier with tropical passionfruit
• 10lb Strawberry Sour – a Belgian style wit with 10 pounds of fresh strawberries per keg and then soured in neutral oak barrels
• White Rascal Belgian Style White Ale – unfiltered and spiced with coriander and Curacao orange peel
• San Juan Sour – Ross and Rachel’s wedding beer inspired after their favorite Efrain’s cocktail the “Pink Cadillac Margarita”
• Nora – an intensely sour pumpkin ale aged for 9 months in neutral wine barrels
• III Dolia – a sour blend aged in a combination of Maderia, Cabernet Sauvignon and Carcavelos barrels which are the rarest and most expensive barrels Avery has very filled

Some of the food we enjoyed for our lunch included

• Isabelle Farm Tomato Salad with Heirloom and Sungold Tomatoes, Munson Farm Corn, avocado, farm greens, croutons, manchego and shallot vin
• Smothered Cheese Curds and Potatoes, with cheese curds, spiced fingerlings, and andouille gravy
• Cheeseburger with ground chuck, smoked gouda, sherry greens, pickles, stout onions, and choice of a side (here you see pork belly green beans
• Sloppy Seitan with barbecue seitan, pickled vegetables on a sesame bun with a choice of side (here spiced fingerlings)

Of all the breweries in Denver we visited, this was my favorite. I would call this a must visit every time I’m in the area, even on revisits.

Which of these three breweries style of tasting room appeals the most to you and why?

I’ll still pick Portland as the winningest beercation city in the US though. 🙂

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Visiting Denver for Beer Vacation / Beercation and GABF in September 2015

• My recap of GABF 2015 with tips and photos
• Beer Tasting in Denver: Great Divide, Crooked Stave, First Draft
• Best Beer Visits Outside Denver
• Denver Beer Vacation: Celebrate GABF outside of GABF