Beercation Archives - Pechluck's Food Adventures

Denver Beer Vacation: Celebrate GABF outside of GABF

November 17, 2015 by Pechluck Leave a Comment

Even though you may not have tickets to a session of GABF, during GABF week in Denver there is so much going on with special tappings all over town that you can have an amazing time trying new beers from all over the US without even stepping into the convention center. Here’s a look at some of the hubs for outside GABF activities to check out.

You can also consider this a list of places to sample a huge variety of beers from different breweries with their many taps in the downtown Denver area, whether GABF is happening or not. Perhaps you are on a Denver beer vacation and want to only stop at one or a few places where you can get a big buffet of beer options all in one sitting? Then this is your list.
Snifter of Avery beer

Tap Takeovers at World of Beer

World of Beer is a franchise with three locations in Colorado and one in Renton, Washington. Even without the special tap takeover when we visited, World of Beer offers 500+ beers. You read that right, more than 500 beers!
The tap handles during the Avery Tap Takeover at World of Beer, Lodo

And, they open from lunch until evening, so you don’t have to necessarily wait until after work when most bars open – great if you’re say, on vacation like I was. The beer menu is well organized into styles with helpful descriptions to help you make sense of their selection.
Avery Tap Takeover during GABF at World Beer, Lodo location on 1555 Blake Street

The 500 beers includes bottles and drafts, and I focused mostly on the drafts.
Chalkboard menu during the Avery Tap Takeover at World of Beer, Lodo

In particular, during my visit there was an Avery Brewing tap takeover with almost all of its year-round and seasonal beer. I loved the Avery Tectum Et Elix Barrel Aged #26, a funky American Wild with earthy flavors soured with Pediococcus and aged in cabernet barrels for 9 months, and the Avery Uncle Jacob’s Stout, an Imperial Stout at 17.4% but so smooth.
Avery Tectum Et Elix Barrel Aged #26, a funky American Wild with earthy flavors soured with Pediococcus and aged in cabernet barrels for 9 months Avery Uncle Jacob's Stout, an Imperial Stout at 17.4%

Also available at World of Lodo on our visit was Utah’s Wasatch Brewing with brewers and swag for their annual Polygamy Party and some beers from Coronado Brewing and Cigar City.
Wasatch Brewery from Utah was also present with swag and brewers to promote their beer

World of Beer also offers tavern food, with a dozen some appetizers, flatbreads, salads, burgers and sandwiches. One of the recommended starters is their German Pretzel, they have a cool way of presenting their giant Bavarian pretzel served with housemade mustard and for a little extra, housemade beer cheese sauce. That’s a regular snifter glass for size comparison there in the photo. I didn’t have room for dessert, but was tempted by their beer infused Belgian Waffle S’mores with toasted marshmallow, graham cracker crumbles and Kahlúa fudge sauce.
The impressively sized pretzel with cheese and mustard is served on hanging to better show fof it's size at World of Beer, Lodo

World of Beer offers happy hour as well as “Beerunch” – that’s right, a beer brunch that includes breakfast and unlimited bloody mary, mimosa, and beermosa bottomless booze brunch special (with food item), and a build your own bloody station. On their menu besides beer, they also had some interesting shots: Cinnamon Toast Crunch with Fireball and Rumchata, Irish Breakfast with Jameson, Butterscotch Schnapps and OJ, Baby Guinness with Patron XO and Bailey’s Irish Cream, and Duck Fart with Crown Royal, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Kahlua… and more
Some of the Shots available - Cinnamon Toast Crunch with Fireball and Rumchata, Irish Breakfast with Jameson, Butterscotch Schnapps and OJ, Baby Guinness with Patron XO and Bailey's Irish Cream, and Duck Fart with Crown Royal, Bailey's Irish Cream and Kahlua... and more

So if you are looking for a great variety of craft beer with food, and maybe also a bunch of TVs available to watch a game, World of Beer is a viable option that can satisfy many tastes of beer and food with a big selection.
Various collected tap handles Poetry: Roses are red, Beer is good, Poems are hard BEER

Tap Takeovers at Freshcraft

Freshcraft, only half a block away in Lodo, offers only 28 taps but the food menu here is more refined, focused specifically on pairing well with beer. Serving lunch and dinner, dishes here sound tasty like a Deviled Pork Belly Wrap with spicy pork belly confit with apples, cabbage, carrots, scallions, jack cheese, and a red wine mustard BBQ sauce; or consider a Cheese Crusted Iowa Style Fried Pork Tenderloin sandwich at lunch. There is even support for a good option for a vegetarian diet, such as their cocoa marinated crimini mushrooms tacos, or quinoa nicoise with Parmesan-crusted quinoa cakes served with fresh greens, cured egg, marinated olives, green beans, tomatoes, and herbed potatoes. (.
Freshcraft, featuring 28 some taps

When we visited, their tap takeover I specifically came for was Upslope Brewing Company, where I was able to try special tappings of their beers such as

Irish Red Ale- GABF Pro-Am competition Entry
Imperial Saison with Merlot Grapes, the Upslope 6th Anniversary Ale
Yirgacheffe Coffee Dubel, an Upslope and Dragonfly Roasters collaboration
Lychee IPA with Azacca Hops, an Upslope and Half Acre Beer Company collaboration

Freshcraft, featuring 28 some taps and tap takeovers each night. On Wednesday September 23 the featured brewery was UpSlope

Falling Rock Tap House

The biggest beer party of GABF, besides GABF itself, it always Falling Rock Tap House. With 92 taps & over 300 bottled selections plus an extensive Vintage Beer Cellar, Falling Rock has basically been serving as the UnOfficial Headquarters for GABF and are open the latest (2AM!) of the options I’ve listed here. The taps are about 40% Colorado Beers, but also include a great selection of beers from the rest of the US as well as from the World.
Falling Rock Tap House - additional taps are added outside in their parking lot for special tappings multiple times daily during GABF week Falling Rock Tap House - besides the taps inside, additional taps are added outside in their parking lot for special tappings multiple times daily during GABF week

During GABF they expand to their parking lot to have beer trailers in order to offer even more beers, and at in the afternoons through late evenings go through 5 or 10 changing of the kegs to feature other breweries on their taps inside or outside. For instance, on the day we visited they had cycled through Oskar Blues beers at 4 PM; Ballast Point at 9 PM; Shelton Brothers-distributed brews at 9:30 PM; the Verboten/Hoppin’ Frog collab beers at 10 PM; Wicked Week, Cascade, Fremont, Two Roads and Crooked Stave at 10:30 PM; and Trinity beers at 11 p.m.

The parking lot during GABF was cash only, but could truly rightfully claim that “Our Trailer Park has better Beer than your Trailer Park! :-)” with options such as Jolly Pumpkin La Parcela, Mikkeller Double Blueberry, Trois Dames Framboos Saison, Lord Hobo Boom Sauce, and more on the first night we visited.
Falling Rock Tap House - additional taps are added outside in their parking lot for special tappings multiple times daily during GABF week

The feel of Falling Rock is a bit like a frat house in that you can probably expect lots of guys drinking lots of beer, but without the immaturity. But, yes, it’s dark woods and the floors are a little sticky. There’s food offered though it’s nothing beyond the normal – you are really here for the beer and in many cases to meet all the fellow beer lovers and brewers who all will be hanging here.
Many, many bottles and tap handles displayed along all the walls of Falling Rock Taphouse

They do at least clearly label the bathroom to help everyone out.
Signage to assist you in finding the restroom at Falling Rock Taphouse

All three of these locations are very walkable – only all within 1/2 a mile of each other, and within a mile of the Colorado Convention Center where GABF is held. For my thoughts on my GABF 2015 experience, see my previous post here. I also covered enjoying beer within Denver and visiting breweries outside Denver by Longmont and Boulder.

Other ways to keep on top of the many many beer events in Denver is to check out a month or so before GABF the First Drafts beer blog at the Denver Post or calendar/listing at Westword, a Denver event listing publication.

Overall, it was a fun trip to have the biggest beercation ever for GABF week, and supporting and celebrating Craft Beer. Even with all the various stops I had there were always unique new beer flavors to enjoy among so many styles. Of all the places I’ve visited so far, Denver is the closest to Portland in it’s broad and deep beer scene offerings and having destinations within reasonable distances to each other to go on a beer sampling trip, beating Austin in beer quality and San Diego in how easy it is to visit.

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

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

Filed Under: Beer Review, Festival Event, Food and Drink, Travel Tagged With: #traveltuesday, Avery Tap Takeover, beer, beer bars in Denver, beer flights, beer samples, Beer tourism in Denver, Beer Vacation, beer visits in Denver, Beercation, Craft Beer, Denver beer, Denver beer sightseeing, Denver beer vacation, Denver beer visits, Denver craft beer, Falling Rock Tap House, Freshcraft, GABF, GABF 2015, GABF afterparties, GABF other events, Tap Takepver, Travel Tuesday, unofficial GABF, unofficial GABF events, Upslope Brewing, World of Beer, World of Beer and Avery Brewing, World of Beer Lodo, World of Beer pretzel

Best Beer Visits Outside Denver

November 10, 2015 by Pechluck 2 Comments

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 Tasting Room in Longmont
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.
Left Hand Brewing, a delicious glass of their Milk Stout

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.
Left Hand Brewing Tasting Room offers no food, but there are food carts available outside

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.
Left Hand Brewing Tasting Room Cask Conditioned Taps at Left Hand Brewing Tasting Room

Go past the main bar and find another backroom with more taps and seats by a stage area,
Left Hand Brewing Tasting Room - additional taps in the back

There is a lovely back outdoor patio that also looks out into some cornhole too.
Left Hand Brewing Tasting Room cornhole outside within the hand fence

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.
Left Hand Brewing Tasting Room cornhole outside within the hand fence

When you get a flight of beer, they thoughtfully provide laminated cards to help mark which beer is which as well as provide descriptions.
Left Hand Brewing Tasting Room tasting trays comes with small laminated cards to help you track the beers you have selected

You can order sampler sizes in a flight of 4 or individually.
Left Hand Brewing Tasting Room tasting trays comes with small laminated cards to help you track the beers you have selected

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.
Left Hand Brewing Tasting Room - restrooms

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…
Left Hand Brewing Tasting Room sampler

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.
Oskar Blues Tasting Room the Tasty Weasel

At the Tasty Weasel, as soon as you walk in to your left you can watch their can production, and some skeeball.
Oskar Blues Tasting Room the Tasty Weasel - a small room on the left gives you a glimpse of the canning production plus skeeball and seating for drinking your beer

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.
Oskar Blues, The Tasty Weasel Tap Room A look inside the patio and a sampling tray at Oskar Blues The Tasty Weasel

Make sure you check not just beers listed on the main board, but the smaller Specialty Beers board on the right side.
Oskar Blues, The Tasty Weasel Tap Room

You will also see that they are really proud to totally use cans instead of bottles – even their tap handles proudly showcase this.
Oskar blues tap handle at the Tasty Weasel Tap Room

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.
Oskar Blues Tasting Room the Tasty Weasel Ten Fidy by Oskar Blues Brewery

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.
Avery Brewing in Boulder Avery Brewing Restaurant upstairs

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.
Avery Brewing downstairs bar and patio

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.
Avery Brewing in Boulder Avery Brewing Restaurant upstairs

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
Avery Brewing beer and their beer menu

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

Avery Brewing in Boulder

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)

Avery Brewing menu for September 22-27 Avery Brewing Isabelle Farm Tomato Salad with Heirloom and Sungold Tomatoes, Munson Farm Corn, avocado, farm greens, croutons, manchego and shallot vin Avery Brewing Smothered Cheese Curds and Potatoes, with cheese curds, spiced fingerlings, and andouille gravy Avery Brewing Cheeseburger with ground chuck, smoked gouda, sherry greens, pickles, stout onions, and choice of a side (here you see pork belly green beans Avery Brewing 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. 🙂

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

Filed Under: Beer Review, Food and Drink, Travel Tagged With: #travel, #traveltuesday, Avery Beer, Avery Brewing, beer, beer taster tray, beer tasting room, beer travel, Beer Vacation, Beercation, Colorado beer, Craft Beer, Denver beer, Left Hand Brewing, Longmont breweries, Longmont CO, Longmont Colorado, Oskar Blues, taster tray, Tasty Weasel, The Tasty Weasel, Travel Tuesday

Beer Tasting in Denver: Great Divide, Crooked Stave, First Draft

November 3, 2015 by Pechluck 11 Comments

Today for Travel Tuesday I take you back to my September trip to Denver, Colorado when I was there for for GABF – the Great American Beer Festival. We were there for several days, but only attended one session/day of GABF (I recapped that here). On other days, we explored the rest of the beer scene in Denver. This post will focus on my favorite beer stops within the Denver city limits itself – I will cover our day trip to Boulder and Longmont in another, separate post. These 3 in this post are all within 1 mile of each other.

Denver Brewery: Great Divide

Great Divide Brewing has two locations. We visited both. Their original location is the Ballpark: Brewery & Tap Room with 16 taps of seasonal and year-round brews.
Great Divide, downtown location

Though the Ballpark taproom is small, the downtown location near Coors Field can’t be beat and it’s small size makes it more intimate and cozy. Right by the bar you can see through the doors to the original beer production area.
Great Divide Tap Room sign outside the location downtown by the baseball field

I highly recommend getting samplers of everything. Their menu offers some suggestions for flights of beer to create.
Great Divide Tasting Room, their year round beers and suggested sample flights

In addition to the smaller sample size allowing you to taste all their beers, 100% of the proceeds from sample pours are donated to local nonprofits. During our visit, the nonprofits benefiting included the Denver Public Library and Urban Peak (servicing homeless youth).
Sample beer at Great Divide Tasting Room

Their new location also open is the RiNo: Barrel Bar & Packaging Wonderland located in the River North aka RiNo neighborhood of Denver and includes the year-round as well as seasonal, Barrel Aged, and limited release offerings. They also offer Crowlers here.
Great Divide Crowlers at the RiNo location

This location is easier to fit groups and has a more hip vibe to it than the more casual ballpark tasting room.
Great Divide RiNo: Barrel Bar & Packaging Wonderland

You are apt to a bit more “Yeti sighting” here in RiNo than the Ballpark location.
Great Divide Brewing tasting room in RiNo

Both locations offer brewery tours.
Great Divide RiNo: Barrel Bar & Packaging Wonderland

Both locations do not offer food, but food trucks can usually be found outside to get a little nourishment. The food truck will vary based on the day. During my visit my friends and I shared a pizza from Basic Kneads Pizza at the Ballpark location, offering wood-fired pizza from their food truck. You can see the flames and them hand tossing the dough to order.
Basic Kneads Pizza, offering wood-fired pizza from their food truck

The 16″ Wise Guy Pizza with Olive Oil, Mozzarella, Sausage, Roasted Onions, and Fresh Rosemary pizza was incredibly delicious and really went well with the beer. At the RiNo location, during our visit a food truck called Amazeballs specializing in baked ball items (chicken balls, beef and ricotta balls, eggplant feta balls, etc) was outside.
Basic Kneads pizza, the 16

Denver Brewery: Crooked Stave

First off, I’ll tell you upfront now that Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project is a brewery that specializes in beers aged in brett and sour beers. Located in a building called The Source, the tasting room is one of multiple food and drink artisan businesses including cheese, wine, and located in the shared market space inside this renovated brick warehouse in Denver’s River North District. The Source is located only a block down the street from Great Divide’s RiNo tasting room.
Denver's RiNo The Source building
This taproom offers 20 some taps of their beers that are bravely experimental and unapologetic in their funkyness and tartness (not all are sour, a few can be subtle Belgian styles as well).
Crooked Stave tasting room, located in Denver's RiNo in The Source building

For instance, we tried a special one off collaboration with Hawkshead Brewery in the UK, a Key Lime Tau (2π) which is mixed fermentation ale aged in oak with lactose, fresh lime peel and fresh lemongrass, which I loved. Another beer was Colorado Wild Sage, an artisanal saison with sage.
Crooked

Another beer were various versions of Sin Frontera, including bourbon barrel, cerveza aged in sherry barrels, aged in whiskey barrels with cherries – it was fun tasting the flight and trying to detect/recall which one is which one.
Sin Frontera from Crooked Stave Brewing

Again, I recommend getting sample pours so you can try many. The Crooked Stave tasting room doesn’t serve food, but you can easily wander a few yards outside to its neighbors within The Source building for a bite.
Samplers of Crooked Stave Brett and sour beers

Denver Pour Your Own Adventure: First Draft

Located only a mile away from RiNo and Crooked Stave’s tasting room, First Draft is a unique beer bar. You see, here you can pour your own beer – and you only have to pay by the ounce.
First Draft in Denver, Colorado

When you first enter, you are asked to show ID and also a credit card to hold your charges. This then nets you a special wristband.
First Draft in Denver, Colorado you put down a credit card and get a wristband in order to track your pours at this pour your own and pay only by the ounce beer bar

You pick the kind of glass you would like to use.
First Draft in Denver, Colorado - select your own glassware as you see fit

You can then walk up to any of the 40 some taps (mostly beer, but also some are ciders or wine) and tap your wristband to the screen of any tap activate the green light that means you can now pour.
"At First Draft in Denver, Colorado

Then you pour however much you desire- be it a full glass, half a glass, even just a few ounces of sample. I poured just a few ounces of several beers that were more on the expensive side, like The Bruery Smoking Wood (usually found only in bottles, and is a delicious Imperial Smoked Porter at 10% ABV) at $1 per ounce as well as normal priced side like Bell’s Brewery Coffee Moustache at $0.60 per ounce.
Pour however little or much beer you'd like for yourself at First Draft in Denver, Colorado

After you finish your pour, you are given a readout of how much you poured and your current total. Before you pour, you can also touch the screen to get more details on the beer before you select it beyond the initial brewery name, name of beer, type of beer style, ABV, IBU, and cost that is displayed by default on the screen for each tap.
First Draft in Denver, Colorado

The high ceilings of the main room, a patio outside, as well as a balcony area seating overlooking the tap stations make the beer bar seem airy and never too packed even though there may be quite a gathering of people reading the taps depending on when groups enter.

They do serve a few snacks of food including cheese plates, charcuterie plates, and snacky things such as grilled shishitos, pretzels, fries, fritters, as well as more substantial sandwiches such as burgers, fried chicken sandwiches, brisket grilled cheese, or churros. One of the best ideas they have is you can get a little ice cream in a glass that you can then pour your beer over for your own craft beer float!
Pour however little or much beer you'd like for yourself at First Draft in Denver, Colorado

So for a unique experience in beer travel and beer drinking, and the chance to try a lot of beers for a super affordable price as long as you carefully control your pours, I definitely recommend First Draft!
Pour however little or much beer you'd like for yourself at First Draft in Denver, Colorado

Have you been beer tasting in Denver and visited any of these beer locations? What beer tasting rooms in Denver have you visited? Have you been to the RiNo area of Denver? What do you think of First Draft’s concept (it wouldn’t fly in Oregon because of OLCC regulations sadly)?

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

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

Filed Under: Beer Review, Festival Event, Food and Drink, Travel Tagged With: #traveltuesday, Basic Kneads pizza, beer adventure, beer travel, Beer Vacation, Beercation, Colorado, Colorado beer, Crooked Stave, Denver beer, Denver beer sightseeing, Denver brewery, First Draft Beer Bar, First Draft in Denver, Great Divide Brewing, pour your own beer, sour beer, sour brewery, Travel Tuesday, Wise Guy Pizza

My Trip to GABF 2015

October 20, 2015 by Pechluck 6 Comments

On September 23-27, I traveled to Denver, Colorado with F and 3 friends to experience the Great American Beer Festival. This annual festival at the Colorado Convention Center is the largest public tasting event of American beer, and also is a competition where breweries big and small compete to win medals. If you are an enthusiast of beer, this is probably on your bucket list.
Other brewery booths of GABF 2015 - Fate
There are multiple sessions during the 3 day festival, and we had tickets to the Saturday session. However, even before entering the convention hall, my friends and I had an incredible time visiting and sampling various breweries of Denver, as well as bars of Denver many of who were having adjacent special beer tappings in honor of GABF. Even without a ticket to GABF itself, you can have a great experience just with all the events around it.

I have several blog Travel Tuesday posts planned about this beer vacation aka beercation. I will start with this post of my thoughts first on the session of GABF 2015 I attended and what my experience was like as a first-timer and as a girl who enjoys beer, but by no means is a beer expert.

Control Yourself. Since this festival offers more than 3,500 beers, there is no way you can taste everything, even while sharing your sample pours and pouring some tastes out after a few small sips during your few hours of your session if it’s not above a certain “good” threshold. Otherwise, you will lose your palate and your sobriety.

Some beer booths poured from kegs, other from cans or bottles like here where we tried Elevation Beer Co‘s Oil Man, an Imperial Stout aged in Bourbon Barrels, and Senorita a Horchata Imperial Porter, both of which are seasonal releases. We also had tastes from Flossmoor Station Brewing Co of their Barrel Aged Shadow of the Moon Imperial Stout, Barrel Aged Pullman Reserve, and Electric Line saison with caramelized lemon peel and rosemary
Making a sampling plan gives you focus. Before the day of our session, I had already glanced at the list of beers and decided that I wanted to focus on 2 of my favorite types of beers- barrel aged beers and sour beers. After coming in one hour early to wait in line, I had a paper copy of the book and the map now too of the individual locations of the breweries and their booth number. I then went in and started circling specific booth numbers on the map. This was better than the GABF app which only showed me areas to help me really located where to go.

We got in line at 11ish am, 1 hour before the doors would open for our Saturday session. This is what it looked like at that time (we were in row 2)… and 45 minutes later. It was pretty exciting when we could go (we were let in one row at a time) as the music of the Centennial State Pipes and Drums played to greet us GABF attendees as we enterMarking the booths we wanted to visit specifically by number helped us
1. Narrow down and set priority order of the areas we would go to based on how many beers in that location we had marked as interesting, but
2. Gave us better focus in finding the breweries since I knew the booth numbers to go directly to them in the last hour when we realized we were in the final countdown and couldn’t meander down area aisles anymore.
3. If there are certain breweries and beers you really really want to try, mark them so you know exactly where they are and you can get to them. We knew from our markings that we would spend a lot of time in the Brewer’s Hall, and that our first stop was going to be for Samuel Adams Utopias.
Have a set meeting spot. Even though we came as a group of 5, we broke up into smaller groups based on our interests – and we knew ahead of time that we would meet by the Big Blue Bear (aka I See What You Mean). Within my smaller group of F and I, we would agree on a specific spot to stand in an aisle to meet back and, we would divide up temporarily to get our individual beers, and then meet back at that same spot to share our beers. We never left each other without an agreed verbal “meet back here.” Sure, you could say you have phones and texting, but you never know what your battery life, or the signal, may be like.
Bring an external battery for your phone. I got a dual external battery charger so that both of us could charge our phones whenever, wherever so never had to worry that we wouldn’t be able to use maps, Uber, whatever. I got a RAV Power specifically because it had dual ports for 2 phones so we wouldn’t have to compare who had the least battery power and needed it most, it has simultaneous 4.5A Output for fast charge, and 16000mAh because there would be days it would charge the phones of every single person in our group!
Now that battery isn’t an issue, it was a matter of conserving time that instead of checking in beers in Untappd, I took a photo of every beer name + brewery I stopped at. This helped jog my memory of what I had but saved time so I could taste, share, finish/dump the beer and get another one with our precious set time period of the session. The beers I thought were 4 or higher (on a 1-5 scale) I always had several pictures of often to get additional pictures of the label to add to my Untappd checkin 🙂

Great sours from Captain Lawrence Brewing Company such as this Rosso e Marron and also a Cuvee de Castleton; Berger Cookie Chocolate Stout; Kitka Coconut Chocolate Milk Stout from The Brew Kettle; Dirty Deeds Russian Imperial Stout; A taste of Wick for Brains Pumpkin Ale from Nebraska
Spend your time in areas other than your home region. GABF has brought the entire US down to a convention center – still huge, but better than travelling thousands of miles. In the first few hours, we meandered a little more in reading what each row had, but by the last hour we began to focus on getting ones we had marked on our map in step 2.
It’s not just about the beer. I talked to the people serving beers to get the story behind a beer or a brewery or the booth decor.

Some of my favorite booth decor at GABF 2015 included the whimsical aquatic pool friends of The Bruery which fans enthusiastically helped take down after the last session; Deep Ellum Brewing had one where that smiley/bottle mouth face kept rotating and had a cool engineering vibe.
I talked to people in line about what beers at GABF were their favorite so far which helped point me towards new beer, but also chatted about where we were from, and in one case as one woman made fun of her boyfriend for liking “apple juice/cider” more than beer, I told them about the Cider Summit held in Portland and Seattle every year and how they should visit. Connect with others – we are all fans together.

Other brewery booths of GABF 2015 and their people- Copper Kettle pouring Basil Cherry, Denver Beer pouring Coconut Chocolate Graham Cracker Porter, Fremont Brewing with Coffee Cinnamon Abominable Barrel Aged Winter Ale
I had some delicious cheese (and talked to others about cheese) at the American Cheese Society table buffet of cheese. I watched people groove at the Oskar Blues silent disco.

Thanks for the great sampling of cheese, American Cheese Society! // The Oskar Blues Silent Disco – everyone has headphones where they can hear the music by the DJ but no one else can
We took photos at various set up photo ops. All of those are part of the full GABF experience. It’s not just about drinking beer.

Laughs at Horse and Dragon Brewing Company… where we then pulled the horse head mask out of my bag and had to take a photo. Fun times at Horse & Dragon with their Cucumber Cricket beer, a cucumber basil kolsch style ale and a Bad Panda coffee stout

Was this a memorable, fun trip that was worthwhile? Yes.

Beer Scouts with their badges // Horse meets Yeti of Great Divide and whispers secrets to him / #FCBMonsters (FCB from Fort Collins Brewing)

Some of highlights of GABF for me include

Discovering the incredible beers of Destihl Brewery, located in central Illinois. They don’t distribute apparently to Oregon, so the closest to go to find them for us would be to go to Seattle, WA. They had lots of spectacular sour beers, and were sampling from a staff of 4 pourers an impressive 10 of their beers. It was great to see these beers even come in can form to make it travel-friendly and accessible!
My biggest discovery besides Destihl Brewery was Short’s Brewing from Bellaire, Michigan where we found really unique, risky beers and fun labels like Bucktricutioner Berliner Weisse with lime and strawberry; Bloody Beer with a bloody mary influence as it is fermented with Roma tomatoes, and spiced with dill, horseradish, peppercorns and celery seed; and one of my favorites of GABF that I tried, Strawberry Short’s Cake a golden ale with strawberries and milk sugar that really made it sweet and I swear I could taste the seeds.
One of my favorite beers I had at GABF was Funky Buddha Brewery’s Morning Wood, a Imperial Bourbon barrel aged Maple Bacon Coffee Porter. It was so good with depths of flavor of coffee and roast and some smoke and sweetnes… So good I was able to get over slight embarrassment when I realized when I got up that I was going to say “I would like a taste of Morning Wood” to the man.
I saw a lot of chocolate and peanut butter porters. I also noticed a lot more distribution of beer in cans, not just bottles, as some breweries were pouring from the cans they distribute with like here from Denver Beer Co and Destihl above.

Denver Beer Co Princess Yum Yum Raspberry Kolsch, Graham Cracker Porter(they also the chocolate as well as a coconut chocolate they were pouring – I preferred the coconut), and Hey Pumpkin, an ale brewed with pumpkin and spices. Yes they come in cans!

Other Misc. Photos
Art created with beer A tip for tracking what beers you've sampled at GABF - take photos! Other brewery booths of GABF 2015 Tip for remembering beers you tried - take a photo! Here Atwater Beer promoting beer lovers and chocolate lovers unite A tip for remembering what beers you sampled at GABF - take photos! Kentucky Bourbon Barrel ales and stouts A little bit of nature offered by G B with the yellow aspens at their GABF booth More booths at GABF 2015 Other brewery booths of GABF 2015 - Brooklyn Brewery Unusual beer from Odd 13 Brewing

In next Travel Tuesday posts, I’ll start posting about the other days before GABF and the breweries we visited and other beer events in the nearby area to give you an idea how even without a GABF ticket, you can easily celebrate beer in many ways during the annual fall Great American Beer festival week.
#FCBMonsters

What do you think of the various beers I tried, would you have tried any of them?

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

Filed Under: Beer Review, Food and Drink, Travel Tagged With: #traveltuesday, beer travel, Beer Vacation, Beercation, Berger Cookie Chocolate Stout, Bloody Beer, Bucktricutioner Berliner Weisse with lime and strawberry, Captain Lawrence Brewing Company, Colorado, Copper Kettle Basil Cherry, Copper Kettle GABF booth, Cuvee de Castleton, Denver, Denver Beer co, Denver Beer Co Princess Yum Yum Raspberry Kolsch, Denver Beer Coconut Chocolate Graham Cracker Porter, Denver Co Hey Pumpkin, Destihl Brewery, Electric Line saison, Elevation Beer Co, Elevation Beer Co Oil Man, Elevation Beer Co Senorita, experience attending GABF, Fate GABF booth, Flossmoor Station, Flossmoor Station Barrel Aged Shadow of the Moon Imperial Stout, Fremont Brewing Coffee Cinnamon Abominable Barrel Aged Winter Ale, Fremont Brewing's Coffee Cinnamon Abominable Barrel Aged Winter Ale, Funky Buddha Brewery's Morning Wood, GABF 2015, Graham Cracker Porter, Great American Beer Festival 2015, Great American Beer Festival experience, Horchata Imperial Porter, Horse & Dragon Bad Panda Coffee Stout, Horse & Dragon Cucumber Cricket, Left Hand Brewing GABF booth, recap of GABF 2015, review of GABF 2015, Rosso e Marron, Sam Adams Utopias, Samuel Adams Utopias, Short's Brewing, Strawberry Short’s Cake, The Bruery GABF, The Bruery GABF 2015 booth, the Bruery GABF decor, Tips for attending Great American Beer Festival, tips for GABF, Travel Tuesday

Beer Travel: Visiting Ommegang Brewery

October 13, 2015 by Pechluck 4 Comments

After attending a wedding, F and I drove from the Finger Lakes area to Cooperstown in New York State. After a morning where we visited the Baseball Hall of Fame, we drove to the other big attraction (well, to us… and it was the one I was certainly more interested in) of Cooperstown, the Ommegang Brewery. The time of year we were visiting Ommegang Brewery was in September, so the foliage was gorgeous on the short 6 mile drive south from Cooperstown.

To park, yes you get to drive through that arch to get to the parking lot.
First seeing the entrance for visiting Ommegang Brewery for a tour, tasting, and late lunch

The entrance to the tasting room/restaurant, as well as the shop and where you can sign up for a tasting, a tour, or both (like we did – both are offered every 30 minutes), is also back there. You can make reservations for Cafe Ommegang for dinner, but it’s first come first serve to get your name on the list for tours and lunch. You must be at least 5 years old to take the tour and 21 years old to participate in a tasting.
Entrance to the Ommegang Visitor's Center, which includes the shop, where you can start tours, and Cafe Ommegang for lunch or dinner dining

There were nice details of their iconic lion logo as part of the landscaping, and the doors promoted their enthusiasm for their product proclaiming

“You cannot be a real country unles you have Beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer” – Frank Zappa.

Ommegang Logo as part of the landscaping at Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown, New York The doors to the Ommegang Brewery Visitor's Center reads You cannot be a real country unles you have Beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer - Frank Zappa.

Another door offered more quotes-

“The problem with the world is that everyone is always a few drinks behind” – Humphrey Bogart
“When a glass sits on a table here, people don’t wonder if it’s half filled or half empty. They just hope it’s good beer.” – Sherman Alexie
“I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy” – Tom Waits
“What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?” – W.C. Fields
“He was a wise man who invented beer.” Plato

You may be wondering what a famous brewery like this is doing out in this village of around 2000 people and area of 1.5 square miles, Cooperstown. Well, it turns out that in the 19th century, Cooperstown was the center of the legendary upstate New York hops industry. Almost every farm in the county Cooperstown is located, Otsego County, grew some hops, and the Otsego County hops were considered the best in the America.

Then, early in the 20th century a series of blights – mold, aphids, Prohibition, caused the fall of the region’s hops industry. When Ommegang Brewery built its location in 1997, it did so on what used to be a hop farm, and with a goal of cooperation between farmers and brewers as the area tries to re-explore a revival of the hops industry. On the land of Ommegang Brewery, we were able to even tour some new strains of hops that are being grown here in order to experiment working with Cornell University.

As part of our tour, we also saw beermaking in the works as liquid drained to the floor while steam made it seem magical, and we watched the bottling line – I’ve seen the machines off but never working before this brewery tour.
Water drains into the floor while steam makes the brewing process seem magical at Ommegang Brewery Ommegang Brewery bottling line

Of course the best thing is the tasting portion!
Ommegang Brewery offers tours as well as tastings (separately, but you can buy both) every 30 minutes or 1 hour depending on the season.

For a $5 fee per person, we tasted 6 beers, and we each got to keep the tasting glass so it’s so well worth it.
For $5 we tasted 6 beers at Ommegang Brewery, and we got to keep the tasting glass so it's so well worth it.

The tasting was very educational in that they are prepared to also help you smell individual ingredients to help you learn to appreciate the various kinds of special ingredients they use in the brewing process in creating their beers.
A tasting of 6 beers and also learning to appreciate the various ingredients in beer at Ommegang Brewery

Ommegang beer tasting for us included
Tasting beer at Ommegang Brewery included this Hennepin

Witte Wheat Ale brewed with Sweet Orange Peel and Coriander
Scythe and Sickle, a Bière de Garde style beer that was a Harvest Ale brewed with barley, wheat, oats and rye as a nod to the harvest of upstate New York grains.
Rare Vos Belgian Amber Ale brewed with Sweet Orange Peel, Grains of Paradise, Coriander
Hennepin Farmhouse Saison brewed with Grains of Paradise, Coriander, Ginger, and Sweet Orange Peel. I found it refreshing and bubbly like a sparkling wine!
Abbey Ale Dubbel Ale brewed with Licorice Root, Star Anise, Sweet Orange Peel, Coriander and Cumin
Three Philosophers Quadruple Ale with Cherries via blend of Ommegang Quadruple Ale and Liefmans Kriek

They offered us a couple little snacks as we were tasting including their own Abbey Ale and Rare VO5 beer cheeses, their horseradish mustard, and some Saratoga Garlic wasabi and horseradish aioli with pretzels, among several jars of stuff to share amont the group. The beer cheese is the bomb.
Tasting of Ommegang beers comes with snacks like Abbey Ale and Rare Vos beer cheeses, their horseradish mustard, and some Saratoga Garlic wasabi and horseradish aioli with pretzels, among several jars of stuff to share amont the group!

We finished up by having our late lunch at their cafe, if by lunch you mean frites and a flight of Duvel Belgian beers and their Wild At Heart brewed with wild Brett. They change the food and beer menu seasonally, and they are well known for promoting beer and food pairings, even offering beer food recipes on their website.
Beer sampler tray at Ommegang Brewery, this is a flight in their restaurant of Duvel Belgian beers

You can pick up shirts, bottles, and the beer cheese at the store on the way out.
Bottles of Ommegang at the Ommegang Brewery store Grab some beer cheese made with the beers of Ommegang at the Ommegang Brewery store

I’ll be off to Sante Fe next week, which naturally will incorporate more beer travel as we visit some Sante Fe breweries, so you’ll see some more beercation Travel Tuesday posts in a bit. I also have on my queue posts from Denver while I was at the Great American Beer Festival!

Have you had Ommegang beer before? Which of the beers in the tasting sounds most delicious to you?

Have you been to Sante Fe and have any recommendations of sights, eats, or drinks?

Filed Under: Beer Review, Travel Tagged With: #traveltuesday, Abbey Ale Dubbel Ale, beer travel, Beercation, Cooperstown, Hennepin Farmhouse Saison, Ommegang Brewery, Ommegang Brewery Abbey Ale beer cheese, Ommegang Brewery Tasting, Ommegang Brewery tour, Ommegang Horseradish Mustard, ommegang Rare Vos beer cheese, Ommegang tasting glass, Rare V0s Belgian Amber Ale, Saratoga Garlic wasabi and horseradish aioli, Scythe and Sickle, Three Philosophers Quadruple Ale with Cherries, Travel Tuesday, Witte Wheat Ale brewed with Sweet Orange Peel and Coriander

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Falling Rock Tap House

Best Beer Visits Outside Denver

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Avery Brewing

Beer Tasting in Denver: Great Divide, Crooked Stave, First Draft

Denver Brewery: Great Divide

Denver Brewery: Crooked Stave

Denver Pour Your Own Adventure: First Draft

Beer Travel: Visiting Ommegang Brewery

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