Great American Beer Festival Tickets

Today is the day to buy tickets to the best beer festival in the world, the GABF! If you've never been to this festival, you are missing out on a beer utopia filled with more beer than you can handle (2,200 beers), celebrity brewers (450+ breweries), beer swag, and beer lovers like yourself (49,000+). The event takes place September 29 - October 1 this year. Here is a rundown on the session dates:

Thursday Sept. 29 5:30pm-10pm $60

Friday Sept. 30 5:30pm-10pm $60

Saturday Oct. 1 12pm-4pm $50 (AHA members only; $88 for new members)

Saturday Oct. 1 5:30pm-10pm $60

Tickets go on sale today at 10am at Ticketmaster and can be purchased here. Do not procrastinate because this festival WILL sell out! See you there!

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La Cumbre Brewing Company, Albuquerque, NM

This post was written by Justin and Michael Carpenter, a local beer drinker and participating homebrewer in Beers Made By Walking. Justin approached me to see if I'd be interested in letting him talk about a brewery he visited in New Mexico. I said Definitely!

Last week my wife and I took at trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We hung out with family and friends, visited some of our old stomping grounds, and hit up some breweries. Out of the handful of pubs we visited, La Cumbre Brewing was definitely the best experience, and it was an honor to meet and speak to Master Brewer/President Jeff Erway.

The brewery is located in a warehouse in a, well...somewhat industrial area of the city. The sign outside that says “Open for Beerness” was a welcoming sight. The tasting room is small yet very comfortable with table tops made from oak barrels. Jeff’s personal beer bottle collection adorns the walls and is quite impressive. Our eyes immediately drifted towards the chalk board that displayed information on all of their beers, including two cask ales – it was definitely a good sign.

Exciting Beer Events this Week in Colorado Springs

There are some exciting beer events happening this week that aren't your usual brewery beer event. A lot of these seem really exciting to me so I thought I'd give them a little extra attention here:

Tuesday - June 28 - 5pm

Sisterhood of the Suds Beer Release / 5pm

SotS brewing beer. This image came from their blog.

This event I believe to be the highlight of all the events this week. A couple weeks ago our friends, the Sisterhood of the Suds, headed up to Colorado Mountain Brewery to participate in Brewer's Whimsey. With the brewer, Andy Bradley, they got their brew on and made a special beer. How cool is that? Some local beer drinkers now have their own beer on tap at a local brewery. Pretty bad-ass if you ask me. I imagine the beer will only last one night, so the 28th is probably your only chance to try it. They brewed an American Pale Ale with Centennial and Simcoe hops. They have more information on their experience brewing with Andy on their website. Colorado Mountain Brewery is at 11202 Rampart Hills view, Colorado Springs.

Wednesday - June 29

Whiskey For My Men, Beer For My Horses / 6-9pm

This is an event that is organized by the Fine Art Center in Colorado Springs to celebrate their 75th Anniversary. Typically a venue with wine tastings and jazz music, on this night they will be serving local whiskey and beer and they'll have Grass It Up playing some good bluegrass for the crowds. With entry, you'll receive free samples of Double Diamond Whiskey and Wine Barrel-Aged Rum from downslope distilling and the beers will be from Bristol. For food they'll have three awesome sounding brats including campfire wild game chili made with bison, wild boar, and elk sausage. The party should be good, last year 425 people showed up. Tickets are $15 for FAC Members; $20 for non-members. Wear a big-ass belt buckle and get a five dollar discount. For tickets visit csfineartscenter.org or call the FAC Box Office at 719.477.4316. The Fine Art Center is located at 30 West Dale St. Colorado Springs.

Thursday - June 30th

Beers Made By Walking Hike in Garden of the Gods / 6pm

BMbW is the summer beer program that I put together. Basically there are 7 hikes comprised of 8 homebrewers. On each hike we'll identify edible and medicinal plants and then use those ingredients to make new beer at Rocky Mountain Brewing, and the beers will be served on tap at Brewer's Republic throughout the summer. Check here for details on tastings and hike sign ups. Unfortunately this first hike is already full, and so is the next one, but I wanted to direct your attention here anyway because this little program is proving to be really popular. If you want to go on a hike later in the summer, you should probably sign up quickly.

Bristol Brewing Release Cheyenne Canyon Piñon Nut Brown / 5-9pm

Big apologies for messing up the date on this release last week. But, I've double checked now and I've got it right. If you aren't going on the Beers Made By Walking hike, you should definitely hit up Bristol's release of one of their "Community Ales." Basically they have a program where the 100% of the profits of this beer go to Cheyenne Canyon state park, a park that I visited over the weekend and really loved. It's a staple here in Colorado Springs. Not only will you be supporting a great place by buying the beer, but you'll also be drinking some good beer. We reviewed the beer last year. So, for the kickoff this year Bristol will have gold panning, snacks from Venetucci Farm and Blue Sage Catering, giveaways, and our pals over at UpaDowna will lead a hike in the park. Also, I would highly recommend reading UpaDowna's survey of the Bristol and Cheyenne Canyon partnership.



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Did you Miss the United Tastes of Belgium?

Did you miss it? I did. But there's a great video here that will make you even more jealous if you weren't able to make it to Denver for their first Belgium-themed beer event. I'll definitely be there next year if I'm not out of town again. On the video we get to see Colorado Springers Jason Yester of Trinity and John Schneider of Black Fox on the video. Also on the video is a nice clip of our friend Chad Yakobsen of Crooked Stave, giving what I think is a really nice description of beer as an art form. When asked why the word 'artisinal' is part of Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project, Chad replies:

To me it's important to what we do. For the time being it's just myself with the company. All these beers are my outward expression of my thoughts, the things I'm thinking, the things that I've seen during travels or experience. So it's kind of the things that I'm drawing on in my nature, the same way an artist would on a canvas, I mean, this is my canvas...

Here's the video:



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Whatever Floats Your Boat

The other day I was talking with a homebrewing pal about a beer that another homebrewer made. This beer had some serious cigar texture and flavors, a little tobacco-y and also I could taste some graininess. When I say graininess I mean a grainy texture, a little chalky I suppose, as if the grain was floating around in the beer. My pal suggested that the graininess is a type of off-flavor and the cigar texture could be as well. I said, "But I really don't mind tasting the graininess in this beer." It seemed to compliment the other qualities in the beer, plus I can remember tasting a few commercial beers quite recently where I could taste some graininess. In one of my beer books, graininess is an off-flavor caused by poor grain crushing, over-sparging, or even too high of a pH in the mash. This got us to talking briefly about what exactly is an off-flavor and when they are appropriate?

Now, I'd be curious to know what you all think? Ever had a beer that has off-flavors that you didn't mind? Obviously sourness and vegetable off-flavors can come in handy at times, but what about some of the others? What do you think?

I'll end this post with one more story. For some reason I've been blessed with the ability to detect diacetyl at very low levels. At times my friends have a hard time picking out the popcorn butter flavor, but it stands out to me like a sore thumb. A few months ago I was drinking a red ale from Twisted Pine and that thing tasted like a buttery mess to me, beyond normal, but my friends still couldn't pick it out. I emailed Twisted Pine and they said they allow a certain small level of diacetyl into that particular beer. That's very intriguing to me that a brewery allows for it, almost as if it is supposed to contribute to the flavor or something. Hopefully it's not due to laziness, I doubt that's the case with Twisted Pine.

Anyway, please share with me, some of your examples of off-flavors gone right...I'm curious to know...


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Firestone Walker's Colorado Release Is Put On Hold

The Westword blog broke the news to me that Firestone Walker will have to delay it's Colorado releases. I couldn't believe it, surely this isn't true, so I checked in with my contact and they confirmed it. Unfortunately there's been a hiccup in the licensing and Firestone Walker is looking to launch now in July. The sales rep in Colorado says that hopefully they'll be able to launch bigger release parties and it might coincide with the release of Firestone Walker in Denver, which was scheduled to receive their beer later down the road.

Welcome to town Pikes Peak Brewing

Last night I had the opportunity to head over to the brand new Pikes Peak Brewing for a homebrewers meeting held by the Brew Bros. Pikes Peak is in their soft-opening phase but on Saturday, June 25th they will host their grand opening. I had visited the brewery before, before it was a brewery, before there was any equipment at all and the grain mill was laying on it's side, just before any of the installation took place. What did I think of it this time though? Well, for starters the place has transformed completely. How about the beer though? Well, read on...

Fantastic looking tap handles

Before I tell you about the beer I'll tell you about the tasting room space itself. I walked in and felt immediately that I was in a warm and cozy atmosphere. The bow-truss ceiling remains visible, there is now a fireplace, a long bar, a number of short top and tall top tables, as well as some couch seating near the fireplace. There is plenty of natural light and there's a long window across the bar that gives us a look into the brewery. As we saw in the previous post the wooden tap handles were made out of beetle-kill pine. That pine remains a fixture everywhere you look in the room and it gives it a very homey feel. So yeah, Pikes Peak has created a really nice feeling place, somewhere in between a cozy pub and the newer more popular tall open space lounge pubs. I've always preferred the former, rarely get it in new

Ft. Collins Visit Part 1: Odell

Last week we headed up to Ft. Collins to see what sorts of things were happening up there. We didn't make it to every brewery but we did hit up a few that we were pretty excited about. We went to Funkwerks, Crooked Stave, Odell, and Equinox. We'll show you some of what we saw, and provide some info on what's happening in that part of the state. I'm going to divide the trip into a couple posts, this one will focus on Odell.

Odell was founded in 1989, and they were the second microbrewery in the state. Boulder Beer Co. was the first. 1989 is the same year that New Belgium, down the street, started up so it is no wonder that with these two breweries Ft. Collins has become the beer-centered town that it is. According to the Odell website the brewery became successful quite quickly. They began in a converted grain elevator and the flagship beers were the 90 Shilling and the Easy Street Wheat. All their flagship beers use a German Ale yeast. It wasn't until 1994 that Odell began bottling up unpasteurized six-packs, and they were the first microbrewery in Colorado to offer six-packs.

We didn't take any pictures outside so I had to lift this from Brewpublic, sorry Angelo!

Also in 1994 Odell upped their production in a newly built 8,000 square foot brewery and produced 8,300 barrels. Not bad! But the beauty-of-a-building you see in the above photo above is what the place looks like now. A 45,000 square foot brewery space. In fact it was only very recently that the space was (almost) doubled from 24,000 to 45,00 sq. ft. After all this expanding and growing, I was surprised to hear that 90 Shilling remains their highest selling beer. I would have guessed the Pale or IPA, it seems like people want beers with a more bitter and hoppy profile but I suppose that this isn't necessarily true. As was pointed out, the beer could easily be considered a sessionable beer as its balance and reasonably low alcohol levels make it an easy drinker.

This photo shows the new space in the brewery. All of it is part of their recent expansion, doubling the size of the brewery. Pretty wild to think about. It might seem like there's plenty

Calender of Events for June in Colorado

It's June and the sun is out (obviously) and blazing and it's time to start drinking more beer. Here's the lowdown on beer related events on the Front Range as well as Colorado Springs for the (rest of the) month of June. I'm sure more things will pop up along the way so keep checking our calendar on the left column of the blog.

NABA 2011 Awards for Colorado Breweries

Colorado brewers picked up a few awards at the North American Brewers Association (NABA) judging last week. I'll note that we didn't win a whole lot of golds though unfortunately, the majority of medals are bronze placements. I also noticed that the majority of the winners were from the western US, and only a brewery or two from Oklahoma also won an award, nothing east of there as far as I can tell. So the festival seems to be pretty localized and I'm not entirely certain how many Colorado breweries entered compared to how many we see on the list below.

Firestone Walker Comes to Colorado Springs

*** UPDATE ***
***The release party has been postponed as Firestone Walker's entry into Colorado has been put on delay. See details here and check back for updates on the next scheduled release party.***

If you haven't heard the news, Firestone Walker is beginning distribution in Colorado around mid June. This is interesting to see in a time when many Colorado breweries have so much demand in their main markets that they've actually had to pull out of some of their fringe markets. I suppose us Coloradans want to drink our own beer AND we want everyone else's too. I was just in Missouri last week and I could get Firestone there, so I wonder what's taken so long to bring them here? I wonder if it has something to do with Colorado being such a large market that they wouldn't have been able to keep up with demand until recently?

On June 23rd, David Walker, co-founder of Firestone Walker will be at Trinity Brewing meeting people and selling a host of his beers, including Double Barrel Ale, Union Jack, Pale 31, Double Jack, and any limited beers Trinity can get a hold of. The event will last from 6-8pm on June 23rd.

*Update* Looks like they'll also be at Southside Johnny's downtown at the same time too.

Firestone is one of the most respected breweries in the country so it's very exciting news that we will finally be able to drink their beer. Their anniversary beers are blends of many of their beers, aged in various barrels, and consistently receive the highest rankings possible on the beer rating sites. Their Double Jack (2IPA) is talked about up and down the West Coast. Their brewery has received Mid-Sized Brewery of the Year three times through the World Beer Cup. Let's welcome them to Colorado!

Firestone at Trinity
June 23rd, 6-8pm

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How to Find Pliny the Elder in Colorado Springs

A lot of people find this blog for searching something like "Pliny the Elder in Colorado Springs." I never update the calendar with info on when Pliny the beer is in town because while it is a great beer it's nothing that deserves to be constantly talked about every time it's here. But I decided to google that same phrase and I see that if you are looking for the beer, there are posts from 2010 announcing it in town but there's s no real way to find out when it's here and not here. So, this post is for you. I asked a few other people about where they get Pliny but they wouldn't tell me their secrets...

Advice for checking in with a local vendor:
If you're looking for Pliny the Elder in Colorado Springs, I have some advice for you. I'm going to list places that sometime carry it. Obviously it will be hit or miss, the beer is only occasionally available, and when it shows up it disappears immediately. So, you want to check in with these places' facebook pages or twitter feeds first! Facebook is usually the best resource there is for finding out exactly when it's coming in, if not, I indicated a better system below. I wouldn't recommend calling these places to ask, as that can get annoying but I've listed the phone numbers anyway...

Want it in a bottle?
Cheers Liquor Mart - use their online system to check - 1105 North Circle Drive - 719.574.2244 ‎
Coaltrain Wine and Spirits - facebook - 330 West Uintah Street - 719.475.9700
Veterans Liquors - 3630 Austin Bluffs Pkwy - 719.266.1179 ‎

Want it on tap?
A Second Cup - facebook - 719.481.6446
Trinity Brewing - facebook - 719.634.0029



I will update this page as I find out about new liquor stores and bars that carry Pliny.


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