Insider's Guide to the FotB Anniversary Party on Friday!

Our first Anniversary Party is on Friday and, as you well know, we are really pulling out the big guns for this one. I've got some insider tips into the 16 beers that will be available to you. Also, for each beer you order on this list, you'll receive a raffle ticket to win cool stuff from the breweries. If you read this blog, then you need to come over and hang out. Please come by and say hi. If we've never met, just ask around for Eric, Isaac, and Dan, and introduce yourself!

Details
5pm till close at Trinity Brewing
Pay per drink / Raffle ticket per drink on this list / A portion of the proceeds will go to the blog.

I can't really tell you which beers you should get first because, honestly, all these beers are pretty special (I will say that the Deschutes Abyss has been one of my all-time favorite beers for years. I drink one Abyss every New Years Eve). The beers range from highly experimental, to very rare, to special seasonals, to one-offs, to beers that are normally exclusive to other bars and taprooms. Here's what we've got coming your way:

A New Look at Another Pint

This month, the ownership of A Second Cup has transferred over to the hands of Tony and Stephanie Hockemeyer. The new name is now officially, and fittingly, Another Pint. Tony has worked there since 2008, including a short break, and Stephanie has been there for about a year. A few months ago they decided to get serious about buying the business off the founder, Jeremy Diggins, as they gained a new vision for it and have really fallen in love with the place.

For starters the new name, Another Pint, seems like a good decision. Previously customers haven't been sure if the business was called A Second Cup or Another Pint, but that won't be a problem anymore. The new name seems to suggest that it will be a beer-centered operation. They've already cut early morning hours from 6am to 8am and are keeping the bar open later in the night. Tony has seen craft beer sales really pick up lately. Just about a year ago, they added ten new taps to the lineup, they've seen the popularity of beer dinners increase, and last month's dinner had an unprecedented reservation list of 70+ people. The first beer dinner of the new ownership will be Stone Brewing, whose marketing campaign is in your face and seems quite fitting for a pub who just made their major focus craft beer (Stone says, 'Fizzy Yellow Beer is For Wussies.')

Focus on the Beer Top 10 Beer Spots in Colorado Springs: #6 Pikes Peak Brewing

Here is the Focus on the Beer list of the top 10 beer spots in the Colorado Springs area. We are starting at #10 and working our way down to #1 in the upcoming weeks. The rest of the Top 10 can be found here. Let us know what you think!

#2 Beer Spot of Colorado Springs: Pike’s Peak Brewing Co.

Located in the small town of monument about 20 minutes north of Colorado Springs lies Pikes Peak Brewing Co., one of the newest additions to southern Colorado’s growing brewery list.  This is a place you cannot afford to miss.

The Beer: 

3rd Annual Biere De Rock Homebrew Competition

For those of you who enjoy homebrewing Belgian style beers, our friends up in Castle Rock are putting together a Belgian style homebrew competition. The Rock Hopper's Brew Club invite you to participate in the third annual Biere De Rock. The beer categories that will be accepted include:
16A Witbier 17D Straight Lambic

16B Belgian Pale Ale 17E Gueze
16C Saison 17F Fruit Lambic
16D Biere de Garde 18A Belgian Blond
16E Belgian Specialty Ale 18B Belgian Dubbel
17B Flanders Red Ale 18C Belgian Tripel
17C Flanders Brown/Oud Bruin 18D Belgian Golden Strong
18E Belgian Dark Strong

For more information of BJCP style guidelines, check them out here.

Judging Saisons at last years competition.

Last years best of show winner Charlie Gottenkieny

Registration for beers is open until November 26th and is $5 per entry. You can drop off your

The Growler: Part 1 The Past

***(Update - Part 2 with responses from Greg Koch, Joe Mohrfeld, and Matt Thrall is here)***

The growler has been a loyal companion of mine ever since attending that first Colorado party where someone brought this 64oz vessel of fresh beer straight from the brewery. I thought the concept was perfect, a reusable large container for transporting the freshest beer to my house straight from the brewery. For the past decade I've collected dozens of growlers and enjoyed surprising friends with fresh and/or rare treats from breweries across the country. I thought everyone loved growlers and enjoyed their delicious contents until earlier this week when I read an article entitled Why Beer Growlers are Bad for your Brew. I was pretty surprised by this one sided pretty biased article so I decided to do some research on the subject. Join me as we embark on a journey of growler history and explore the different opinions on the growler's role in enjoying fresh beer in this two part series.

Part 1: The history of the Growler

Image from Jess Kidden

The growler started its humble beginnings in the mid 1800’s before the popularity of pre-filled bottles and cans. If a customer wanted beer outside of a saloon, they would fill a container with beer. The containers ranged from pitchers to jars to jugs and were made of various materials such as glass metal and pottery. The most common container was a two quart galvanized pail. The vessels were called growlers. Growler fills were sold as a “pint” and were filled with close to a quart of beer and an equal part of foam. An early 20th century growler fill was commonly 5-15 cents.

Image from Jess Kidden

The origin of the word “growler” has many theories. The most popular theory is that it was

Final Recap: Beers Made By Walking Tasting #2

The final event for Beers Made By Walking took place about a week and a half ago. It was a lot of fun and many people were asking if we could do it again next year so it's something I'll be entertaining. For those of you who missed out on all of it, Beers Made By Walking was a summer long program where we went on a series of public hikes throughout the Pikes Peak Region, identified edible and medicinal plants along the way, and then made beers based on what we saw on the trails. There were two tastings, the first in August. The beers were brewed by local homebrewers but produced up at Pikes Peak Brewing, so that they were commercial and could be on tap at our downtown hangout, Brewer's Republic.

Anyone who showed up was given a sample tray to use for the day and a twelve page menu that had all sorts of information on the beer, the brewers, and the project itself. You can see the beers in the above photo. The closest one was from the first hike for this series (technically the 4th hike though) at Mueller State Park - a Strawberry Blonde Ale with Limber Pine by Scott Buchholz. The next was by Rich Mock, the hike was the Old Midland Railroad Grade in Manitou, the beer was gruit-ish with yarrow and wild sages but also some hops added strictly for flavor and aroma. The next was a saison by Tom Brown, complete with bee plant, amaranth, rose hips, tansy mustard, some wild hops, and water from the Catamount Trail hike in Green Mountain Falls. At the far end was Matt Kupferer's beer, inspired by North Cheyenne Canyon Park with Hazelnuts, Sarsparilla, and Spruce. The beers were all very different from each other the same way they were all very different from the first four beers at the previous tasting.

We're Turning 1!...And We're Throwing A Big Party!!!

Focus on the Beer will be turning one very soon. In our first year we've made nearly 200 posts, we've done interviews with brewers, documented festivals, we've had heated discussions, we helped bring new beer to Colorado Springs, we've kept you posted on what's happening around town, and much more, and...well, we thought it being our 1st birthday and all, we should probably throw a huge party! We invited a number of great breweries that we've talked about on the blog to provide special and rare beers just for this occasion. We've got quite the killer line up, so please mark Dec 02nd on your calendar. Below are the details and the list of beers:

Focus on the Beer Anniversary Party
Dec 2nd / 5pm-close / at Trinity Brewing
Come meet the people behind the blog and party with us!
Here's the facebook page for this event.

Special Tappings:
Avery Brewing - TBA
Crooked Stave - Chardonnay Barrel Aged Good Glory
Deschutes - 2011 Abyss
Firestone Walker - 15th Anniversary
Funkwerks - Cherry Saison
Great Divide - Hibernation Vertical - 09, 10, 11
New Belgium - Ken's Beer
Odell - TBA (something dark)
Phantom Canyon - Methuselah Rookie Card
Rockyard - TBA
Ska Brewing - Sethvleteren 8
Trinity Brewing - Soul Aged on Coconut
Twisted Pine - PoisonFish

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2011 All Colorado Beer Festival This Weekend

We've been so busy working on our events that we've been a little slow to post information about this upcoming All Colorado Beer Festival. We've written about a few of our complaints with beer festivals recently, but I haven't been to this festival before so I don't know what it's like, and I can't saying anything towards that end. I know that this weekend if I find that I'm not on the mountain in the snow, I will likely find myself here. The list of breweries seems reasonably decent, especially if you aren't able to make it out of town often, there's a handful of breweries that we often don't see here in The Springs.

Here's some info and a list of participating breweries: