Battle of the Brewers: Round 2

Battle of the Brewers: Round 2
Saturday, May 19th / 4pm SHARP! 
$10 cash / At Brewer's Republic / 112 N. Nevada, Colorado Springs
Facebook Event Page

Round Two of Battle of the Brewers is just around the corner. Last time we brought you eight local brewers, we put the brewers into brackets, we chose sixteen random ingredients, and you were the judge for the beers. It was a blast. You selected your four favorite beers in a blind tasting and now the winners of round one are paired up against each other. They've been working endlessly to perfect this round's offering.

On May 19th, join us for Round Two, where once again you'll be the judge. Be there at 4pm SHARP to participate. When the round is over we will announce the winners for the finals and randomly select the two ingredients. For $10 you will get a sample tray with four beers AND you will get a 10oz pour of a beer from a specialty keg.

The Players:
Lone Tree vs. Phantom Canyon (Pineapple and Honey)
Rockyard vs. Shamrock (Almonds and Ginger)

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Beer Drinker of the Week #6

Beer Drinker of the Week is a segment that will serve as a way to show off all that delicious beer you've been drinking, or just simply show us what beers you enjoy on a normal basis. This series allows you to present your beer in an artistic environment, tell us what you think about the beers you're trying, what beer is in your fridge regularly, or tell a story about how you acquired a hard to find beer. You and your beers are the focus here.

Beer Drinker of the Week #6: Amanda and Ned Brush

For the Love of Beer

I JUST learned that The Love of Beer will be playing twice in Colorado Springs for the Indie Spirit Film Festival. This is a documentary by Alison Grayson in Oregon and features women in the craft beer industry in the Pacific NW. The movie premiered during last year's Portland Beer Week in August. The film was met with a standing ovation and a crowd of over 400 people. I'm very very pumped that this movie will be in Colorado Springs and I cannot recommend enough that you carve out some time to see this. It's coming up quickly though.
Screenings are:

Info:
6:45pm tonight (Friday) at Max Kade Theatre / in Armstrong Hall, room 300 at Colorado College
9:00am Sunday (Apr 22) at Studio A / Edith Kenney Gaylord Center at Colorado College

Tickets are $10 apiece if you don't already have a pass to the festival, order full festival tickets here or get them 15 minutes in advance at the venue, if the show hasn't already sold out.

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Upcoming Beer/Wine Dinner at DAT's Italian

Beer and Wine Dinner
At Dat's Italian
May 8 / 6:30pm / $44
Make Reservations: 719.632.3287
2514 W Colorado Ave., Colorado Springs

This is a cool sounding idea. Dat's Italian is putting together a five course meal and each course will be paired with a wine and a beer. Beers will be selected by Rich Mock, who was one of the brewers for Beers Made By Walking last summer. Wines will be selected by Paulina Loveless. You'll need to make reservations in advance, $44 doesn't sound like a bad price at all for all this.

Eric Steen Presentation on Beer and Art

On April 27th I will give a talk about Beers Made By Walking and other beer-related events that I've put together in places like Portland, New York City, Kansas City, and Glasgow. You should come and hang out and hear what I've got to say! It will be at a private home, it'll be potluck style, there will be some beer available but you should also bring your own. Also bring a fold-up chair or blanket to sit on because it will take place outside! Because it's a local home, I'm only giving the address of the place to people who want to go enough to email me (ericmsteen at gmail dot com).

I'll be giving my talk alongside an artist named Harrell Fletcher, visiting from Portland, Oregon. Our talks are part of a three-day-walk we are doing with other Colorado Springs residents. The walk, a type of blending of art and geography, starts at UCCS and ends at the top of Pikes Peak and the presentation we're giving is a stopping place along the way. If you are interested in participating in part of this walk, email me, and I'll send you more information. I need to know soon though!

Both the talk and the walk are sponsored by the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art, the UCCS Department of Art History, and UCCS Visual and Performing Art.

Details:
What: A Presentation from Eric Steen and Harrell Fletcher
Where: At a private home / email for directions (ericmsteen at gmail dot com)
When: April 27th / 7pm Potluck / 7:30 Presentations
Bring: Potluck Style, bring food, bring some drinks, bring something to sit in

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Beer Events In Town This Week

A few beer happenings this week around town. Take a look!

Wednesday, April 18th 
Brewer's Republic Beer Dinner with Pikes Peak Brewing
Featuring Blue Sage Catering
At: Brewer's Republic / 112 N. Nevada, Colorado Springs
Call for more details / 719.633.2105

Friday, April 20th
Special 420 Tapping
At: Front Range BBQ / 2330 West Colorado Ave.
Starts at: 4:20pm
We will have a special release of the Nectar Ales Hemp Ale and a special Lagunitas 420 beer (only two places in Colorado got it).

Oskar Blues Pint Night
At: Another Pint / 13860 Gleneagle Dr.
We are having a pint night with Oskar Blues. Yummy beer, food, and free swag. The band playing is the Lethal Lisa Mcall Band.

Sunday, April 22nd
Colorado Springs Urban Beer Scavenger Hunt
At: Multiple Locations
Teams set out on foot in search of locations and tasks. During this crazy adventure, each team will be challenged with completing specific tasks and recovering select items. Beware, checkpoints may exist. (think beer). Players stick together to decipher clues, solve puzzles and race to finish. All details can be found here: http://www.urbanbeerhunt.com/coloradosprings.htm

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The Days Are Getting Warmer

The days are getting warmer and I've got the perfect beer in mind.

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2012 Saison Fest Image Recap

Saison Fest 2012 has come and gone and we have to wait another 365 days till the next one. After living in Colorado Springs for a year and a half I have come to love Saisons and Farmhouse Ales, due in large part to Trinity Brewing and their persistence in exploring the possibilities of these beers. We've seen Saisons of all kinds, from clean, dry, and sharp to messy, playful, and complex. We've seen farmhouse ales with wild yeast, with vegetables grown in our own backyards, with saffron, with heather, without hops, with fruit, with almonds, with large amounts of tartness and many other variations. It makes perfect sense that Trinity's newest flagship beer is Saison Man, a clean and dry saison named after Jason Yester, and it also makes sense that Jason organizes the annual Saison and Farmhouse Ale Festival. This is a day where breweries all over Colorado do some experimentation and bring some very playful offerings. Many of the beers are created for this event, while others are special beers that we just can't really get this far south of Denver (yet). It's a lovely festival, I really can't emphasize it enough. This year I had just as much fun as last year and I'm looking forward to the next one, although I wish we could have it again in 30 days. I hope you enjoy our photos and our recap.

Beer Happenings This Weekend (starting 4/13/2012)

There's a number of craft beer things happening this weekend and I'd like to just point them out for you. The highlight is undoubtedly the Saison Festival, one of my favorite events of the year, although there are plenty of other options if you can't make it. Check it out:

Beer Drinker of the Week #05

Beer Drinker of the Week is a segment that will serve as a way to show off all that delicious beer you've been drinking, or just simply show us what beers you enjoy on a normal basis. This series allows you to present your beer in an artistic environment, tell us what you think about the beers you're trying, what beer is in your fridge regularly, or tell a story about how you acquired a hard to find beer. You and your beers are the focus here.

(First off I wanted to apologize for not keeping up with this segment. We at Focus on the beer have had a crazy past couple of weekends but we really want to keep this segment going. So here's Colorado Springs Beer Drinker of the Week: Matt Kupferer.)

Beer Drinker of the Week #5: Matt Kupferer

The Beers:
Shiner Kosmos, Belhaven Wee Heavy, Rogue Irish Style Lager, Shiner Black Lager, Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ale, Rogue Dead Guy Ale, Victory Prima Pils, Uinta Cockeyed Cooper, Jolly Pumpkin Bam Noire, Unibroue Grande Reserve 17, Oskar Blues Deviant Dales, Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Dark. Missing In Action: Alaskan Birch Bock, Shiner Ryes and Shine Rye Lager, Shiner Bock, Shiner Hefe, Shiner Blonde

Four New Beers From Bristol!

You are looking at four new labels for Bristol Brewing. We spotted these labels on beerpulse.com and checked with Bristol to see if we could post about them. Bristol has had their expansion plans in the works, tripling their brewing capacity, basically opening up a community center at Ivywild, and now we see their intention to really step things up with four new beers. An Imperial IPA and Wit will come in 22oz bottles. The Belgian Style Dubbel and Tripel, part of the Belgian series, will be released in silk-screened 750ml bottles and available in May. I'm curious if the Dubbel will be anything like the B6000, which was also a Dubbel, because that beer was very fun to drink. I'm not sure when the Wit and 2IPA are due out. The labels for the Belgian beers were released on March 15th and the 22oz labels were released on April 5th. I would like to really congratulate Bristol on their hard work.

Beer Thoughts: Avery Uncle Jacob's Stout

Avery Brewing Co. Uncle Jacob's Stout

Beer Info:
The beer is named in honor of Jacob Spears, credited as the first distiller to name his whiskey 'bourbon.' This is a massive 17.4% American Imperial Stout, aged six months in bourbon barrels. 694 cases of this were bottled, compared to the 188 cases of their Muscat D' Amor (which I believe is my favorite Avery beer ever!). Even Colorado Springs received a few cases of the Muscat (and you can still find it if you look for it), so I'm assuming we'll get at least a few cases of this in the near future.

Image Recap of all the crazy things we did last weekend

Last weekend was one of the busiest weekends in recent memory for craft beer in Colorado Springs. We've got some photos to guide you through some of the events. Included are Meet the Brewer with Doug Odell, our trip up north to pick up kegs for Battle of the Brewers, Battle of the Brewers, and Front Range's beer brunch. This is tough work sometimes!

Look for these beers in pubs on Session Beer day

Session beer day is coming up quickly on April 7th. We posted a list of session and near-session beers you can pick up in local shops. I wanted to also offer a few suggestions (probably not a comprehensive list) of places to go and beers to drink on this day. Session beer for me is about drinking with friends and talking, brainstorming, and arguing. Bring a friend with you wherever you end up. These beers are 4.5% and below, while I'd prefer to only list beers below 4%, that would leave us with only one beer. Check it out:

The DL on Ivywild and Bristol

Just got an update from Bristol Brewing on the Ivywild project and thought we'd share it here with you. Based on what I'm reading, the place sounds like it's going to be a legitimate community center, where people can really hang out and participate and contribute to all sorts of goings-ons. I'm very happy to have something like this in town and I'm looking forward to being able to find my favorite "nook and cranny to curl up [in] with a beer." We'll be doing a photo shoot there at some point soon too. Here's from Laura Long:

Video Recap: Battle of the Brewers Round One

Battle of the Brewers: Round One from Focus on the Beer on Vimeo.

Battle of the Brewers was pretty amazing. We opened Brewer's Republic at 4pm and there was a huge line going out the door. Apparently a few other folks were just as interested as we were in seeing what our local brewers could do with a handful of random ingredients. Check out the awesome video that our photo guy Daniel Flanders put together. I think it nicely captures the spirit of the event.