Important - Facebook Changes Dramatically Affect Our Readers

Image from Dangerous Minds.

Since the beginning of summer we noticed that the amount of traffic sent to our site from Facebook has been slowly declining. At first we just thought that perhaps people in the summer in Colorado were out hiking, biking, climbing, and drinking so there was less time to be online. I've heard from other beer bloggers the same thing, that during the summer the hits-per-day begins to decrease and that it picks back up in September. Unfortunately we've found that the trend is continuing and we've found some disturbing information about some recent Facebook changes that keeps our Facebook friends from seeing our posts. The sad thing is that this is happening to all FB pages, not just ours. We wanted to share these changes with you and give you, our readers and fans, some suggestions for ways to better stay up to date in light of these changes...

The website Dangerous Minds asks if what Facebook has done is the largest 'bait and switch' in history. Essentially a few months ago Facebook began a program where they ask page owners to pay to promote certain posts in order to receive more views. At the same time they began decreasing the amount of people that would see a a post that we make on our own wall that links to our website. Before the change I would estimate around 75% of our FB fans would see our FB posts, now only 15% of our fans see our FB posts.

For us, this is a bit of a bummer because when you 'like' our page on FB you are saying that you're interested in receiving our FB updates. If you can't see the updates and if we can't connect with you, then you're missing out on some of our updates about craft beer things in town, you're missing out on our stories and our reports about beer, you're missing out on all the events that we've organized, you're missing out on our educational articles, you're missing out on our hopes and ideas for growing interest in craft beer.

So, we have a couple options for you, we've figured out a few ways to make it easier to keep in touch. Here are a couple ways that you can make certain that you stay connected with us and that you know everything that's going on:

Subscribe to our blog via email or rss
Click this link if you would like to receive notifications of our posts sent directly to your email inbox. Anytime we post, you'll get an email at the end of the day. That might mean you get anywhere from 3-6 emails from us in a given week. If you choose this option, make sure to confirm your subscription with the follow up email. Another option is RSS subscriptions if you are familiar with RSS, here is our link.

Add us to your Interest List on Facebook
Facebook allows people to create Interests Lists for some of their favorite topics. Let's assume that you're interested in beer, you can create an interest list with all your favorite beer pages (including Focus on the Beer of course). Our posts will be more likely to show up in your main news feed,and you'll be able to view your new interest list (it will have it's own wall) and you won't miss anything. Here's how to do it.

1. Go to our FB page. 2. Like our page if you haven't already. 3. Hold the cursor over the box that says 'liked' and menu will show up that says something along the lines of 'add to interest list' or 'start an interest list.' 4. If you don't have a list, click on 'New List' and consider naming it Beer or Colorado Beer. 5. If you already have a beer interest list, add us to it.

Done! Now to view the list, go to your home page by clicking "Home" at the top. On the left side of your new Interest List should show up under the "Interests" heading. You may have to click on "More" to open up the option depending on the set up.

Visit our News Feed on Facebook
This is a bit less convenient than the other two options but we just wanted to mention it. Go to our FB Page and underneath our big cover photo you'll see an orange box titled "News." Click on that and you can see all our recent links to the Focus on the Beer site. If you do that on a regular basis (a few times a week) you won't miss anything.


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Beers Made By Walking will serve three beers this weekend during Wynkoop's big party!

This Saturday, we have been invited to serve up three of our Beers Made By Walking beers from this summer at Wynkoop during their annual Beers of the Year event! What a real honor! The event runs from 1-4pm on Nov. 3. All the information is below, including info on the three BMBW beers: 

Attendees can sample every beer Wynkoop brewed this year and special cask, reserve and vintage Wynkoop beers. Along with beers from fave peers (Breckenridge Brewery, Fort Collins Brewery, Mountain Sun Breweries & Pubs, and Beers Made By Walking) and a selection of gourmet cheeses to accompany the array of 50 beers.  

We will be serving three beers from our Beers Made by Walking stash! This will include Ska's Cerveza de las Animas Perdidas (chokecherry, juniper, and yarrow Saison), Strange's Eldorado Bel-Gin Dark (Belgian dark with juniper and pineapple weed), and a beer we saved just for this event...the never before seen Wynkoop Green Cross (American Pale Ale with dank hops, hemp seeds, and magic).

Wynkoop will be releasing a pair of out-there new beers at this year's Beers of the Year. Belgian Pear Cider (8.2% ABV) is built from a trippel recipe and fermented with Colorado pear juice. The Chancellor is a single malt/single hop super-strong ale (14% ABV) made from a 1930 Oxford University recipe provided by UK beer historian Terry Foster. It has been barrel aging for 16 months.

Beer nuts can buy advance $25 Beers of the Year tickets and see the current beer list at www.wynkoop.com. Tix are $32 at the door the day of the show. Advance ticket buyers are entered into a drawing for a pair of tickets to Wynkoop's Dec. 1 Parade of Darks.

2 Big Events this Week

The big events in town this week are the All Colorado Beer Festival on the weekend and earlier in the week Great Storm Brewing is throwing a big Halloween Party. Check out the details below:

Great Storm Brewing Halloween Party 
Oct. 31st / Starting at 11am / 204 Mount View Lane in Colorado Springs.
Wear a costume and get your first pint of beer for $1. Great Strom will have a slew of special small batch beers just for this event, including:

• Pompion Ale - an unspiced golden ale made from nearly 100 lbs of roasted pumpkins, based on a recipe published by Benjamin Franklin 
• Gdansk Gdansk Revolution - our tribute to the Solidarity movement that eventually ended communism in Poland, this beer is a Baltic porter spiced with Polish bay leaves. 
• Death Star Imperial Stout - the big brother to Stephen Shelton's Dark Side Ale we served during our Midsummer party - we only have about 24 servings of this special high gravity beer, so first come, first served.

Looks like they're going all out for this party!

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All Colorado Beer Festival
Nov. 3 /  Various Times (see below) / 3650 N. Nevada Ave. Colorado Springs

I'm counting 38 Colorado breweries for this festival. Tickets are $30 in advance and VIP passes are $40 in advance. They might cost more at the door. Session times are: Session 1) 1-4:30pm and Session 2) 6:30-10pm. All details and tickets are here.

The All Colorado Beer Festival is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation established to operate beer festivals for the express purpose of raising funds for Colorado Springs area nonprofit organizations. In five years the ACBF has donated over $85,000.

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Beer Photo of the Week #19

Photos of the Week by Daniel Flanders. Beer samples and beer tickets.

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Free Taxi Rides For Halloween This Weekend

I received an email about the Safe & Sober program that gives out free taxi rides to folks who need it during Halloween. I figured that even though this isn't promoting regional craft beer, it's a really great service and you all should know about it. Read all the rules below, you have to mention a certain name to get the free ride, and because Halloween is on a weekday, this program is only for certain hours this weekend:

Paradox Beer Releases the Heralded Nocturnes Line Up

Last night was the grand release party for Paradox Beer Co. It was a snowy evening, which made the backdrop for the event quite beautiful. Paradox brought along the three beers that have been available for the past month or so (Paradise Nines, Kandid Kaiser, and Bandeau Artiste) as well as two brand new beers that will be available in liquor stores soon. The new beers are part of their Heralded Nocturnes line up, certainly more Autumnal and Harvest characteristics with nuttier and more caramely malt flavors.

Pikes Peak Brewing's Barrel Room

Monday night was a great night in Monument. We headed north to visit Pikes Peak Brewing for Monument Beer Week and the grand opening of the Barrel Room. When we first got their the place was packed and we stuck around long enough to talk briefly with Chris Wright and to enjoy a few beers. This was perhaps one of the most memorable beer nights of memory as we were celebrating what should prove to be a top-notch space where beer is presented as art.

The brewery celebrated this grand opening by bringing in all sorts of barrel aged beers, ranging from the biggest dark Russian Imperial Stouts in bourbon barrels to soft and delicate sour and Brett beers. We bought a bottle of Crooked Stave's Batch 01, which was their first brew aged for a while with raspberries, and I also had an oak aged Ten Fidy from Oskar Blues. Other highlights included The Bruery's Oud Bruin, the Scaldis Prestige, Jolly Pumpkin, AC Golden, and many many others.

Lotsa Beer Happenings This Week in the Region!

Updated with more events! * Indicates newly added event.

My oh my there's a lot of craft beer stuff this week. Check out the list. I'll add to it if I find more.

Beer Photo of the Week #18

Photos of the Week by Daniel Flanders. Monumental beer.
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Brewer's Republic brings River North Brewing to town

A while back we visited River North Brewing up in Denver and were really impressed with all of their beers. The brewery is brand new and already make some good headlines, carving out a place in the heart of Denver beer lovers. Well, Brewer's Republic is bringing their brewer to town and they're going to have a special tapping of four of their beers, with another beer in bottles. This seems like a pretty great event. Just to be clear, it is not related to the Meet the Brewer series that we organize, but it's still going to be good. And it's good to see another place putting on a good event like this. I'd head that way on Sunday.

Brewer's Republic brings River North Brewing to town
Sun. Oct 21st / 5-7pm / 112 N. Nevada, COS.
Come by Brewer's Republic on Sunday October 21st from 5-7 pm to meet Patrick with River North. River North Brewery is located in the River North Art district in the northern part of downtown Denver. We will have four beers available:

Quandry - Belgian Quad

BPR - Belgian Pale Red

River North White - Belgian Wit

Whiskey Barrel Aged River North White

And also one case of Avarice their Belgian Stout.

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A run down of CO awards at the 2012 GABF

In case you haven't seen it yet, we wanted to give you a run down on how Colorado did, in terms of winning medals, at the Great American Beer Festival this year (2012). We have some tribute photos for Trinity Brewing here because they won a bronze for their TPS in the American Brett Ale Category, which is one of my favorite categories so I'm really happy for them about this. Also, we should give a shout out to Funkwerks for winning two golds along with Small Brewing Company of the Year!

All in all I count 35 awards, including the Small Brewery of the Year. One of these awards comes from the Pro AM homebrew competition and one comes from the large Coors Brewery for the American Lager category. There are 84 judged categories, so if we are only talking about those and not Small Brewery of the Year or the Prom AM (that's 33 medals), Colorado took home 13% of all the medals at GABF! Not bad, I'd say. Out of these 33 medals we won 14 golds, 7 silvers, and 12 bronze medals. So 42% of our medals were gold medals. We won 16.6% of all the gold medals at GABF, 8% of all the silvers, and 14% of all the bronze medals. Additionally we placed in 30 different categories, meaning that CO brewers placed in about 36% of all the categories at GABF. Nice work Colorado!

Beer Happenings over the next few days (Oct 17-21, 2012)

Lots and lots of beer happenings over the next two weeks in the Pikes Peak Region (including an Oktoberfest party!). I think we'll start you off slow with information about the events over the weekend, but if you want a peek ahead at all the beer dinners, Monument Beer Week, and special events you should check out our calendar. Here's what's up for the next few days:

Monument Beer Week Oct. 20-27

Saturday, October 20th, kicks off Monument Beer Week. This week is organized by Pikes Peak Brewing Co.  There will be beer dinners at local restaurants as well as beer events at Pikes Peak Brewing. Here are a few of the events that no one should miss if you happen to be in the area. For a complete list of the activities, check out it out here.

Monday 10/22/12 6pm: Grand Opening of the Barrel Room – PPBC
The Pikes Peak Brewing Company introduces our new tasting room called “The Barrel Room”. To debut our new digs, we will offer a special tasting of rare and unique barrel aged beers from around the world. No reservations needed. Beers offered will include:

Scaldis Prestige De Nuits – Brasserie Dubuisson
Lucienaga – Jolly Pumpkin
Bam Noire – Jolly Pumpkin
Signal de Botrange – Elevation Beer Co.
Double DBA – Firestone Walker
Oak Aged Yeti – Great Divide
Monks Cafe – Brewery Van Steenberge
Petrus Oud Bruin – Brewery Van Steenberge
Petrus Aged Pale Ale – Brewery Van Steenberge
Batch #1 – Crooked Stave
Curetta Reserva – Crooked Stave
Duchesse De Bourgogen – Brouwerij Verhaeghe
La Trappe – Bierbrouwerij De Koningshoeven
LambickX – De Troch
Le Capitaine – Trinity Brewery
Oude Tart – The Bruery
Paradox Beer Co.
River North Brewery
Sour – AC Golden

The Party At and Around GABF

Everyone knows that the Great American Beer Festival is a giant beer party. Hundreds of breweries around the country bring in their mainline beers and some of their best offerings for the big show. The event is amazing, you enter the convention center with tens of thousands of people as bagpipes overwhelm you with a wall of sound. People rush to the booths where the rarest beers will disappear quickly and then they set off to try beers that they can only get while at GABF. The brewers too come with excitement as they hope to snag a coveted GABF award (Huge congrats to Trinity for their Bronze in the American Brett Ale category!). While most don't win anything, I imagine no one goes home truly upset, it's practically impossible to leave GABF without a sense that you've just had the best few days of your life. Plus your liver is hurting and you spend one day recuperating, and that's also one of the best days ever.

But there's much more to GABF than meets the eye. There are literally a hundred-plus events happening around Denver that supplement the festivities. Some of them are rare beer tappings, or beers that aren't normally available to Colorado and other markets. Some are fundraisers, some are big cook-outs, some you can meet the brewers, etc. etc. etc. We went to a number of these events. In many ways we enjoyed these as much as the big event itself because they were slightly quieter and slower and that's just what we needed. So this post really is a look at the party Around GABF rather than a look At GABF.

Coming Up: Loads and Loads of Beer Dinners

Here's your guide to the line of beer dinners coming up over the next couple weeks. These sound great, make sure to get your reservations in time!

Wed / October 17th AND Beyond

Bristol + More Belgian Beer Dinner
The Blue Star / October 17th / 6:30pm / $50++
Call to make reservations: 719.632.1086

Beer Photo of the Week #17

Photos of the Week by Daniel Flanders. Beers Made By Walking glassware in Denver.
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Photo Recap: Denver Beers Made By Walking

Tuesday night was the debut of Beers Made By Walking in Denver. We've been pretty excited about this event as we worked with nine of our favorite Colorado Breweries to create special beers just for the event. We were pleased to have a packed house, our friends from Denver Off The Wagon showed up, a few pals from Colorado Springs, as did a few other people we've met along the way. You can read more about the event on Denver's Westword and the Denver Post. The Westword called the event one of the most unusual event of GABF week. We really like that description!

Bristol's Venettuci Pumpkin Ale is on its way!

The Venetucci Pumpkin Ale might be my favorite Bristol beer. I love pumpkin beers, they signal a change of seasons. Autumn and Fall are generally my favorite times of the year, and these beers are the epitome of Fall. Of course most breweries in town make pumpkin beers, and many of them are great. Last year I tried the Trinity, Phantom Canyon and Rock Bottom pumpkin beers and all were wonderful. Trinity's beer is really worth trying if you can get your hands on in. Bristol's beer gets the most attention however, and perhaps rightly so. The proceeds of the beer are donated to the Venetucci Farm, and the beer itself has a wonderful smoothe texture with nicely balanced spices. I don't know if I can decide a favorite pumpkin beer ever but Bristol, Trinity, and Upslope are certainly contenders for first. Last year, FotB readers did a blind taste test of some local pumpkin beers and Bristol's was the clear winner.

Bristol was kind enough to send along some photos. Here we see the Bristol crew picking, cutting, and roasting the pumpkins, getting them prepared for the brew. It is said that roasting the pumpkins and getting them a bit carmelized will add some carmel-pumpkin flavor to the beer. Generally the spices contribute most of the pumpkiny flavor. However, the pumpkins play a huge part in making the beer smoothe like pumpkin pie.

The pre-orders for this beer have already taken place so your if you want some you have a couple options. You can either show up to Bristol on the night of the release or you can try to find it at a local liquor store. I went to the opening last year and it was a ton of fun, even though I waited for a whole hour to get in! I got my allotment of bottles and I had three pints of the beer at the bar. Also last year there was some controversy as some local liquor shops charged high prices for the beer. That may happen again but generally if you go to some of the places we talk about on the blog you won't run into that problem. Regardless, the whole situation is a ton of fun, whether you're showing up to the taproom or hunting for the bottles around town...you won't want to miss it.

Here's the information about the release party:
Thursday, October 25 / 5:00 pm
Bristol tasting room, 1647 S. Tejon, Colorado Springs

Things You’ll Want To Know:
--There is a 2-bottle limit per person.
--A limited number of bottles will be available for purchase at $5.99 plus tax per bottle (bottles may not be consumed in the tasting room).
--Pints will be available for $6.00 each.
--Growler fills will not be available this year so that the line will move faster and so there will be more beer to go around.
--If the brewery sells out before you get some, don’t forget to try the liquor store. They’ll have some, too!

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Photo of the Week #16b: Euphoria!

Photos of the Week by Daniel Flanders. For those that mark seasons by seasonals: Euphoria has arrived...Winter is coming

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A Sneak Peek at Tuesday's Beers Made By Walking!

We thought we'd give you a top-secret look at the Denver Beers Made By Walking program. Upon looking at this list we got pretty excited and we have a really hard time keeping secrets. These ten beers will be served for one night only at Wynkoop Brewing, on Oct. 9th from 5-8pm.

Here we go!

Crooked Stave - Foragester Sai-bucha - A blend of three beers with jasmine kombucha tea, linen flowers, and wild grapes.

Oskar Blues - Opuntia Zytha - Our brew is a Golden Ale made with prickly pear cactus and fresh hops picked out of Charlie Papazian's yard.

Lone Tree - High Plains Harvest Brown - Brown Ale with whiskey soaked pumpkin seeds and orange blossom honey.

Phantom Canyon - Sundance Saison - A balanced and clean Saison made with rose hips and sumac.

Pikes Peak - Dances with Bees - Inspired by a hike to Palmer Lake Reservoir, a golden honey ale with sunflower seeds.

Pikes Peak - Kriekenstein - A 4% sour mash Kriek with chokecherry.

Ska Brewing - Cerveza de las Animas Perdidas - A dry and fruity Saison spiced with juniper, yarrow, and chokecherries, inspired by the Animas River in Durango.

Strange - Eldorado Bel-Gin Dark - Brewed with juniper berries and pineapple weed this Belgian Dark Ale is the color of the canyon walls along Eldorado Creek.

Trinity - Saison Du Tomme - Light bodied Saison with rose hips and amaranth from the hike, also added is lemongrass and grains of paradise.

Wynkoop - Oishi Gochiso - A light lager made with pacific rim hops and a blend of spices and tea inspired by our urban walk.

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Photo of the Week #16a: Eric Salazar

Photos of the Week by Daniel Flanders. Eric Salazar of New Belgium talking about their wood aging program.

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Recap: New Belgium Meet the Brewer

Last night was an amazing night at Front Range BBQ. We brought out Eric Salazar, the brewer for the New Belgium wood-aging program, for our Meet the Brewer series. Eric gave a keynote presentation for 60 minutes to a house packed full of people who were drinking some limited New Belgium brews. Big thanks to Travis Flett and Michael Bussmann for helping put this together with me.

The presentation was pretty informative. Eric talked all about the history of the wood program at New Belgium. Peter Bouckaert was brought in from the Rodenbach Brewery in Belgium where he had been trained in brewing and blending sour beers. He started up the program at New Belgium and is the creator of the infamous La Folie. Now New Belgium has 35 wood foeders ranging in size from I believe 23 hectoliters to 250 hectoliters. Their total capacity is around 4200 hectoliters, which is roughly 3600 barrels.

Photo Recap: PBR Night at Tony's

We may be a craft-beer blog but we have to admit that on occasion we do enjoy a nice cold 24oz can of Pabst Blue Ribbon at places like Tony's or Supernova. Sometimes it just feels right, and you know it too. So, we were pretty pumped when we heard about the PBR night at Tony's last week. People were encouraged to make art that had PBR as the inspiration and bring it into Tony's. Artwork ranged from paintings to sculpture, installation work, bicycles, and more. Winners were given prizes and just about everyone had a tallboy in their hand. Here's a photo recap, we apologize in advance to the artists whose names we did not right down.

Reminder: New Belgium Meet the Brewer

Just wanted to send out a reminder for our Meet the Brewer with Eric Salazar of New Belgium. The event is tomorrow (Thurs. Oct 4th) and promises to be the most educational and exciting of our series yet!

Follow the link below for the full set of details:
Meet the Brewer: New Beglium (w/presentation)
Featuring a 60 Minute Talk "From Grain to Glass" by Eric Salazar
Thurs. October 4th / 7pm / Pay Per Beer
Front Range BBQ / 2330 W. Colorado Ave., Colorado Springs
Facebook Event Page


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Pikes Peak Brewing Rolls Out Monument Beer Week 2012

Now in it's second year, Monument Beer Week is more expansive, ambitious, and comprehensive than ever before. The dates are set for Sat. Oct. 22 to Sat. Oct. 27th. There will be plenty of great events, and we'll be sure to post more details when we have them. For now, begin penning in events on your calendars, here's the list:

News from New Belgium about this Tuesday's BMBW

Unfortunately New Belgium will not have a beer ready for Tuesday's event in Denver. They are pretty bummed about it but have released a statement for us:

For the fine fans of Beers Made by Walking.
When New Belgium started discussions with Beers Made by Walking to brew a beer for their big ol’ party during GABF it was contingent on our new pilot brewing system being complete. Come brew day for our Beer Made by Walking the system was not complete. We are sorry for this, but big projects (like building a pilot system) sometimes take longer than their original timeline. Everyone new it was going to be close, and it was looking like it was going to happen, and then it didn’t. Again, we’re sorry that we will not be able to get in on the party. However, we still want to brew a beer with BMBW, we are planning that beer now. It will be available and pouring at Focus On the Beer’s anniversary party in December. Sorry about all this, it’s a bummer, I know. Enjoy the party and we will see you in December…

We are thankful that New Belgium has showed a huge interest in what we are doing and we're glad that they still want to make it work for our party. I thought I'd let you all know that.

We do have a backup plan though! Pikes Peak Brewing hosted a local BMBW event just a couple weeks ago and they were able to brew up an extra batch of the Sour-Mash Chokecherry Kriek on their pilot system. We'll be bringing that up as a replacement. Let me tell you right away that this beer is really fantastic and I'm looking forward to trying it again!


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The 1st beer I try at GABF will be from Wynkoop

Perhaps you've heard of Oyster Stouts before? They're a rare but historical style and I've had a couple. Well, you'll want to check out the latest spin on stouts from our friend's up north. On April 1st this year Wynkoop released some press about a "Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout." I've learned the hard way to basically stay off the internet on April 1st so I knew this was a joke. They released a ridiculous video (see below!!!), made a logo for the beer and everything and it was super funny. So, because I'm working with them on the Denver Beers Made By Walking the Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout came up again and I learned that they had just actually truly made the beer. The idea was just too good to ignore! No joke, it's 100% serious (well perhaps it's not serious, but it's legit), they made a beer with bull balls in it. Here's some facts for ya:

"A special ultra-limited-release beer, it weighs in at 7% ABV and 3 BPB (That’s balls per barrel). In addition to our brewpub, the beer will be served at our table at the Great American Beer Festival next week."

Believe it or not I'm looking forward to trying this beer and I'm going to make it the first one I try at GABF. What do you think? Well, first, before you tell me what you think, watch this video...
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