Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Coming up on the 16th, the Koreatown Beer Belly will be hosting Our Mutual Friend, the Denver brewery, not Janice from accounting.
For this special Thursday edition of their One Night Stand (#ONS) the following will be pouring…
1. Times Arrow (IPA)
2. Inner Light (Mosaic Pale Ale)
3. Riot of Color (Mango Lime Berliner Weiss)
4. Wicket (Belgian Wit)
5. All Colorado (IPA)
6. Weirding Way (Brett Saison) bottle pour
7. Gratitude Four (Pink Guava Saison) bottle pour
It is ticket time! This fest is a bit easier than say, the Firestone Walker Invitational, but you do have to be on the ball.
It is Great American Beer Festival time again! Tickets for the public go on sale via the ever so much fun Ticketmaster on August 2nd 10:00 AM MOUNTAIN TIME!
So be prepped and logged in and have a separate tab to immediately look for hotels in Denver cause that race is even harder sometimes.
Set your alarms for 10am on August 3rd, that is when tickets for the 35th Great American Beer Festival become available for purchase.
Just a little gathering in Denver and their Convention Center for more than 800 breweries and somewhere close to 3,800 beers. This year the fest runs from Thursday, October 6th to Saturday, October 8th.
This year the general session tickets are $80. They will go quickly.
I won’t be in Denver for the GABF tomorrow, live Tweeting or SnapChatting about the wave of beer that will descend upon the Blue Bear’s convention center but I will give you a re-cap of the awards and how California and (more specifically), Los Angeles fared. And I may even live tweet some of the awards like Bernie Sanders with a Republican debate. You can follow along with the Brewing Network if you are also not in Colorado.
If you are attending this year, make a point to go through the many, many guides out there to help plot your course. The only advice that I can give you is to try the local beer first and foremost. And stay hydrated. And do take the tour of New Belgium if you haven’t before because it is amazing.
Most breweries grow and grow to meet demand and to meet at least a little economy of scale but once you get big, what then?
Go small again! At least that is the case with New Belgium which will open a 10-barrel pilot brewery this year.
Some explanation of the plan is in order:
The brewery will be in downtown Denver on the ground floor of the not-yet opened Source Hotel.
The Source Hotel is next door to the Source Culinary Market (where you can find Crooked Stave)
New Belgium will be making primarily small batch, barrel-aged sour offerings.
50 oak barrels will be pulled up or elevator-ed up to the top of the building to a new bar called,
Then, beers, cocktails and food will be paired together.
If you have some free time come September 24-26, maybe you should head to Denver for the 34th annual Great American Beer Festival?
You have five days to decide because tickets will be available for purchase to the general public online on July 29, 2015 at Ticketmaster.
(Make sure to get up at the right time, the tickets go on sale on Mountain Time)
If forced to attend a professional baseball game, I could have fun checking out the craft beer choices. Checking out the good food options and even the totally bad for you food. And at Coors Field, there is another attraction to keep my mind off the interminable length of an actual game.
The Colorado Rockies will be adding hop plants to the garden that is beyond the outfield. This gardne already includes the home run fountains as well as other plants and trees but now will have planter boxes of quite possibley Citra, Simcoe and Cascade. These hops will be used (if they successfully grow) in a fresh hop beer made by Blue Moon at the Sandlot.
Now watching beer being made is so much more interesting.
Fiction Beer Company is not made up. It is non-fiction by definition. Founded by a book fan and a beer fan their tag line is “Crafting liquid literature”. And I love the branding via book styles:
The Classics:
“Like a good book you read over and over, our classics are beers you may be familiar with such as an IPA, Wit, or a Scotch Ale. Just because they are classics doesn’t mean they have to be boring; our brewers utilize their creative license to alter the same old stories to create a new experience.”
Mystery & Adventure:
“Think of a page-turner. Something to keep your attention, keep you guessing and keep you wondering what is coming next. Interesting flavors, varying styles, seasonal elements, all coming together to keep you drinking.”
Fantasy & Science-Fiction:
“Imagination is the only limit here. As an author might dream up a far-away world full of magic and outlandish creatures, these beers are conjured using a variety of techniques and ingredients to create a complex elixir for those who wish to try something out of this world. Sour, barrel aged and brett beers are just the beginning …”
Choose your own Adventure:
“Beer flights. Choose what you want to drink and in what order. We may suggest an optimal path of consumption; however, we leave it up to you—choose wisely.”
Makes me want to grab a good book and sit down with a pint. But what to pair with a romance?
Our final destination in Denver is Our Mutual Friend. Not a person, no. But a Malt & Brew in the River North neighborhood.
And where did they get the name? Their website explains that “Part of what we love about beer is its power to bring people together…”
Now on to what I would have in my taster tray:
Our second stop in Denver, home of the Great American Beer Festival is TRVE Brewing Company. And pretty much everything you need to know is summed up with this snapshot from their stark, black website….
They also advise employees about Slayer tattoos. So there is that as well. And though that type of music is more for my brother-in-law, I would not be scared of walking in and ordering the following taster tray:
Hellion – American Table Beer
Scorn – Dry Hopped Pale Wheat Beer
Grey Watcher – Grisette
and I would love to try one of their Solera efforts, their Brett beeers or the Winter Zephyr, a sour black ale which sounds intriguing. I am sure I would walk away with a bottle cause those labels would be perfect for Halloween.
