Another Friday, another Colorado Living post. Today's post falls on a perfect day, M is actually on his way back to Denver for the weekend for work. Lucky him.
Since M was going to be out of town, I decided to volunteer to work this weekend. Today marks day one of another 8 days in a row. I hope I survive. I guess if I am burned out by middle of summer, I won't feel so bad leaving, will I?
Today I am going to share with you one of the best things about Colorado. The beer! Colorado has some fantastic breweries. Two of my favorite breweries are in Denver and one of them is in Boulder.
M and I tried to make it to as many of Colorado's breweries as we could. We even went on a camping trip to Durango just to visit a few specific breweries. Durango is completely across the state from where we were living and of course we hit as many breweries as we could on the way.
Colorado has a pretty cool idea, there is a map that is sold called the Beer Drinker's Guide To Colorado. It highlights all of the Colorado breweries. Here is a small portion of the map.
I tried to take as many pictures as I could when I remembered but of course I wasn't blogging at the time so simple pictures such as my favorite breweries, places I frequented quite often, I don't have pictures of. Fail.
I'll begin in Denver. As you can see, Denver has a plethora of beer! Two of my favorite places were Strange Brewing Company and Drydock Brewing Company.
Strange Brewing Co was one of the newest and smallest breweries in town. It was run by volunteer workers out of what could be considered a garage. They have awesome beer. Two of my favorites were Cherry Bomb Stout and Cherry Kriek. They get their cherries from Michigan which is way cool.
Drydock Brewing Company was a favorite of mine because they have Firkin Friday. Every Friday at 3pm they would tap a firkin of specialty beer, such as Strawberry Blonde or Raspberry Framboise. A firkin is just smaller than a keg. I would rush from work, where I would get out at 3:30pm and M would battle the traffic to barely meet me by 4pm. Sometimes I would order the very last pint they were serving and save it for M. Their beers are phenomenal and just thinking about that place is making me miss is so much. They run their brewery out of their homebrew shop. We would go there to get supplies to brew our own.
Boulder is also loaded with breweries. One of my favorite breweries in Boulder was Twisted Pine Brewing Company. Twisted Pine brews a ton of different styles of beer. One of my favorites was their Espresso Stout, brewed with espresso.
Boulder Beer Company put on an even last April, a beer scavenger hunt. M and I were quick to sign up and we had a blast. You are basically on a scavenger hunt though Boulder and you find clues to lead you to the next bar. At the bar you get free beer while you are there. There are certain things we had to collect on the hunt. I do have pictures of the crazy time we had.
We played jenga in a bar, rode a bull, had to find specific things to take pictures of - all while getting free beer. One of the funnest events I've done.
In addition to the local breweries, we also visited breweries in Grand Lake, Breckenridge, Estes Park and any small brewery on the way we could find. Oscar Blues Brewery was in the small town of Lyons, CO which we passed though on our way to Estes Park.
We also went to the big breweries, New Belgium and Odell in Fort Collins. However, I can only find one picture from that trip and I know I have more.
Odell Brewing Co - spring 2010
As I mentioned, we took a trip across the state to visit a few breweries in Durango. On the way, we hit up as many as possible. We stopped at a teeny tiny brewery in Del Norte to find that it was closed. On our way back from our Durango trip we stopped again to find it open. We go to great lengths to visit breweries.
Small town of Del Norte.
On our way back we were lucky enough to make it inside. It was an experience to say the least, the smallest brewery in existence. It is also where I learned that I am very fond of sour beers.
After Del Norte and before Durango we got to Pagosa Springs. We spent some time at the brewery there.
When we got to Durango we had Durango Brewing Company, Steamworks and Ska. Ska was basically the reason we went to Durango and all of the rest were a bonus.
After Durango Brewing Co and Steamworks we found out that Ska was closed! It would be open Monday morning at 8am. I couldn't believe it. We had driven 7 hours, there was no way we were missing out on Ska. We camped in Durango and sure enough on Monday morning, bright and early, on our way back to Denver we stopped at Ska!
Morning flight!
Happy camper. Literally.
Ska was all we hoped it could be and Durango was beautiful. We were rained out camping but we still managed to have fun and I am so glad we were able to see the things we did. The road trip was pretty epic too.
We also had the chance to visit the many breweries in Colorado Springs, without pictures as usual. Bristol Brewing Company, Trinity Brewery, Phantom Canyon Brewing Company and Colorado Mountain Brewery.
I've also previously mentioned visiting Aspen Brewing Company. There are some others that I haven't mentioned and that I don't have pictures from that we stopped at in passing. It was a goal of ours to make it to as many Colorado breweries that were feasible and I have to say we ended up being pretty successful.
Check out my other Colorado Living posts!
