Last year, the coordinators of the Colorado Distillers Festival created a tongue-in-cheek infographic comparing the costs of road-tripping around the state to visit distilleries versus simply attending the festival. The 1,020-mile road trip would take five days and cost $132 in gas alone, according to the infographic. The festival meanwhile…
Boulder is the cradle of craft brewing in Colorado, and nearby Longmont is home to two of the biggest breweries in the state, but until recently, southeastern Boulder County was primarily known only as the former headquarters for the Rock Bottom chain. By this fall, however, there will be eight…
Longmont-based Mobile Canning Systems has helped thirteen small Colorado craft breweries can more than a million beers since the company started up in 2011. In fact, the demand from breweries that want to begin packaging their beers is so great that Mobile Canning took delivery of its second mobile canning…
Twelve Degree Brewing, which opens tonight in Louisville, is rewriting history. Not only is it the second craft brewery to open in the former headquarters of the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery chain (the company, now owned by Craftworks, has since moved to Broomfield), but it is doing business in…
What’s the hardest test you’ve ever heard of? For many, the bar exam — the test every aspiring attorney must pass in order to legally practice law — will come to mind. The test’s difficulty cannot be denied; only about 55,000 people pass every year. But the fact is, the…
South Denver’s beer scene, which has been somewhat stagnant compared to the rest of the metro area, will get a boost this fall when Grist Brewing opens its doors in a business park just south of C-470 and Santa Fe Drive in Highlands Ranch. Founded by Rob Kevwitch, an organic…
The annual Food & Wine Classic that takes place in Aspen every June is known in industry circles as the epicurean equivalent of the Olympics. And given that the festival features more than 72 hours of pure excess, one certainly needs to be in peak physical form in order to…
Great Divide Brewing has been teasing fans of its highly-regarded, highly-sought after Yeti line of imperial stouts with news about a new flavor of Yeti coming out this year. It turns out that elusive new Yeti will be Oatmeal Yeti, made with rolled oats to “soften Yeti’s notoriously roasty backbone,”…
Factotum Brewhouse, which plans to open this fall in the Sunnyside neighborhood, is trying to raise $8,000 on Kickstarter so that it can “improve its current industrial vibe and make the taproom more fun and comfortable for customers.” So far, it has about 40 percent of that goal, with 32…
In liquor stores full of new and ever-rotating cans and bottles of beer, how can a startup brewery — or one that is new to packaging — stand out from the pack? That’s the question that local graphic designer Josh Emrich asked himself when he sat down to create a…
Starting in late July, one of our favorite watering holes — Star Bar — will host its first Battle of the Nontenders, a guest bartending cocktail challenge designed for those of us who have no experience whatsoever slinging drinks behind the stick. “It can be challenging to get behind an…
When it opens in December, Joyride Brewing hopes to use a little bit of Edgewater’s history to help propel the little town on the edge of Sloan’s Lake into the future. Created by friends Dave Bergen, Brent Smith and Grant Babb, Joyride will be located at the corner of 25th…
Tivoli Brewing, a new company that brought back one of the oldest names in Denver beer last year, will begin selling 22-ounce bomber bottles of Tivoli Beer this week. The beer, a German-style lager, is based on the name and recipe for the original Tivoli Beer, which was brewed in…
The country in the midst of a veritable cocktail renaissance — and Hey Bartender, a documentary that tells the story of the bartender in the era of the craft cocktail, offers a revealing look into the rebirth of the bartender and the comeback of the cocktail. Hey Bartender had its…
Ali Benetka, who has been an assistant brewer at Renegade Brewing only since January, was promoted to the top job this week, making her just the second female head brewer in Colorado and part of a growing number of women who wear the rubber boots. A Denver native, Benetka had…
Master Sommelier Brett Zimmerman hosted the first-ever Drink Ribera Denver Workshop at Zengo yesterday afternoon; it included an in-depth seminar and walk-around tasting of more than sixty wines from the Ribera del Duero region. Winemaking there dates back 2,000 years to the Roman era; the Tempranillo grape, known locally as…
It’s hard to follow a beer made with bull testicles, but Wynkoop Brewing Co. is going to try by releasing Colorojo Imperial Red Ale in cans next week. Like Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout, this hoppy, 8.2 percent ABV double red IPA is part of the brewery’s new Even Smaller Batch…
The craft beer business is booming, but so is the homebrewing sector as the interest in making and drinking good beer grows. The American Homebrewers Association, which is based in Boulder, released the results of a survey of homebrewing shops this week showing that 80 percent of them saw increased…
The owners of Sanitas Brewing aren’t planning to gently test the waters of Boulder’s increasingly-crowded craft-beer scene when they open their 15,000-square-foot, fifteen-barrel brewery and taproom this summer. They plan to jump in head-first. Sanitas co-founders Chris Coyne, Michael Memsic and Zach Nichols will offer two year-round canned beers, a…
Ghost chiles, Thai chiles, smoked jalapenos, wasabi powder, habanero peppers, cayenne peppers and shishito peppers made a hot day even hotter during yesterday’s heatwave that resulted in scorching sunburns for anyone outside, including the throngs that gathered on the rooftop at Linger for the Viva Sangrita, Viva Tequila Ocho battle…
Update: We have a winner of our Colorado Urban Winefest contest giveaway.This morning, we asked Cafe Society readers to answer this question: What’s the furthest distance, in exact miles, that a participating winery traveled to Denver to be a part of Colorado Wine Week? Congrats to Skinney85, who guessed 325…
There’s something perfect about the contrast between a cold Colorado beer in your hand and the warm sun on your face — something that makes the tensions of the day melt away. And although there are plenty of places around Colorado to drink good beer, a few of them stand…
