PHILOSOPHY
“We’re all hopheads,” says Eric Huber, head brewer at the Lyons location. “We do love classical styles, we do love a lot of what the other guys are doing, but it’s about what we want to drink ourselves. We’ve got a clientele who loves what we’ve been doing, and we’ve been training them to drink the hoppy beers we’ve been drinking for years. The best way to find out if it’s a great batch is put it on and see what the local boys think.”
KEY BEER
Dale’s Pale Ale, 6.5 % ABV. Initially laughed off, Katechis’s delicate craft beer packaged in aluminum cans was an unlikely success. For one, Katechis didn’t live in Portland or Seattle, where craft is king. He lived in the Deep South. “In 1989 or 1990, there were not too many home brewers in Auburn, Alabama,” he says. “Actually, I knew of one—and that was me.” He had developed a recipe for Dale’s Pale Ale, an extremely hoppy beer, almost IPA-like, outside of the style guideline of a pale ale, which evolved with his first-hired brewers. And the rest, as they say, is history.
North Boulder
UPSLOPE BREWING COMPANY
1501 Lee Hill Rd., No. 20 • Boulder, CO 80304 • (720) 379-7528 • upslopebrewing.com • Established: 2008
Flatiron Park: 1898 S. Flatiron Court Boulder, CO 80301 • (303) 396-1898 • Established: 2013
SCENE & STORY
In a generic North Boulder strip mall on Lee Hill Road, some enterprising, beer loving, home brewing friends built a booming business. The taproom is decorated with photos of the brewery’s fans drinking Upslope brews in the wilds of Colorado and beyond. The founders themselves, a garrulous bunch, are quick to recount close scrapes from the early days, coping with limited space, little money, harsh winter temperatures, and other setbacks. But like the Flatiron Mountain images that decorate their cans, things went straight up for Upslope. In 2013, Upslope opened its second location in Flatiron Park, a 27,000-square-foot brewery complete with a 2,300-square-foot taproom, and announced plans for a 11,000-square-foot Boulder location and barrel-aging facility soon after, as well.
PHILOSOPHY
Upslope’s MO is simple. Great craft brews should be canned and ready to rock at a moment’s notice. “We’re all about drinking our beer, not just in a pub, but on the side of a mountain,” says assistant brewer Alex Violette. “It’s a completely different experience. Take it rafting with you. Get out there and have fun with it, you know?” Better yet, it’s easier to leave no trace with canned beer: crush up the cans and pack them out. The approach also makes sense from a business standpoint. The same amount of beer weighs about 40 percent less in the can than in a bottle, and stacks more efficiently in a truck, making it a more energy-efficient product going out of the brewery, as well.
KEY BEER
Upslope’s beers are firmly in the middle of the typical Colorado beer lover’s palate, with big, malty, hop-accented beers that finish clean. Their marquee beer is Upslope Pale Ale (5.8% ABV). “It’s brewed in the tradition of American-style pale ale except for one different aspect: we use Patagonian hops,” says Violette. “They add a little bit more of an earthy-spicy flavor to our pale ale. It’s also a very approachable beer, not over-the-top hopped. It’s something that’s really easy to drink on a warm summer day.”
High Rocky Mountains and Beyond
CASEY BREWING & BLENDING
3421 Grand Ave. • Glenwood Springs, CO 81601 • (970) 230-9691 • caseybrewing.com • Established: 2013
SCENE & STORY
In life, blending is a good thing. Just think: Root beer floats. Neapolitan ice cream. Troy Casey knows a thing or two about blending. Casey earned a reputation as an expert on sour ales aged in oak and blended in the ancient (and ultra-time-consuming) Belgian tradition while he worked for AC Golden, the MillerCoors–owned beer incubator in Golden, Colorado. Casey left AC Golden in the end of 2013 on good terms with his big brewery colleagues, ready to forge a path of his own.
In his new venture, Casey Brewing & Blending overlooking the Roaring Fork river canyon in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Casey is focusing on sour ales aged on local fruits. “We’re getting flavors that you can’t get anywhere else,” Casey told me. “It’s the freshest fruit flavor in a beer and is a form of fruit preservation. When you’re picking fruit at its peak and putting it in a beer, the fruit doesn’t age. Six months from now, you can open a cherry beer and have those flavors. Depending on when the grape harvest is, we might try to use some grapes. We’re having fun with beer.”
It’s a stark departure from his former days inside the industrial AC Golden. And it comes as a bit of a surprise. “I never had dreams of opening my own brewery,” Casey told me. “I was very excited to be a company man for Miller-Coors because large companies are interesting—they have a lot of moving parts. But things shifted in the industry and I realized that it wasn’t the future I wanted.” Lucky for us.
PHILOSOPHY
“When I drink a German pilsner, I’m usually bored by it only because I know a lot about how that beer is made,” Casey says. “For me, making these Belgian styles, it’s still a mystery—I don’t know what’s happening. There’s a symbiotic relationships in a barrel that’s unlike anything else. No matter how much you look at the science, you’ll never understand. I made these beers and I can’t tell you exactly why they taste that way. Another brewer could do the same thing I did and they’d make a completely different beer. It’s all about the climate, the temperature, the type of barrel, the humidity you have. That’s why it’s really fun.”
KEY BEER
Casey has two core brands, 100 percent fermented and aged in oak—the Saison and a Belgian-style sour which comes in variations with local raspberries, cherries, plums, peaches, and other fruits. “I’m very proud of my Saison,” Casey says. “It’s 5.5% ABV; it’s very dry and pleasantly tart. It has a really interesting naval orange taste that I’ve never tasted in a beer before. I don’t believe it could be any better if it was made with ingredients from anywhere else. It’s very important to use what you have available. I don’t think of it as limiting. I use that as a challenge to make something that no one else can make.”
WILD MOUNTAIN SMOKEHOUSE & BREWERY
70 E. First St. • Nederland, CO 80466 (303) 258-9453 • wildmountainsb.com • Established: 2007
SCENE & STORY
About seventeen miles west and 3,000 feet higher in elevation than Boulder, tiny Nederland—an old Ute Indian trading post turned silver mining town (population: 1,700)—is home to a lot of hippies, mountain bikers, and “the Frozen Dead Guy,” a.k.a. Bredo Morstoel, a Norwegian whose body has been kept at -60°F by the townspeople for more than twenty years (long story), making him something like a bizzaro town father. It’s also home to a reasonably priced little beer and barbecue getaway very much worth a drive out of Boulder.
With well-made beers, a mountain view from the back patio, and high marks for soul food (especially the hardwood-smoked ribs and wings, and the sweet potato fries), Nederland’s little brewery would be worth visiting on its own accord, but there’s still another reason people flock there, in late summer: NedFest, a three-day roots music festival that has welcomed such iconic artists as the mandolinist David Grisman, Cajun jammer Dr. John, and “newgrass” aces Yonder Mountain String Band.
PHILOSOPHY
Beer and barbecue go together like peanut butter and jelly, right? This is a restaurant dedicated to the relatively simple mission of making great beer for great barbecue and vice versa.
KEY BEER
There are always four house brews on tap; try the Brewski Sampler (samples of four draughts and a guest tap) to see what’s freshest. The house brew Otis Pale Ale has been a standby, and the bottle list has included selections from Russian River, Lost Abbey, Stone, and Left Hand.
BRECKENRIDGE BREWERY & PUB
600 S. Main St. • Breckenridge, CO 80424 (970) 453-1550 • breckbrew.com • Established: 1990
SCENE & STORY
“Breck” was founded beneath
a soaring peak which would later become one of the top ski areas in North America, with steep, exposed, sought-after black diamond runs like the Lake Chutes. Runs like those were the first love of local Richard Squire, who, when not skiing, was home brewing. As the state’s craft beer industry fired up, Squire saw his chance and took it; today Breckenridge beers are available in more than twenty-five states. The original location of the Breckenridge family of brewpubs (an aggressive brewpub expansion strategy was scaled back in the late 1990s), this spacious brewpub has mustard yellow and deep red walls, with metal railings and plenty of space, giving it a modern feel. The hearty fare, if nothing too adventurous, is just right for après-ski. Score an outside table with a view of the peak (and those Lake Chutes), and the picture is nearly complete. There’s a twelve-acre, 85,000-square-foot production brewery in Littleton now, and five other restaurants affiliated with the brand, which to some dismay, was sold to AB InBev in December 2015 for an undisclosed but surely mountainous sum.
PHILOSOPHY
Squire’s dream: ski all day and drink great beer every night. That about covers it, doesn’t it?
KEY BEER
The 7.85% ABV Extra ESB, part of the small batch series, deftly blends a roasted and slightly sweet caramel character with astringent hops. Expect to see many new barrel-aged and large format releases in coming years.
Aspen
ASPEN BREWING CO.
304 E. Hopkins Ave. • Aspen, CO 81611 (970) 920-2739 • aspenbrewing.com • Established: 2008
SCENE & STORY
Two friends not long out of college opened Aspen Brewing Co. in a cluttered old architect’s studio, decorating the place with hand-carved tap handles, Tibetan prayer flags, maps, and other bric-a-brac. Former Keystone Light drinkers, the roommates had discovered the incredible spectrum of flavors in craft brews on tap while going to school in Boulder. They started home brewing, and, being regulars in Aspen, dreamed they could bring the movement back to Aspen, local craft brewing pioneer Flying Dog having long departed to Denver, then Maryland. The optimism was well founded: their first batches blew out in a matter of days, a scenario they clearly still regard in awe.
The duo moved quickly to auger into Aspen’s social fabric, contributing to charities, bringing in new brewers, and scouting property for the next level—they were already thinking bigger. Today, the crew has graduated to a shiny taproom closer to Main Street, and to the well-heeled tourists that flock to Aspen practically year-round, while production has expanded to a warehouse out near the airport.
PHILOSOPHY
Stewards of the land, with a hearty thirst for beer. “We’re not just punks out of college,” says Duncan Clauss, one half of the founding team. The Aspen crew was one of the first three breweries, alongside New Belgium and Odell, to sign on to the Clean Water Act with Environment Colorado and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
KEY BEER
The big, juicy, American-style India pale ale known as Independence Pass (7% ABV) is a grassy, floral blast of Cascade, Palisade, Columbus, and Simcoe hops, with a foundation of sturdy malt.
2858 Upper River Rd. • Woody Creek, CO 81656 • (970) 923-4585 • woodycreektavern.com
The saying “Good people drink good beer” might not be the best-known line from Hunter S. Thompson, whose seminal work, Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, scorched the pants off the literary world in 1972, but it is—obviously—one of his best. And, although traveling in the usual manner of Dr. Gonzo (bat-eyed high with a trunk full of drugs, firearms, dynamite, and rats, to be deposited on some politician’s front lawn), is not even remotely recommended, it is a good idea to visit the writer’s two most famous old haunts, one in glitzy Aspen, and one right outside it in a dustier spot.
Start at J-Bar, a Victorian gem with a marble floor and tin ceiling in the lobby of the Hotel Jerome in Aspen proper. This watering hole started hydrating silver miners in 1889 and later became the preferred liquid-rations stop for 10th Mountain Division soldiers-in-training during World War II. Thompson used the place as his headquarters for his campaign for sheriff in 1970, running on his “freak power ticket” with a pledge to regulate illicit drug sales, replace the city streets with dirt, and, more than anything else, as he would later write, prevent “greedheads, land-rapers and other human jackals from capitalizing on the name Aspen.” (He lost by only 400 votes.) For years after, Thompson was a regular here, stopping by after the post office to eat, drink, and read his mail, generally making less of a scene than on the drunken night when he duct-taped fellow partier Bill Murray to a chair and pushed him into the hotel pool, nearly drowning him. The first of Thompson’s two memorials was held here after his death in 2005; behind the bar today, there’s a print of the poster Thompson and artist Tom Benton created for the sheriff’s campaign with its iconic double-thumbed fist clenching a peyote. On tap, look for locally brewed Aspen Brewing Co; for dinner, there’s a good half-pound burger for fourteen dollars. Good enough for government work, as they say, even if you’re not running for sheriff with a head full of high-grade smoke.
Thompson loved the area outside of town, too, which he first visited in 1961. While Aspen itself was (and still is) full of private jets and Hollywood types, Thompson’s chosen corner of the woods, Woody Creek, was and is a lot grittier. “He could walk naked on the porch of his mountain house, take a leak off the porch into a blue toilet bowl with a palm tree growing out of it, and squeeze off a few .44 slugs at some gongs mounted on the hillside. He could chew mescaline and turn the stereo up to 100 decibels without pissing off the neighbors,” writes Paul Perry in his book, Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Hunter S. Thompson. Fans of the writer (who coined another personal favorite, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”) will deeply enjoy making this pilgrimage, deeper into Gonzo territory.
The Woody Creek Tavern, founded in 1980 by theoretical physicist, spark-plug fortune heir, and longtime HST neighbor George Stranahan, resides up a curling canyon road about eight miles outside the town of Woody Creek. There’s not much to see besides; as a local bumper sticker puts it, Woody Creek consists of “a bump, two dips, and a rumble strip.” No matter; not only is this celebrated dive Thompson’s most celebrated watering hole (and a shrine with innumerable photos and tributes adorning its walls), it’s also a business intertwined with Colorado craft beer history and even a thread of statewide politics.
Stranahan, a tireless entrepreneur, opened Aspen’s first new brewery in a century in 1991, naming it the Flying Dog after a piece of folk art he’d seen on a wild-haired trek to the Baltoro Glacier in Pakistan. By 1994, the business was booming, so he moved operations to Denver and installed a 50bbl brewing system (a.k.a. brewhouse), collaborating on a bottling plant with John Hickenlooper (Hickenlooper, creator of Wynkoop’s Railyard Ale, who would go on to become mayor of Denver, and then governor of Colorado in early 2011). Shortly after, at Thompson’s behest, Stranahan commissioned famed illustrator Ralph Steadman to do some wild beer labels with the words “Good Beer, No Shit.” The state of Colorado deemed the art obscene and called for a halt to production, but after five years in court Stranahan’s beer survived, label intact. Today, as an investor, Stranahan’s name also graces a top-shelf, Colorado-made whiskey.
As for the brewery, Flying Dog is now based in Maryland, but the Woody Creek Tavern, festooned with American flags, prized by the locals (the “Woody Creatures”), and flanked by a trailer park, isn’t going anywhere. With its walls shimmering with thousands of Polaroids and margaritas as strong as mescaline, nor will you.
Ouray
OURAY BREWERY
607 Main St. • Ouray, CO 81427 (970) 325-7388 • ouraybrewery.com • Established: 2010
SCENE & STORY
In a town built at elevation 7,800 feet and ringed by peaks so high its long been dubbed the Switzerland of America (population: 900), it’s fitting that the Ouray Brewery feels like a vertical affair, with a ground floor taproom leading up to a brewery and dining
room mezzanine, and finally a stunning rooftop deck from which to view a cathedral of soaring 14ers (14,000-foot peaks) including Hayden and Whitehouse Peaks. The taproom has a modernized mountain house feel, with exposed beams, track lighting, and a row of heavyweight bar swings hanging from the ceiling. Once a trinket shop and home of a local newspaper, The Ouray Plain-dealer, 607 Main is now one of the most bustling watering holes in Ouray.
But it’s not just beer: Founder Erin Eddy also organizes the annual Ouray Ice Festival, a world-famous ice-climbing weekend held every January in the Ouray Ice Park, a daredevil’s playground formed each winter when the city runs gushers of water into Uncompahgre Gorge that promptly freeze in place. More than 3,000 alpinists, gear heads, and assorted outdoors mavens pile into town to watch and compete in climbing competitions. After climbing 100-foot spires of ice or tightrope walking the gorge on a nylon slack line, you can imagine one might develop a bit of thirst; so it’s a good thing there’s plenty of local beer.
PHILOSOPHY
Eddy’s MO is straightforward. “Consistency is the philosophy I’m trying to follow. Same four beers on tap at all times. Never run out of beer. Never run out of food. Never give bad service. Hire the best people, and make sure they follow the vision I have.”
KEY BEER
San Juan IPA, with a ruddy copper hue, ample, citrusy hop bite, and medium body is the local favorite.
215 7th Ave. • Ouray, CO 81427 • (970) 903-1824 • ouraylehouse.com • Established: 2005
Getting to the tiny mountain town of Ouray takes some doing. Wedged beneath a scrum of jagged San Juan Mountain passes, it’s a solid two-hour drive from Aspen or Durango. But for the love of beer, you should go.
The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition) Page 19