The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition)

by Christian DeBenedetti

  I did, en route to Durango from Aspen a few years ago, but almost made the mistake of merely passing through. In fact, I’d been hearing about this town for ages—there’s the world-famous ice-climbing festival every winter, and in summer, tourists flock to ride the Durango-to-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Train as it chugs up and down the 10,000-foot passes. At the time of my travels, though, I wasn’t even aware there were breweries in Ouray. But its main street, lined with historic, wind-whipped facades, was too pretty to pass up. Sure enough, you can walk right into a saloon that opened in 1891, at the Old Western Hotel, and salute the portrait of “Juanita” on the floor, painted by an itinerant artist for the princely sum of a few beers.

  Ask around where to get a good, locally brewed beer, as I did, and eventually a local will point you to the Ourayle House, across the street from the 1891 Historic Western Hotel and tucked into an old garage building. There, with a mangled whitewater kayak hanging on a makeshift fence, stands the brewery, a “one man, one dog” operation, as the owner himself has dubbed it.

  Reaching the front door, a hand-lettered chalk sign welcomes with: “It’s not that we don’t like kids, but we don’t drink beer at your child’s day care either.” Below that: “Amazingly, we are OPEN.” And, “Sorry, we don’t take credit cards. It’s not you, it’s us.” And, hilariously, right below that: “Well, maybe it’s a little you.”

  Steel your confidence and walk into the company also known as (literally) Mr. Grumpy Pants Brewing Co. (“Welcome! ‘Welcome’ being a relative term,” says another sign) and grab a stool as locals turn to see what the cat dragged in. Discarded ice axes, crampons, and carabiners hang willy-nilly on the split and varnished salvage timber walls. A woodstove crackles in one end of the room. Signs, all hand-scrawled in chalk, peek out from every corner. There are no TV screens, no gleaming copper brewing tanks, no chef walking around in whites. Instead: ramshackle rocking chairs and tattered decks of cards. To a certain kind of beer drinker—present company included—it doesn’t even matter what’s on tap, because the place just feels like a corner of heaven.

  On one evening I found the owner, James “Hutch” Hutchison, sliding side to side behind the bar on a kind of zip-line barstool with an impish grin. After studying land-use planning and the somewhat vague-sounding major of environmental economics, he began building the brewpub. It’s a Reinhold Messnerian hideaway, crabbed and cabin-like, sure, but also idealistic, big-hearted, and honest about what matters. “If a kayak is missing,” reads one totem, “the river is up and no one’s here. We’re in a meeting.” And, on another one, “Due to factors beyond our control, major powder days may result in brewery closing at any time.” I imagine Hutch chuckling as he locks up the brewhouse after a dump of snow to head out backcountry skiing. What’s best about Ourayle is how merrily unconcerned Hutch is about it all. “You move down here for the lifestyle, not for the job,” he explains. “I love that we have seven months of winter, three months of company. You’re just nestled into the Rocky Mountains. People have said it looks so claustrophobic, like Mother Nature is giving you a big hug.”

  Call it a bear hug. I felt I could disappear here for a while, drinking beer with Hutch and throwing a few darts over pints of ale. “This is where the misfits kind of fit in,” says Hutch. “It’s real casual—you can bring your own food, you can cook here, every restaurant in town will deliver here,” he says with a cheeky grin, “with the exception of the girl across the street. She has a lot of young European waitresses working for her, and apparently they never make it back.”

  The fact is that this is what matters in a small town: Fresh beer, and no Big Country attitude. And while Ourayle House might not have cultivated the time-consuming brewing techniques of, say, Avery, or the polish and feel-good politics of New Belgium, there was something about it that night that made me feel I might well have found the best brewpub in the world.

  The Million Dollar Highway

  U.S. Route 550 wends between Montrose and Durango, Colorado; up, through, and over Ute Indian country, the Uncompahgre Gorge, several historic towns, and a spate of precipitous passes. The Million Dollar Highway is the route’s most famous section; Russian immigrant engineer Otto Mears somehow managed to build this twenty-three-mile stretch between Ouray and Silverton, a tortuous curlicue of switchbacks following old stagecoach routes and mining roads (and lacking almost any guardrails above the plunging ravines).

  It’s a wonder he ever finished. Soaring skyward through a series of tight turns overlooking void-like chasms, the road tops 11,018-foot Red Mountain before easing—mercifully—down into Silverton. No one’s sure if the name comes from the richness of those mines, now quiet, or the quality of the views. And while this particular road is the only direct route between Ouray’s excellent breweries and Silverton and Durango beyond, it’s not a drive to be taken at night, or in a gutless car, or with even the slightest buzz from one of Ouray’s excellent local brews. On a good day, it’s a white-knuckler; in darkness and driving sleet (as I drove it) it’s a roll of the dice.

  Durango

  STEAMWORKS BREWING CO.

  801 E. 2nd Ave. • Durango, CO 81301 (970) 259-9200 • steamworksbrewing.com • Established: 1996

  SCENE & STORY

  Originally built in the 1920s, the home of Steamworks Brewing Company—Durango’s fourth brewery—had long been used as an auto dealership. There were cement floors, a large showroom, and a large, half-shell-like ceiling structure overhead. “There were literally GMCs and Cadillacs and Jeeps parked here,” says cofounder Chris Oyler of the space, which now sports rows of taps, tables, stools, and brewing medals instead of cars. Oyler—and a cadre of some forty-seven initial investors—felt the building’s industrial look was a good one for craft beer. “Having those cars parked here, I knew that the floors could hold some weight. I knew it was a solid building,” he recalls. At the time, though, the exposed wooden truss beams supporting the roof were hidden above old dusty ceiling tiles. “We started pulling them down and looking up at the rafters, and we were like ‘Wow, this is gorgeous.’” It is indeed.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Durango’s soft water—low in magnesium, calcium, and other minerals—is ideal for brewing, requiring little or no adjustment during the brewing process (a luxury not all brewing towns enjoy). The company specializes in lagers, and despite the difficulty of brewing those well, there’s an ease about the place. “These are beers you can sit down and have more than one or two of,” he adds, mentioning the company’s popular Colorado Kölsch by way of illustration. That approach has worked, at least in terms of growth and medals; today, Steamworks has a busy canning program, widening distribution, and has hauled in a spate of medals at the Great American Beer Festival and other brewing events.

  KEY BEER

  Colorado Kölsch—a lightly bittered golden ale (4.85% ABV) with a touch of biscuit-like sweetness in the body and a crisp, dry finish recently pulled a silver medal at the 2015 GABF.

  SKA BREWING CO.

  225 Girard St. • Durango, CO 81303 (970) 247-5792 • skabrewing.com • Established: 1995

  SCENE & STORY

  With a new, $4.8 million, ultra-eco friendly facility just south of Durango and an everybody-into-the-mosh-pit image, Ska is a fun brewery to visit. But when it comes to brewing, they’re not goofing around. A visit to the sunny taproom and modernist-looking food court outside built from repurposed shipping containers may be the highlight of any beer lover’s visit to Durango.

  PHILOSOPHY

  The well-meaning hell-raisers behind this company, a group of Colorado locals who decided to home brew because they weren’t of legal age, have recently graduated to regional microbrewery status, a fact that still seems to give them a case of the giggles. They’re known for pranks on other brewers (like producing a twenty-minute spoof of the Discovery Channel’s Brew Masters show, starring their friend, Dogfish Head brewery founder Sam Calagione), and making the festival rounds with a posse in tow.

>   KEY BEER

  Ten Pin Porter shows off Ska’s more serious side: it’s a fulsome, roasty black brew of 5.5% ABV with flavors of cocoa, coffee, and molasses in admirable balance.

  Pagosa Springs

  PAGOSA SPRINGS BREWING CO.

  118 N. Pagosa Blvd. • Pagosa Springs, CO 81147 • (970) 731-2739 • Established: 2006

  SCENE & STORY

  Heading east out of Durango toward New Mexico via Pagosa Springs, Colorado, on U.S. 160 to U.S. 84E affords one of the greatest drives in the United States—make it in daylight after leaving Ska so you can see what’s around you. On arrival to Pagosa Springs Brewing Co., it’s easy to see why this small seasonal resort town is such a haven for vacation-home owners and skiers. Soaring peaks ring the town; Wolf Creek, just a short drive away, is a world-class powder skiing destination that gets some of the earliest and best white stuff. And Tony Simmons’s brewpub and beer garden is ideally located right off the highway coming into town. Since the day it opened, it’s changed the drinking scene in this very beautiful place, and beyond.

  “I don’t think we realized how successful we were going to be at the time,” says Simmons, who is the owner and head brewer. “We started off really as a beer bar with very limited food, and as we’ve evolved and kind of bootstrapped our way through this it’s evolved into a full- service, made-from-scratch menu, and that’s really helped tremendously as our business has grown.” “Evolved” is putting it mildly: In just five years, Pagosa Brewing Company has garnered an incredible twenty-four medals at the GABF and other competitions, a testament to Simmons’s in-depth training at the Siebel Institute in Chicago and Munich.

  The HQ is a rustic affair. “Our building was actually a garage,” he recalls. “It stored a couple of cars and it had a wood shop, but it really had no significant power, and there was no water or plumbing. That was a big investment to get it ready for a brewery.” Today it maintains a down-to-earth feel, with a lazy, expansive beer garden (10,000 square feet, with some fifty tables, heat lamps, and fire pits) and a folksy kitchen-in-a-trailer setup.

  PHILOSOPHY

  “We’re really proud of the fact that we don’t filter any of our beers. It’s all natural and I think it shows.” Simmons is an energetic presence in the Colorado beer scene and eager experimenter; to date he’s released some forty different brews. A contest sponsored by the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary (a consortium of academic historians and museum curators) in 2006 inspired him to brew a batch of “Poor Richard’s Ale,” a coppery, low-hopped, colonial American brown ale utilizing corn and molasses, which was meant to approximate what Franklin would have enjoyed in the pubs of the day. A prestigious panel of brewing industry judges (including descendants of Franklin himself, “The First American”) picked Simmons’s recipe to be served at the gala event in Philadelphia and later brewed by more than 100 commercial brewing companies in thirty-five states and some 3,000 home brewers around the country.

  KEY BEER

  Every visitor should try the Poor Richard’s and Kayaker Cream Ale, the brewery’s top selling and most sessionable beer. It’s a crisp, light-bodied Helles lager tailor-made for hot summer afternoons. When the sun drops and the air cools off, try one of Simmons’s heavier-bodied brews, such as the Coconut Porter, which took the silver medal in its category at the 2010 GABF. “That was a real honor,” says Simmons. “Other breweries have tried to [brew the style], but we’ve been really fortunate in being able to dial it in. People go crazy for it.”

  BIG BEERS, BELGIANS & BARLEYWINES FEST

  Vail, CO 81657 • bigbeersfestival.com • Established: 2000

  SCENE & STORY

  Every great day of skiing is best capped off with a good beer. So why not 100? For the last fifteen years, a brother-and-sister team of beer lovers have put on this weekend of tasting, beer dinners, a home brew competition, informational brewmaster seminars, and, for those who can peel away from the action inside, skiing the world-class terrain of Vail. The fifteenth annual festival, held in 2015, featured over 100 top brewing companies (mostly from the United States, and a handful from Europe), all of which sent their founders and head brewers along. Which means for the festival attendee, it’s a chance to meet some of the most well-known brewers in the land over a beer in an intimate but not too crowded environment. Chris Bauweraerts of Belgium’s Brasserie La Chouffe, Avery’s Adam Avery, Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione, Boulevard’s Steven Pauwels, Allagash’s Rob Tod, and New Belgium’s Peter Bouckaert (among other luminaries) all regularly attend.

  BEST of the REST: COLORADO

  STRANGE BREWING CO.

  1330 Zuni St. • Denver, CO 80204 • (720) 985-2337 • strangecraft.com

  Out-of-work IT guy Tim Myers turned a home brewing hobby into a nano that just keeps getting better, culminating with a gold at the World Beer Cup in 2014 for his company’s montmorency-packed Cherry Kriek (5% ABV), a highly competitive category. Head down the tasting room for one-barrel Wednesdays, when experimental beers run amok. Blackberry-bergamot golden ale, anyone?

  FRESHCRAFT

  1530 Blake St., Ste. A • Denver, CO 80202 • (303) 758-9608 • freshcraft.com

  Iowa-born-and-bred brothers Jason and Lucas Forgy present a supereclectic menu (from tacos to barbecue to French) and a vast beer selection with twenty rotating taps and over 100 bottles; go during the “Beer Session” happy hours (3 to 7 p.m. daily) for discounts on sandwiches and 5.5% ABV-and-below draft beer pairings. This place is always packed during GABF.

  HOGSHEAD BREWERY & TAPROOM

  4460 W. 29th Ave. • Denver, CO 80212 • (303) 495-3105 • hogsheadbrewery.com

  One of most Denver’s most innovative brewpubs is also, paradoxically, one of the most traditional anywhere in the United States—at least when it comes the beer styles served. Built in a repurposed 1950s gas station and focusing mainly on the ancient art of cask-conditioned, English-style ales served at “cellar temperature” (50 degrees—cool, but not ice cold), Hogshead has been building a steady following for several years. Try the mellow Lake Lightning, a straightforward English pale ale, and work your way up.

  POST BREWING

  105 W. Emma St. • Lafayette, CO 80026 • (303) 593-2066 • postbrewing.com • Established: 2014

  Former Dogfish Head brewer Bryan Selders signed on to help launch to this much hyped brewpub in 2014, which is a classic brewpub-restaurant, with great bar food and attention to detail throughout the interior. “With the capacity that we started out with, we have about 1,600 barrels of capacity per year,” Selders told me. “We’re gonna have six beers at a time, maybe eight if something lingers. I just want to make sure that we’re focused on making those six beers as kick-ass as humanly possible.”

  WEST FLANDERS BREWING

  1125 Pearl St. • Boulder, CO 80302 • (303) 447-2739 • wfbrews.com

  Music-mad brewmaster Brian Lutz’s resume includes the top jobs at Oskar Blues, Lefthand, Redfish Brewhouse, and research trips to Belgium with the likes of New Belgium’s Peter Bouckaert. To balance all the Belgian-inflected beer you’ll want to try, there’s excellent, locally sourced food (order up some of the local tenderbelly pork . . . on anything). To drink? Try the Obfuscation Trippel (7.5% ABV), a style few Americans tackle well.

  BRU HANDBUILT ALES

  5290 Arapahoe • Boulder, CO 80303 • (720) 638-5193 • bruboulder.com

  Founder and head brewer Ian Clark has an ace up his sleeve: a formal culinary education. Which means he’s also the head chef. Ambitious, sure, but what might overwhelm him (and underwhelm guests) works amazingly well. The beers are very good, the food is tasty and imaginative (incorporating Clark’s backyard honey, among other ultra-local ingredients), and the place is smartly put together (handbuilt, of course).

  SANITAS BREWING COMPANY

  3550 Frontier Ave. • Boulder, CO, 80301 • (303) 442-4130 • sanitasbrewing.com

  Former Boulder Beer Co. brewer Chris Coyne and two partners opened this spotless taproom and 10,000-plus-sq
uare-foot production facility in September 2012 to make organic, canned beers year round, from easy-drinking session ales to aggressive fare like India Black Ale and just about everything else on down the line—plans include extensive barrel-aging and even a coolship. Try the Saison (5.2% ABV), which makes a compelling case that this farmhouse Belgian style, usually packed in in 750-milliliter bottles, is also a winner in “lite” form.

  TWISTED PINE BREWING CO.

  3201 Walnut St. • Boulder, CO 80301 • (303) 786-9270 • twistedpinebrewing.com

  The diminutive Twisted Pine, established in 1995, casts a tall shadow thanks to a series of big wins at the Great American Beer Festival and a slew of well-regarded beers and experiments including Ghost Face Killah, a pepper beer made with bhut jolokia, a pepper that is also known as “Ghost Chili” and is six times hotter than a habañero. An excellent brew is the fifteenth anniversary Hoppy Knight India Black Ale (7% ABV), a fulsome, piney sipper that balances ample servings of mellow malt and spice.

  THE MAYOR OF OLD TOWN

  632 S. Mason St. • Fort Collins, CO 80524 • (970) 682-2410 • themayorofoldtown.com

  Since you’re visiting Fort Collins to hit Odell, New Belgium, Funkwerks, and others, you’d be remiss not to include this superstylish beer bar downtown opened in 2011, with an outstanding 100-tap selection of beers and a bright, clean, white subway tile interior with wide bar and cool captain’s chairs, where you can post up for fresh beer, good flatbread pizzas, sandwiches, and burgers, and other fare. Look for sought-after sours from Trinity of Colorado Springs.

  FUNKWERKS

  1900 E, Lincoln Ave. • Fort Collins, CO 80524 • (970) 482-3865 • funkwerks.com

  In 2010, award-winning Colorado home brewer Gordon Schuck and his beer-obsessed accountant friend Brad Lincoln opened this small, all-organic brewery in Fort Collins after meeting at Chicago’s Siebel Institute to make saison beers, also known as farmhouse ales, starting with a tiny system and quickly ramping up production. Try the Funkwerks Saison (6.8% ABV), a tawny, grassy sipper with a clean, dry finish. In 2012 Funkwerks was named Small Brewing Company of the Year during GABF, and received two gold medals for Saison and Deceit, a Belgian-style golden strong. The latter was also awarded a silver medal in 2014 at the World Beer Cup. And in 2014, Raspberry Provincial won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival. My personal favorite? Tropic King, an 8% ABV “imperial” saison. Delicious stuff.