Rallying the Troops: Drinking Beer, Fighting Hunger

Beer and food pairings are all the rage: seared Chilean sea bass with Japanese sweet potato mousselin paired with chardonnay barrel-aged bière de garde, charcoal-grilled Canadian sirloin with sautéed asparagus tips and ginger-infused nectarine puree paired with imperial Scottish gruit ale, and hand-strangled koala stuffed with 57 Hot Pockets and rare, heated gazpacho paired with Russian kvass blended with quadrupel brewed with the sweat of St. Relindis of Maaseik.  That’s all well and good but can I, like, just get a taco or something?  An expertly paired beer/food course is something I can totally get behind but, oftentimes, I just want to try a bunch of craft beer and stuff my face with BBQ ribs and bratwurst.  Thanks to the Front Range Rally, held in Loveland and benefiting the Food Bank for Larimer County, beer geeks like me got the chance to taste a ton of craft beer and pair it with the unpretentious scrumptiousness from award-winning, local food trucks.

 

The beer list and our funky cups

Set in the parking lot of the Loveland Food Share, the Rally, unlike Telluride Blues & Brews Festival or Rails & Ales Brewfest, may not win many awards for majestic scenery but the asphalt slab for which the beer tents used as foundation wasn’t without its charms.  Being held at such a site, the Rally seemed like a spontaneous occurrence—like a flash mob of beer, food, and music just popped up in this parking lot!  It was less contrived, more honest than most beer festivals that can sometimes try to razzle-dazzle you with silent discos, quirky locals, and presentations all of which I do enjoy but, really, when it comes down to it, I’m here for the beer and it can be refreshing to cut the frills from time to time. 

Nicole and I pulled up to the Rally entrance, showed our IDs, got wrist-banded, received our food truck tokens, and picked up our tasting glasses.  My delicate beer geek sensibilities were faintly offended to see that the drinking vessels were plastic cups with a molded shot glasses in the center (you pour the shot into the center cup, your chaser into the outer ring, and then throw it down your gullet).  It seemed weird; like I was in Cancun over Spring Break.  But, in the end, does it really matter?  Is anybody that interested in proper vessels when they’re walking around a parking lot, eating grilled cheese sandwiches, listening to local folk rock bands, and enjoying a warm, spring afternoon?  No, absolutely not.  Not even I was interested.  I’m just being a persnickety little prick, I guess.    

Fortunately, the parking lot was quite large allowing for many breweries to share the space—32 in all and one cider-maker—and each brewery brought several beers.  Suffice to say, there were plenty of suds slinging in Loveland and, while I tried a lot, I barely made a dent in the provided beer list.  Here are some that I thought stood above the crowds and why:

♦ Watermelon Kolsch-Style Ale from Fate Brewing Company.  Holy cow!  If they took the word “refreshing” and pureed it into liquid, it would be this beer.  It’s light, watery, but still flavorful: the perfect thirst quencher.

♦ Bandit Brown from City Star Brewing just because we finally tasted the base-style for those fabulous vanilla and whisky-barreled versions we had at the Berthoud taproom (click here).

♦ Juicy Peach Ale from Big Beaver Brewing Co.  Like Watermelon Kolsch, it’s just plain refreshing and it definitely lives up to its name in terms of flavor.

♦ Rub-A-Chub Kolsch from Big Beaver for the name alone.

♦ Near Da Beach from Pateros Creek Brewing Co.  I’ll just let their press release do the talking for this one: “Spiced Colonial Ale – With the help of Funkwerks and CB & Potts, we hand made a jerk seasoning using habanero, allspice, cumin, and nutmeg and then brewed a biscuity English-style ale with a sweet pineapple finish.”

♦ Sofie and Sofie Paradisi from Goose Island Beer Co.  These guys may incur the wrath of slighted beer geeks for selling out to Anheuser-Busch but they still make some great stuff. 

As it is with almost every beer event, it’s not about the beer so much as it is about the people you meet—people such as the social media manager at City Star (whom I’ve Twitter’d to on more than one occasion) as well as the guys behind Echo Brewing Co.  We met up with volunteer and fellow beer blogger Dave of Fermentedly Challenged plus a lot of people with Indiana connections (Nicole was wearing a Sun King Brewery shirt).  One of those Indiana folk was a brewer at The Fort Collins Brewery.  We also chatted a bit with the folks at High Hops Brewery because I know they have strong connections in the hop farming industry and that’s an agricultural pursuit in which I’d like to get my parents involved.  Probably a good retirement job, don’t you think?

It was an excellent event and props go out to the volunteers and brewers who made it so special.  Even when a gust of wind came blowing down the slopes and when the cardboard garbage cans and tents—unable to stake into the asphalt—starting lifting off the ground, the people running the show where right there picking up loose trash and tethering down canopies with their own body weight.  No wind was going to stop the beer from pouring at the Front Range Rally!

Compared to other beer festivals, the Rally was quite small but, as the cliché goes, great things come in small packages.  It wasn’t overwhelming, it was outside in the sunshine, there were lots of small, somewhat obscure local breweries, and many of the attending breweries brought along some of their wackier, non-flagship beers which I always appreciate. 

The Front Range Rally is set to be an annual occurrence so, if you missed it this year, catch it again in 2014.  It’s fun and, although no beer geek needs an excuse to drink, drinking for charity usually make you feel just a little better about it.

Prost!

Chris       

I really enjoyed the small, welcoming atmosphere of the Front Range Rally.  As we wandered from tent to tent, we were able to actually talk to the brewers and learn a little bit about the beers that we were drinking.  But, there was too much to choose from and we didn’t have a chance to try everything.

Compared to a larger beer festival like Great American Beer Festival (GABF), the Front Range Rally wasn’t at all intimidating—I felt I could actually take a moment to relax.  We were able to chat with fellow beer geeks as we waited in line and met a couple with t-shirt slogans written in binary code.  We also met some other beer lovers that had recently moved from Indiana so it’s a good thing I wore my Sun King shirt.

Chris and I agree that big beer festivals are awesome because they offer so many different beers but the big festivals are impersonal; you don’t get to enjoy your beer before you’re filling your glass again.  My solution: regional GABFs.  There are so many regions that Chris and I don’t get to visit during the year and you can’t visit them all in one or two nights at GABF.  If they parced it out into different sections of the country and held these events at different times throughout the year, beer geeks might better explore our nation’s great beers.

Some of the Rally highlights:

1) The food from Quiero Arepas, one of my favorite food trucks.

2) Watermelon Kӧlsch.  I have been trying to get my hands on Hell or High Watermelon from 21^st Amendment Brewery for a while now. This was satisfying substitute.

3) Pome Mel, a cider from Colorado Cider Company made with Colorado wildflower honey.

4) Juicy Peach Ale from Big Beaver Brewing Co., a nice thirst-quenching brew that is perfect for a hot, summer afternoon.

5) Bandit Brown.  This is one of my favorite beers that City Star Brewing makes. They have several variations that I want to try, including hazelnut and vanilla.

Nicole 

Beer Not in Colorado: Homecoming III -- The Drinkening

Please click here to read about last year’s trip to Indianapolis.

Back home again in Indiana,
and it seems that I can see
the gleaming candle light, still burning bright, 
through the sycamores for me.
The new-mown hay sends all its fragrance
through the fields I used to roam.
When I dream about the moonlight on the Wabash
then I long for my Indiana home.

I’m called to the mountains, to the snow, to the canyons of the Western Slope.  I yearn for the crisp, thin air, the alpine meadows, and the springtime blizzards.  I love Colorado.  I love its scenery, I love its people, and—you guessed it—I love its beer.  Alas, I was neither born nor raised here.  I’m from the land of corn and cows, of thunderstorms, limestone, and forests so dense you can’t see five feet in.  I’m of a place where Christianity is the minority faith to the religion of high school basketball and where, if you don’t play Euchre, then leave the table.  A place called Indiana, a place Nicole and I visited about a week ago.

 

Slippery Noodle

Like our past May visits to The Circle City, Nicole and I were there to compete in the OneAmerica 500 Festival Mini Marathon and, while the main purpose of the trip was one of strenuous physical activity, that’s no reason why we couldn’t unwind with a few local beers after the race (and before).

Shortly after landing at the Indianapolis airport, we were whisked away by my parents to our hotel where, after a brief period of rest, we were ready to hit the town for some pre-race libations.

Our first stop was the Slippery Noodle Inn—Indiana’s oldest bar and the city’s premier blues venue.  Only a smidge removed from hipper-than-you-might-think downtown Indy, Slippery Noodle is a little gritty and a little blue collar what with its neon beer signs, ubiquitous pictures of Jake and Elwood Blues, and other assorted dive bar memorabilia but, even with these decidedly contemporary touches, a pressed tin ceiling, a risqué, wild west-style picture of a lady of the evening, and ornate, wooden bar back keep Slippery Noodle planted firmly in the past.  And what a past!  Slippery Noodle was a stop on the Underground Railroad, an illegal brewery during Prohibition, a bordello, and a place John Dillinger used for target practice.  If you want your drink garnished with a little history, check out Slippery Noodle.

While there, I ordered the Blues Brew by Upland Brewing Co., Slippery Noodle’s house beer.  It’s a middle-of-the-road IPA that’s not too hoppy for the uninitiated but still possessing a mild kick.  It’s a good house beer for Slippery Noodle which, even with a modestly impressive craft beer selection, doesn’t necessarily cater to the beer geek crowd; it’s more a cheap beer and whiskey joint.  Blues Brew is one of those bridging beers that just might make a hop-head out of an unsuspecting domestic-beer guzzler.  I also ordered Half Court IPA from Cutters Brewing Company mostly because the logo of an old-timey barn with a basketball hoop hanging over the door tugged at my Hoosier heartstrings.

 

Blues Brew

After Slippery Noodle, we walked to Iozzo’s Garden of Italy to carb up for the race and, amidst the shoveling of pasta into my face, I washed my meal down with an Osiris Pale Ale from Sun King Brewery which I claim is the Dale’s Pale Ale of Indiana; it’s everywhere, it’s bitter, and it’s great.  Also, both beers are canned.  It is no wonder that Sun King and the Oskar Blues Brewery crew are so good at collaborating with each other—they are kindred spirits.  On a side note, Iozzo’s is probably some of the best Italian food you’re going to find in the Midwest so check it out if you’re in town.

The next day was race day.  I believe I finished the 13.1 mile race somewhere around 1:37:00 which, being the sixth time I’ve run this race, is neither my best nor worst time.  I’m holding steady, at least.

Post-race, Nicole and I soothed our aching muscles for just a minute for the call of craft beer was too strong to ignore.  Before long, we were on our way to Jockamo Upper Crust Pizza, recommended to us by our local beer contact Tamre whom Nicole and I first met at the Indy Beer Bloggers Conference.  It’s tasty pizza made better with a little Alpha King Pale Ale from Three Floyds Brewing Co., a beer I’d almost say usurps Osiris as “Dale’s of Indiana” except it’s brewed in northern Indiana so, really, most of the fans of Alpha King reside in Chicago or southern Michigan.  Of course, it’s still brewed in Indiana but it’s not centrally located like Sun King which would have to travel much further to distribute out-of-state.  Alpha King is great beer, don’t get me wrong, it’s just torn between too many regions while Sun King devotes pretty much all its energy to its home state.  Then again, Oskar Blues distributes in many states outside of Colorado so my reasoning seems to be a bit flawed.  Whatever, I’m still sticking by my original assertion because it was my gut reaction (and because Alpha King doesn't come in a can): Osiris=Dale’s.

Moving on from that tangent, after recommending Jockamo to us, Tamre and her husband decided to eat there, too, and, after meeting up and eating up, we all headed next door to Black Acre Brewing Co.

Black Acre’s interior is comprised of rustic, aged wood boards adorning the walls of the bar area,  chunks of thick, rough, fence post-like stakes forming a stand-up, communal table, iron fixtures, and modern touches such as shiny, flat wood panels and modern art hanging on the wall.  It’s a lovely juxtaposition of rural and urban. 

I had both the Wedlock Belgian-style porter and the Saucy Intruder, a rye IPA, and, as we caught-up with old friends, the question of why Black Acre was named as such crawled into my dad’s head and refused to leave so, before we left, we had to slake his curiosity.  Apparently, many of the people behind the brewery’s creation were once involved in real estate or property law or some such similar thing and, in that realm of business, a “black acre” is essentially the property equivalent of “John Doe.”  It’s a placeholder name for a location that doesn’t yet have a designation and, before the brewery had a name, they just called it Black Acre until they realized that’s a pretty cool name and simply kept it.  There, now go impress your friends with your astounding real estate knowledge. 

The rest of the day involved a lot more eating and drinking throughout Indy: Workingman’s Pilsner by Fountain Square Brewing Co. (pretty decent) and a Wee Mac Scottish Ale by Sun King Brewery (best American-made Scottish ale in the eyes of this beer geek) at Scotty’s Brewhouse where we kept a few-years-old tradition alive by placing $1 bets on the Kentucky Derby (my dad won; don’t even mention the word “Orb” around him lest you set him off on a bragging frenzy), Dragonfly IPA by Upland at Mikado Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar, and a Batch #1 Bourbon Barrel Oatmeal Stout (would need more body and more Bourbon flavors before I really got into it) by Triton Brewing Company at the Indianapolis Colts Grille. 

We called it a night so that we might finally rest our tired, marathon-haggard legs on something other than a bar stool.  But the adventure wasn’t over yet; we still had a whole Sunday to enjoy Indy’s beer scene.

The next day, legs feeling even more sore than the day before, we hopped in the car and drove to the Broad Ripple neighborhood and Brugge Brasserie—a brewery, as I recall, that, along with Sun King, helped Indiana win the most medals of any state at the 2011 Great American Beer Festival.  With an accomplishment like that, you know you’re in for a treat.

Brugge—residing in a monolithic brick building with an over-sized Belgian goblet cut from metal hanging on the side—is a more refined brewery.  No cinder blocks, fluorescent lighting, or grain bags hanging on the walls here; Brugge features polished copper table tops, hand-blown glass light fixtures, and draperies over the windows.  There’s a touch of class present at Brugge. 

 

Neat table at Brugge

Brugge didn’t have a wide selection of their own beers on tap—mostly guest brews—but the one’s they had were extraordinary; quality over quantity, as they say.  Pooka, a sour beer made with boysenberry, absolutely blew my mind!  What a wonderful, lemony, summertime drink!  Any brewery with the cajones to brew sour beers immediately has my attention and any brewery that brews good sour beers has my undying respect.  Props, Brugge; you hit it out of the park with this one.  I also had the Soul Brother #1, a brown ale, which was, y’know, pretty good but it had a hard time following Pooka’s act. 

 

Pooka

One last thing on Brugge: if you’re wondering why all the tables have holes in them, they’re not there so you can scrape off debris (although, looking through the holes of our table, it sure seemed like that’s what patrons thought they were for).  Order some of Brugge’s excellent fries, which come in conical, wrapped paper, and you’ll understand the holes’ purpose.

We popped over to nearby Thr3e Wise Men Brewing Co., a brewery Nicole and I had visited two years prior, and indulged in a few more beers.  Namely, Centennial Martyr Double IPA and Two Sisters Carolina Saison which were both quite nice but I especially enjoyed the Centennial Martyr—great example of the Double IPA style.

 

Soul Brother #1 & the purpose of the table holes

After leaving Thr3e Wise Men, we took a much needed rest.  Dinner that night was at St. Elmo Steak House, almost certainly the fanciest and most famous restaurant in the city; the place where you’d have the best chance of seeing a local celebrity (remember the Guitar Hero episode of South Park when Stan and Kyle went to the exclusive party rife with “celebrities” like Jake Jabs and Ron Zappolo?  Those are the types of celebrities you’d see at St. Elmo).  Normally, I wouldn’t go to such a high-end restaurant but I’d never been before and, like Slippery Noodle, it’s an Indy institution so everybody from Indiana really ought to go at least once in their lives.

I don’t have much to say about beer when it comes to St. Elmo.  They do have a pretty decent craft beer menu so I had the STLIPA from Urban Chestnut Brewing Company (the only non-Indiana beer I had the whole trip) and it was quite nice.  And, of course, the steak is great, too, but, oddly enough for a landlocked state, the biggest standout on the menu is the shrimp cocktail.  People don’t talk much about the shrimp themselves but more about the sauce in which it comes slathered.  Good God!  I love spicy food but the excessive amounts of horseradish in this cocktail will make flames shoot out your nostrils!  Definitely go to St. Elmo if you’ve got a head cold; they’ll hollow your head out with quick burst of fire.

With that, we concluded our weekend in Indy.  I’m glad to be back in Colorado, there’s no doubt about that, but being home for short periods of time is, I think, good for the soul.  It is a time to remember where you come from, how you were raised, and to reconnect with your roots.  But, with all due respect to the moonlight on the Wabash, when I dream of a finely-crafted Hoosier beer, then I long for my Indiana home.

Prost!

Chris   

We stumbled upon a church auction Saturday night raffling off a Colts helmet. Unfortunately, it was signed by Coach Caldwell which, to Denver fans, is like a Broncos helmet signed by McDaniels; the coach we want to forget

            

200, Here We Come (The Breweries of Berthoud/Loveland)!

You’ll remember earlier this month when Nicole and I reported on our 100th Colorado brewery visit.  Old news—now we’re focused on 200 and our recent trip to Berthoud/Loveland has set that new goal in motion!  The time for celebrating success is over, the time for drinking beer has resumed (granted, there’s a lot of overlap between those two times).

Inside City Star

Our first stop was Berthoud’s City Star Brewery located on quintessential small-town main street (or Mountain Avenue, as it was).  The brick exterior and barn wood-and-metal signage introduce the interior ambiance excellently: distressed wood rafters, corrugated steel siding, barrels acting as two-top tables, and a unique chandelier which is best described as a deconstructed barrel.  I shiver a little each time somebody says, “Look up [blank] in the dictionary and you’ll see a picture of [blank]” because dictionaries aren’t exactly the most illustrated of books, now are they?  Maybe if you said encyclopedia  it would make more sense.  Regardless of my nerdy quibbles, if I were to use a cliché in describing City Star, I would say, “look up rustic in the dictionary and you’ll see a picture of City Star’s taproom.”

We sidled up to the bar and ordered a sample platter of the following: Cowboy’s Golden (5% ABV), Whiskey Bandit (5.7% ABV), Vanilla Bandit (5.5% ABV), Mule Kick (8.1% ABV), and Widowmaker (11.25% ABV).

 

Left to right: Cowboy's Golden, Whiskey Bandit, Vanilla Bandit, Mule Kick, & Widowmaker

Cowboy’s Golden is a pale, hazy yellow with a crisp, cider-like aroma and an inoffensive, light flavor that hints at fruit.  It’s a take-your-boots-off-and-sit-for-awhile kind of beer.  You could knock a few of these back at the campfire and still be sober enough to ride back to the homestead. 

Whiskey Bandit is the Bandit Brown Ale aged in whiskey barrels and it didn’t take us long to realize our mistake—we should have ordered the regular Bandit, too, so that we’d have something with which to compare the whiskey’d version.  Well, that’s hindsight for you.  At any rate, Whiskey Bandit is a murky brown beer with red highlights.  The aroma is resplendent with nose-hair singing whiskey as well as vanilla which tends to be a common scent and flavor imparted by the wood of barrels.  The flavor is much like the aroma: full of whiskey and vanilla with an alcoholic burn in the aftertaste.

 

Brew area at City Star

As you may have guessed, Vanilla Bandit is the vanilla-fied version of Bandit.  Again, a point of comparison would have been nice but, hey, whatever.  In terms of appearance, Vanilla Bandit is indiscernible from Whiskey Bandit.  Likewise, the aromas are similar except the whiskey is absent and the vanilla is ramped up.  Vanilla Bandit starts with a chocolate flavor and finishes with ice cream-like vanilla. 

A strong ale brewed with Madhava honey, Mule kick is hazy brown and possessing little noticeable aroma.  The flavor is much like a Scottish ale except with a honey-like sweetness.

Oily black, Widowmaker, an imperial oatmeal stout, is topped with a beige head.  This velvety beast of a beer smells like chocolate and alcohol and the tongue is in accordance with the nose—it tastes of chocolate with an alcoholic kick. 

Our next stop was Loveland Aleworks which, from the outside, looks a lot like City Star with brick and iron composing much of the façade.  The interior, however, seems to have come from the same Wild West era as City Star but, while City Star calls to mind an old barn, Loveland Aleworks is more reminiscent of a frontier inn with its tin ceiling tiles, exposed brick wall, and polished cement bar that almost looks like a lobby’s check-in counter. 

At Loveland Aleworks we had samples of their IPA (7.8% ABV), Cherry Saison (7% ABV), Blackberry Wit (5.7% ABV), and American Sour Ale with Raspberries (7.2%). 

Left to right: IPA, Cherry Saison, Blackberry Wit, & American Sour

The IPA is pretty much in line with what you’d expect from the style; it’s a dark, copper color with an apparent but not overbearing hop aroma.  There are also faint whiffs of something tropical, too.  Much of the beer’s bitterness is tasted in the back of the mouth.  It’s a pretty standard beer all around. 

What wasn’t necessarily standard are the other three beers in the line-up; although only one of them mentions “sour” in its name, all three are, to some degree, sour beers.  This got me excited.  Not just excited because I like sour beers (which I do) but excited because it indicates a burgeoning trend.  Sour beers are, in spite of the growth of craft beer, still considered outliers; they’re beyond the norm, beyond the acceptable tasting range of the average palate.  They’re freakish beers designed to satisfy a lunatic fringe of beer drinkers. 

Inside Loveland Aleworks

Oh, sure, they’re still available.  New Belgium Brewing has some epic sours but, then again, we’re talking about New Belgium—a national brand that, at this point, can pretty much experiment all it wants without repercussion because they possess the marketing and distributing tools which allow them to get their sours into the hands of those who love that sort of beer regardless of where they live; they don’t rely solely on local support and taproom sales.  The same can be said of Avery Brewing.  They, too, have sours that’ll suck your lips to the back of your skull but, like New Belgium, they’re big enough to make it work.  One exception to the rule can be made for Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project which is not a huge brewery but it is located in Denver where there’s no shortage of adventurous beer geeks.  Crooked Stave looking for Denver customers to drink their sours is like a pastry chef looking for somebody to lick the bowl at a WeightWatchers convention. 

But what if you’re like Loveland Aleworks: small and in a relatively obscure town?  I’ve been to 100+ breweries in Colorado and I can attest that, for the most part, when you’re the only brewery in a tiny, out-of-the-way town, you don’t dabble much in genre-defying beer styles; just the fact that you make their own beer is gimmick enough to get locals through the door.  There really isn’t a need to push the envelope when people patronize your establishment no matter what you serve.  So why is Loveland Aleworks giving that envelope a giant shove? My theory: as insignificant one might think Loveland is, it still has four craft breweries within city limits (Big Beaver Brewing Company, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, and the next brewery I'm about to talk about being the other three) and  they each have to differentiate themselves from the other sud-slingers in town.  Also, how’s that for a testament to the popularity of Colorado beer?  A town no out-of-staters have even heard of has four breweries?  You can’t pull that off just anywhere.  God bless Colorado and its beer-loving denizens.

 

Inside Loveland Aleworks

The Cherry Saison is somewhat clear and copper-colored.  It smells very bread-like and the taste is, likewise, bready but with a light cherry tartness.

A cloudy, pale yellow beer, Blackberry Wit has a nose full of yeast and the eponymous berry.  It has a mild sour flavor accompanied by a dry finish.

American Sour Ale is hazy and the color of a rosy peach.  It has an interesting aroma like watermelon Jolly Ranchers or boxwood and the flavor reminds one of a blackberry-flavored Izze soda.  It is a tart beer but doesn’t make one pucker.

Nicole and I’s last stop was Verboten Brewing.  Tucked far away from the passerby’s eye in a commercial strip, the outside of Verboten is unassuming but the interior packs a lot of character into a long and narrow sliver of property.  There’s aged wood accents, giant, bulbous lights hanging over the bar, and artsy, metalwork bar stools.

Verboten has a brilliant marketing plan of naming all their beers after obscure, meme-ish pop culture quotes.  For the people who get it, they’ll buy that beer just because of the name.  For the people that don’t get it, they’ll still drink the beer and just wonder what the wacky name is all about.  Would I have ordered the orange blossom honey wheat (4.8% ABV) had it not been named Thinking of Something Orange?  No, probably not; it’s not a style of beer that you’ll often find in my glass.  However, because I recognized the name as a quote from one of the funniest movies of all time and because it’s a quote I repeat on an almost daily basis, I simply had to drink it (click here if you need some elucidation).

I also had Five Second Frencher (4.7% ABV) and In Another Life (6% ABV).

Left to right: Something Orange, Five Second Frencher, & In Another Life

Something Orange is a cloudy, almost white beer.  It wafts a pleasant citrus aroma and the flavor tastes like orange peel, yeast, and honey sweetness.

I think I got the dregs of the barrel when they served me Five Second Frencher, a lemongrass wit.  I don’t know if it’s supposed to look that way but, when they slid it to me, it looked like cake batter or unrefined honey.  The nose has a light, lemongrass aroma and the flavor, likewise, is most notably lemongrass. 

Brew area at Verboten

In Another Life, a vanilla porter, has a tan head and a black body with no highlights.  The aroma and flavor are like extra-milky milk chocolate with vanilla popping up in the aftertaste. 

And that’s how we reached 103 breweries!  Only 97 more before you get to hear us brag about reaching 200.  I’m sure there will be plenty more adventures between now and then to write about so keep posted, readers, and keep enjoying Colorado beer.

Prost!

Chris 

One of the perks of my job (teacher) is having Spring Break even as an adult  so Chris and I decided to use that time wisely to visit some new breweries.  One of my favorites from our northern journey was City Star.  Although it’s spring, I nonetheless enjoyed some of their darker beers.  The one that stood out the most was the Vanilla Bandit which I wanted to take home in a growler so that I could bake with it; it was dessert in a glass.  When I checked-in Vanilla Bandit on Untappd, I noticed that City Star makes Bandit in several different flavors do I guess I will just have to visit City Star again so I can try those, too.

Nicole

The other beers at Verboten (I'll let you and Google figure out the references)

I hear ya, Jack (from Loveland Aleworks)

Nicole messin' around on Loveland's artistic bike racks