Denver has a tendency for two-syllable neighborhood
nicknames. There’s LoHi (Lower
Highlands) known for its upscale, yuppie population, there’s LoDo (Lower
Downtown) attracting youthful partygoers, and there’s RiNo (River North)
boasting a stronghold of starving artists and hipsters. Then, perhaps because of its relative
distance from the heart of the city, the lesser-mentioned SoBo (South Broadway,
although it should really be SoBro but I guess that sounds too “frat-y”) famous
for dispensaries, antique shops, and, as Nicole and I found out, a high
concentration of breweries.
With friends Robin and Justin in tow, we began our
SoBo brewery conquest at Grandma’s House, the craft craft brewery. That’s no typo, I mean to say it’s a craft
brewery that, like Nana herself, enjoys a little arts and crafts. The matriarch’s presence is felt everywhere
in the taproom. The tap handles are
wrapped in hand-knitted sleeves. The bar
top is an actual quilt hardened by polyurethane. 50’s-style, folding, aluminum-edged tables are
the base for antique vases, jars of hard candy, and tacky bric-a-brac like
animatronic singing fish and dancing hamsters.
The old TV box is hooked up to an original NES, the walls are adorned
with curios including, but not limited to, Bobbleheads, Elvis paraphernalia,
and folksy art. The theme is even
carried into the restroom where, behind the mirror, you’ll find bunion
cushions, shoe powder, constipation meds, and an admonishment from Grandma
telling you not to peek behind other people’s medicine cabinets.
Yes, Grandma’s House is quite kitschy but that’s
entirely the point. It’s tongue-in-cheek
and I applaud their originality. Too
often, brewery taproom themes are repeated ad
infinitum. The industrial, factory
look? Seen it. The sleek and modern look? Been done.
The outdoorsy, rustic look? Join
the club. Hell, Denver alone features
two breweries themed to heavy metal! I’m
not knocking these breweries; in fact, I rather enjoy those archetypal taproom designs. But, being archetypes, they are a bit lacking
in imagination. Grandma’s House, on the
other hand, got a bit nutty with their motif and the pay-off is a completely
novel taproom design. Find another geriatric-themed
brewery and I’ll give you a dollar.
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| Inside Grandma's House |
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| Inside Grandma's House |
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| Inside Grandma's House |
Initially outdated though the decor might be, the
beers of Grandma’s House, well, they’re not you’re grandma’s beer (although
they’re served in your grandma’s glassware, emblazoned as they are with Hamm’s
logos and Looney Tunes characters).
Session IPAs with peach added, oatmeal stouts with hatch green chilis,
along with classic styles such as ESBs and Scottish-style ales means there’s
plenty of “cough medicine” from which Grandma can choose.
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| Scottish Red at Grandma's House |
Our next stop was a few blocks off Broadway on Pearl
Street. Platt Park Brewing Co. née Denver
Pearl Brewing Company is a recent GABF silver medalist and the victim of a two-pronged litigious attack from both Pabst and an unnamed (but obvious) local
brewery that took umbrage with the word “Denver” (golly, who could that be?). I felt Denver Pearl’s pain when I heard the
news; there’s too many nasty cease-and-desist letters floating around the
industry. That said, I always thought “Denver
Pearl” was a lame name. I can’t pinpoint
exactly why. Maybe it just didn’t have
that snap, y’know? Platt Park’s a good name—it’s alliterative,
both words are monosyllabic, and both end with a hard, definitive
consonant. Denver Pearl had none of
that. No alliteration, no uniformity of syllables,
and there’s not a clean finish to either word—the word “Pearl” extends into a
slur making it sound sloppy and guttural.
I didn’t like the formula for the name, either i.e. the
city + the street. It’s an awkward way
to name a brewery. What if everybody did
that? Care to visit Wheat Ridge Wadsworth Brewery? Fort Collins Linden Brewing Company? Colorado Springs Garden of the Gods Beer Co.? It’s plain weird.
Former titles put to the side, Platt Park’s taproom
is best defined as modern bucolic.
Although the tables and doors are wooden and although “Platt Park’s”
been spelled out in rusty metal squares, there’s still a sense of consistency. It’s not a hodge-podge, everything matches,
and the overall feel is that of a city-slicker attempting to emulate a countrified
abode. The massive windows looking into the
brew room and walk-in cooler are also nice touches of contemporaneousness.
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| Inside Platt Park |
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| Inside Platt Park |
Platt Park’s beer, like its interior design, walks a
line, a line between standard and experimental.
Nothing at Platt Park is totally off-the-wall but many place a foot or
two off the beaten path. Nadare, for
example, is a classic Japanese-style rice lager. Typically, such beers are brewed with rice
and Nadare is no exception—except it’s brewed with jasmine rice. It’s those minor deviations that make a beer
special. It could have been a boring old
Sapporo but, instead, leaned closer to a CAUTION: Brewing Co. Lao Wang Lager. A pumpkin beer on nitro, a Berliner Weisse
with choice of syrups (as I mentioned in an earlier post, an option sorely
lacking in the American market), and several others completed the laudable tap
menu.
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| Nadare |
Our third stop, FERMÆNTRA, was the furthest from
Broadway and is more accurately attributed to the Denver University
neighborhood. But, it was in the
vicinity of Platt Park so it felt as if it belonged with the other breweries we
hit that day.
We were at FERMÆNTRA for their grand opening so it
was a crowded room. We muscled our way
to the bar and glanced over the list of beers.
The list was intimidating, a lot of the beer names were technical and it
took some effort to pronounce them correctly e.g. Terrarum, Canticle,
Aphion. Tricky words should be expected,
though, from a brewery that spells its name with the none-too-common æsc grapheme.
After practicing the word “Meristem” a few times, I
ordered the Russian imperial stout of that name. It was everything I needed on a snowy, chilly
day—robust, roasted, and high in alcohol.
We all enjoyed our respective beers huddled in the corner of the
taproom, handsome and cultured with its brick walls and solid-colored splashes
of vibrancy, attempting, with not much success, to keep out of the path of the
hordes. We downed our brews, placed our
empty glasses where the servers could easily retrieve them, and, with shoulders
tucked in, waddled through the masses, out the door, and on to our next
brewery.
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| Meristem |
Former Future Brewing Company is a brewery Nicole and
I had visited previously but a) we didn’t blog about it at the time, b) Robin
and Justin hadn’t been there, and c) Nicole and I had a coupon we wanted to
use.
Squeezed into a tight row of brick storefronts,
Former Future has a kind of steampunk/hipster vibe. With airplane wings as bar tops, masculine
dark wood tables, black-and-white photos, globular, metalwork light fixtures,
and antiquated terrarium jars housing sundry plants, the interior of Former
Future might be mistaken as the den of Professor Phineas Barleyhop, the bygone,
mustachioed man on the brewery’s prior logo.
I only mention that because Former Future, before they opened, held a
naming contest for that man and I was responsible for one-third of the total
appellation i.e. I contributed the “Phineas” part. I got a free shirt out of it. Now, they don’t even use that logo and I can
no longer point it out and brag to anybody who will listen. I’ve resorted to regaling blog readers with my
former glories. Soothing my troubled mind
was Brettly So…, a rye ESB with brettanomyces; the taste of that
expertly-crafted beer lessened the sting of my great accomplishment being lost
to the sands of time.
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| That's actually Justin's good side--at Former Future |
Then, finally, we visited our fifth and final SoBo
brewery and Nicole and I’s 139th Colorado brewery, Bære Brewing Co.
(another damn æsc!), so named for the
Old English word for “barley” and the precursor to the modern word “beer.” When we started this brewery mission about
five years ago, our 139th brewery would have meant we were in the
home stretch, only a few isolated places left to visit before we’d been to all Colorado breweries. Because of craft beer’s exponential growth,
though, Nicole and I are hardly closer to our goal than that day in 2009 when
we saw the Beer Drinker’s Guide to Colorado map hanging in the Odell taproom
and decided to embark on this impossible journey. In truth, I’m glad we’ve fallen behind
because the sooner our quest ends, the sooner our fun ends. And nobody wants that.
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| Inside Baere |
Bære, located in a former martial arts dojo in the middle
of a commercial strip, is a pastoral cabin oasis on busy, urban Broadway. The walls are absolutely covered with
weathered, reclaimed planks and the bar top is a nice, solid piece of butcher
block. Walking off the street and into Bære
is an abrupt transition from gritty streets to faux mountain lodge. I enjoyed the Bære-liner Weisse, a pleasantly
tart beer so brightly yellow it almost looks like somebody soaked a highlighter
in a glass of water.
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| Baere-liner Weisse |
We’ve come to a point where we can’t talk about
Denver breweries anymore—it’s too broad a term.
Each Mile High neighborhood has its own beer-y reputation, separate from
the rest. Denver is, in practice, a
conglomeration of several smaller beer cities, each component part boasting an
enviable quantity and quality of beer.
As such, when out-of-towners ask me for suggestions in regards to great
Denver breweries, I always tell them to pick a section of town lest my list of recommendations
be lengthier than The Bible. Shall we
discuss the RiNo breweries? The LoDo
breweries? The Colfax breweries (a brew
crawl I hope to complete soon)? Whatever
section of town you may choose, as of now, I can guarantee you won’t be
disappointed with the SoBo package.
Prost!
Chris
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| Dino bike rack outside FERMÆNTRA |
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