Left Hand Brewery (Longmont, CO)

 

All left handed

From Oscar Blues we continued our trek into Longmont, which is just outside of Boulder.  In Longmont, our trip had finally cultivated at one of our most anticipated breweries for the whole trip: Left Hand Brewery.  Left Hand is the home of many quality beers, such as the milk stout, which Ali claims was the beer that converted her into a beer enthusiast.  This Sunday was indeed turning into quite the religious experience, and Left Hand did not disappoint. 

What should be understood about Left Hand Brewery is that they specialize in dark, rich, juicy, somewhat orgasmic beers.  Forget lagers, blondes, or ambers, Left Hand does a Pale, IPA, and then the dankest dark beer in the world.  I wager that this may be my favorite brewery this tour (though there are many more contestants to come) but Left Hand left me feeling euphoric and elated, misting-up a little even with dark chocolaty tears.

The source of so much glory

400 lb. Monkey (IPA):  This English-style IPA may not impress everyone, but it’s certainly good enough to make it onto the list. 

Black Jack Porter:  A thick, chocolaty brew, you may feel as if you’re being refreshed with a smooth, cold beer or by washing your face with molten liquid gold.  Ahhhh…love the way that molten hot gold exfoliates and softens.

A rare photo of Ali sneezing and laughing

Milk Stout:  If you haven’t tried the milk stout by now, you may be guilty of wasting your entire life.  If you’ve been drinking Guiness all this time and thinking that this is what a quality stout tastes like, then you most certainly have been wasting your entire life.  Though chocolaty sweet and smooth, unconventional for a stout, you can’t hold a finger against this one.  Getting this beer on nitro tap makes it even better.

Fade to Black:  This is Left Hand’s seasonal Pepper Porter, the third edition.  Do you see a trend here?  You got the part about the specializing in dank, dark beers, right?  One might think that brewing peppercorns with a porter would only add to its demise, but I’m sure someone thought the same about putting pepper on cantaloupe.  You certainly can taste a peppery finish on this one, and it’s just as good as when you put pepper on pretty much anything.

Jeff and Claudia enjoying my company

Wake Up Dead Imperial Stout:  This is certainly the coupe-de-gras of the Left Hands in my opinion.  Describing it would be like describing a kiss by Shiva or one of Vishnu’s farts.  Sweet yet spicey.  Powerful yet modestly subtle.  Indescribable and somewhat at odds with itself.  

Rating:  500 out of 10 irrelevant numerical rating systems.

Oscar Blues (Lyons, CO)

The controversial theory of human evolution

Our post-Avery day was actually the first day we were hung over the entire trip.  Perhaps it was that mottled death cloud, perhaps it was the beer, but either way we took our first real day-off from beer snobbing to recuperate and reflect on the trip so far.  As of Avery we had polished off some +/- 42 pints collectively, which translates into seven gallons of beer over the course of a week.  Not bad, but we still had a long thirsty road ahead of us.

Oscar Blues is the brewer of Dales’ Pale Ale and Old Chub, the two beers you’re more apt to find in a liquor store throughout the West.  As far as Oscar Blues other beers goes, there were some hits and misses.  Fortunately it was Sunday, the day of which I celebrate football by sacrificing many beers at the inner sanctum of my gullet.

The Imperial Red

Mama’s little Yellow Pils:  Most Sundays during the last football season I steadily drank Lagunitas’ Pils, which has metastasized into a peculiar fondness and almost superstitious reliance on the beer.  The Little Yellow Pils wasn’t bad, but not good enough to sway the football gods from forsaking the Denver Broncos.  Then again, that team may need more than divine intervention.

Old Chub Skotch Ale:  Probably my favorite of Oscar Blues’ beers.  Strong and malty, thick and potent, even from a can.

photo of the photo of the Red

Oktoberfest:  Could this be it?  Could this at long last be the Oktoberfest to end all others?  Have I finally found that one alt beer that stands out amongst the rest and guide all us beer snobs into the light?  Hell no!  Another ambery fall beer that fails to impress or unimpress.  It’s as neutrally disappointing as it is refreshing.  How is it that so many different Oktoberfests can taste the same?  Why?  Why?

Imperial Red:  At first, when Ali got this beer, I was certain that this was actually Dale’s Pale, because it was so uncharacteristically non-red and deeply hoppy.  We even had the waitress cast the deciding taste.  Fortunately for us she thought it was the Deviant Dale’s Dbl. hopped ale and gave us another pint of the Imperial Red, which it was all along.  The beer may not be red, but it’s damned good.

Rating:  Oscar Blues= 34 out of 42 Galaga space bugs (but it gets an extra life because it has a vintage arcade room).

Avery Brewery (Boulder, CO)

Slightly less serious beer country.

We left Paonia two giant zucchinis richer, but now that we were clearing the grandeur of the I-70 mountain pass and heading for Denver, we knew that two zucchinis or not, we were heading for serious beer country.  Serious.  The larger Denver metropolitan area; including Boulder, Longmont, and Lyons, is host to enough breweries to either get all the cattle in Texas drunk for two nights or support a small pod of mythical beer dolphins for life.  And I’m not even talking about the Coors or Buttweiper breweries, I mean microbreweries only.  Serious beer country.

Well ahead of our arrival, we had been mapping and planning our conquest of this beer Mecca, and on the menu for the night was Avery Brewery in Boulder.  Avery had come highly recommended by numerous trusted sources, my older brother amongst them, who would be personally escorting us to the brewery.

Jeff about to explode with Bacchanalia

Our first impression of Avery was a mixed one.  At first I was intrigued by the twenty-odd taps along the wall and a beer list that could be confused for a novella.  Then I was confounded by what looked like a fraternity rush taking place at the bar.  Our waitress even had to excuse herself to go chug a beer with the boys before she could take our order.  Hmmm…

Fortunately another waitress stepped in to do some damage control, but either way we were left feeling slighted.  It got me thinking though of how we interact with beer.  The noisy, cursing patrons inside were doing exactly what most college kids do with beer: consume it to get drunk fast and maybe hook-up with someone…or something.  We on the other hand were there to snob the snobbiest of breweries, but it seemed our snobbery was grossly out of place!  What gives?  Does no one respect self-proclaimed and unqualified critics in this town?

This is good beer...except that one.

It just goes to show that despite the high quality of any beer, it’s only as good as the people drinking it.  As with food, cinema, music, and art in general, it all comes down to taste.  Some people either appreciate the subtle notes of caramel and coriander in a beer, and some people just don’t give a rat’s ass about it.  But no matter what it does for you, so long as you enjoy it, who’s to say whose taste is better than another’s?  Well, I guess I could:

Imperial Oktoberfest:  What?  Imperial?  Oktoberfest?  Beer?  Again, everyone wants to be hip and chic, and of course Avery’s got to one-up everyone and get the royal Czar of Oktoberland to piss in their beer.  Magical piss or not, its still good.

Brown:  Tastes like a drunken, wet dog.  Seriously.  Don’t ask me how I’d know what a drunken wet dog tastes like.  I drank the beer.  I know. 

A toxic cloud o'death's view of our beer

Salvation:  Tastes like the usual promises the clergy make when trying to win over converts:  bile. 

Mark of the Beast:  6 hops, 6 sugars, 6 barleys.  Six pints of this extraordinarily strong beer and you’ll need six days to work it off.  Black and potent. Be warned, this bad boy will eat your soul.

Eremite:  This was our first encounter with a sour beer.  At first I didn’t know what to think of it, but after a few sips, you come to enjoy it.  It’s brewed in old white wine barrels over the course of a few years, giving it a sparkling, sweet yet potently sour and tart champagne-like taste.  Good.

"EWWW! Get a room!"

Old Jubilator:  Despite of the cloud of rotting death that blew in from the Greenly feedlot in the East, this beer still managed to stand out as exceptionally good.  That’s kind of a big deal.  I mean stinking, thick, nightmarish cloud of death stench.  Satan’s diarrhea foul.   Yeah, that’s good beer.

Rating:  67 out of 89 sorority girls grossed-out by public displays of affection. 

Revolutionary Brewing (Paonia, CO)

I should make mention now that the MSR “hubba hubba” tent is the shit.  Though we may have enjoyed a pleasant night at the edge of a fierce mountain storm, that storm eventually made it off the hill and thoroughly dumped all over us.  We woke to find that we were practically floating in a puddle, but thanks to above mentioned product, we were still dry.  Again, I 100% approve of this product.

There is no good way to stay dry when packing up your superior tent though, and no lobster pot of a hot spring was going to serve to warm our sorrowful state.  We made for the highway, dripping and cursing, but never undone.  We knew Paonia and fresh brews awaited us somewhere down that road, and time was wasting just getting wet.

The Red and the Pale

Paonia (pronounced P’h-Oh-nee AH) is so damned cute it either belongs in a Disney movie where the farmers and their talking animals all live happily ever after, or in a horror movie where the farm animals turn into zombies and eat the farmers.  But just beyond the chic and fluffy wool covering your eyes is a brewery that will not conform to the oppressive norms of the status quo.  No no, Revolutionary Brewery seeks to redefine not only reality, but beer itself, and will not rest till the shackles of the oppressive beer oligarchy have been shed from the pints of the proletariat! 

Time to bring down the Man!

Really, Revolutionary Brewing is just as cute and quaint in its image as it is in its beer, but nonetheless produced some of the finer beers on our tour.  The brewery itself is likely no bigger than the room you’re sitting in right now, but its just the right size for planning your next big act to shake up the establishment.  In honor of Revolutionary’s progressive momentum, we decided to describe and judge their beers in an equally progressive way.  Instead of bowing to the grammatical rules that so rigidly define us and divide us, we will instead tear down these linguistic laws and speak in a wholly new and free language!

Red:  Beth's crotch hairs!  ?Wake up and bark like a hamburger?  We could go BOWLING!

Heffeweizen:  Backward spoken tap dance face!  Don’t camera up slither down stars into the waste bucket.  This is supposed to>de>wo>fillmeup?

Stout:  Giant gorilla hands selling me cupcake freedom!  If you want, I’ll book cheetahs for dinner!!!!!

"Who let this guy play?  UuuGH, terrible!"

Porter:  Time gun fired up a motor that eats the future!  Now go to sleep!  Go to sleep!  Go to sleep!  Go to sleep!

Pale Ale:  VN  IE nfw2 23ihf 43902 nw edn( 2w39 (W0efni N $23 $&(@ 72 89#$# *(G)9gf24gni?><?!!

Rating:  87&8 out of 129_-998 awkward silences while playing open mic night.

Colorado Boy (Ridgeway, CO)

Ouray is indeed a cute, quaint little mining town, but its no Orvis hot springs.  Outside of Ridgeway, about 10 miles north of Ouray, the Orvis hot springs allow their patrons to finally, FINALLY, get naked and soak their birthday suits till they’re lobster pink.   Go ahead and hang your inhibitions up with your clothes, because this tepid world rarely allows for opportunities to let it all hang out.  Fortunately for us, we were treated to a wonderfully calm evening floating around in the dark with other perfect strangers, just beyond the reach of the storm dusting the mountains behind us.

Fortunately for us as well, another brewery of fine repute was just down the road.  My first idea about the origin name for Colorado Boy was that it must be named after some kid that in 1885, was orphaned when his parents were tragically killed in an avalanche while pursuing their dreams of baggin’ fourteener peaks.  Instead of fearing the indifferent and monstrously satanic Rockies that claimed his parents, he set out to climb every peak in Colorado, and after defeating them all by the age of sixteen, went on to climb every peak in the country and also save a number of baby ducks (look for the inspiring true story out on DVD this fall).

 

But no, it’s instead named after a giant mine near by.  Yeah.  Giant, filthy, environmentally destructive and morally degrading mine.  If this brewery were smart, they’d roll with my story, never mind it’s completely false, but still, people want to buy a story of their product, not just the product.  Colorado Boy’s beer, back stories aside, still served up satanic-mountain-defeating’s worth of whoop ass.

Irish Red:  Their award winning red (as in Gold at the Great American Beer Festival), this beer is straight-up red, red like Rambo’s bandana, red like Karl Rove’s undies or Joseph Stalin’s birthday party balloons.  Red.  It’s also pretty good.

Alt-beir:  This is a different take on the Oktoberfest beers you typically find plaguing the beer world this time of year.  Everyone wants to be as authentic as possible, and so these guys imported their hops all the way from Germany.  According to some, unless your beer isn’t made in Munich, it aint Oktobeiry enough to be an Oktoberfest!  Whatever.  This beer is rich and caramel-sweet and at least stood out amongst many of the Oktoberfest beers we’d had on the trip.  I approve.

Rating:  23 out of 27 peculiarly non-awkward moments sitting naked next to someone in the hot springs.

Ouray Brewing (Ouray, CO)

Making your way from Durango to Ouray through Red Mountain Pass, you will be able to see one of the largest creatures on Earth: the giant amalgam complex of aspen trees that paint the mountain sides.  Aspens are all clones of themselves, putting up new trees from the roots of another nearby aspen.  In this way, aspen trees are all connected to one another, and are arguably the same tree, or the one of the largest complexes of living organisms on Earth.

Seeing them in early October, as their leaves turn from green to yellow, orange, and red, you might even think the forest around you was on fire.  But before I start hopelessly describing its grandeur and beauty, remember the ratio of words to pictures of beauty, and that pictures really don’t do it justice anyway.

Making it out of the pass just ahead of an incoming snow storm, we ponied up to the Ouray Brewing Co. in (Guess! Guess!) Ouray, Colorado.  Though Ouray Brewing has only been open for a year (2010) they’ve still managed to make a name for themselves as purveyors of finely crafted brews.

Blonde: Really good, and to date, probably the best yet.  Way better than that valley-girl from Ska.

Brown:   See, I told you brown ales could be good!  This beer stands out as the best brown ale to date.  If given the choice between drinking this beer or a glass of Hepatitis-C, I’d way rather drink this beer than that glass of poison.  Duh!

IPA:  Fruity, citrusy, and exceptionally hopped.  Either this beer’s just really good or that orange/brown water in the river from all the copper tailings has melted my taste buds.

Rating:  1 out of 1.2 serrated tourist traps.

Ska Brewery (Durango, CO)

Later that day, we made a slow mosey from Carver to the industrial park of Durango to find one of the larger-named breweries on our tour: Ska brewery.  Ska has certainly made a name for itself over the 15-odd years it’s been in business.  Though Ska and Steamworks opened around the same time, Ska has certainly pulled away as far as distribution and can be found in liquor stores and bars throughout the West. 

 

Though Ska does some good staple beers such as Pinstripe Red and Decadent IPA, their alternative or speacialty beers were found lacking in quality.  If you’re one for hoppier beers with a sweeter side to them, than Ska certainly struts its stuff, but as far as their other beers, we felt a little let down.  Nonetheless, not all breweries strive to have the best of ALL kinds of beers, and more often than not just stick to their guns, so if your drinking Ska anytime soon, consider the following.

Decadent IPA:  One of Ska’s staple beers, the Decadent shows up at parties in my mouth unannounced, with a grip of its skankster friends with gold teeth.  Yeah, by morning there will be holes in the cushions of your couch and Mom’s favorite lamp is broken, but damn if that wasn’t fun!

Organic Belgium Dubbel bock:  Dark, subtle, sensitive, charismatic.  “Shouts and yells at my mouth!  It throws hops at my tongue!”  Ali reserves the right to her own opinion about this beer, but I still think it’s alright. 

True Blonde Ale:  True blonde?  Please, I know highlights when I see them, and this beer is all phony.  Ali, being more a dirty and truer blonde (and more a fan of Nimbus’ Dirty Gurera) could only smirk and sneer at this bimbo-beer.  So light in taste and color, you’d almost think that the carbonation in this beer is an implant!  You’re better off saving some money and getting a 12-pack of PBR.

Buster Nut Brown Ale:  A lot of people who like brown ales support their choice in palate by referring to New Castle or Moosedrool, two popular and unimaginative brown ales.  They’re not bad, but not impressive, but that’s not to say brown ales can’t be good.  Indeed, many are, especially nut browns.  Ol’ Buster here isn’t bad, but falls into that category of being dark enough for people who associate with Bud Lite to drink around real beer drinkers and pretend like they’re cool and know a thing or two about beer.  Nice try, Buster, but no dice.

 

Ska Special ESB:  “Gaghhhhh!”  Ali certainly has a way of expressing herself and really hitting it on the head.  Truer words, Ali, truer words…

Rating:  4992—12 out of 54637.00001 Barbie doll eating sharks.

Carver Brewery (Durango, CO)

It has occurred to me that I am a terrible failure.  The only worthwhile thing in life, and I’ve failed at it.  I mean blogging.  By now you’ve certainly noticed the lapse of time between postings and the overall lack of attention we’ve been putting into these updates.  So many people have bent over backwards to get us this blog space, and here we are wasting it. 

Oh well.  Mark it all up to the amount of beer and fun we’re reveling in.  As for Carver Brewery, they not only served as a fine place to drink beer, but as a finer place to get out of the torrential deluge that had followed us to Durango.  It wasn’t even noon yet, and already we were busy at our snobbery.  Fortunately for Carver, they done well.  Carver was once a bakery (Carver’s bakery) sometime in the 1950’s and eventually was sold to the current owners and brewers that make Carver beer.  Carver was Colorado’s second craft brewery in the state, established only a month after Wynkoop brewery in Denver.

Ironhorse Stout:  Guiness goodness.  Coffee like in appearance, beer like in results.

Garden-brau Heffewiezen:  Gingery and sweet like a grapefruit, would go great on a sunny, non-rainy day like the one we endured in Durango. 

Old Oak Amber:  Amber in appearance, yet somewhat boring in results.  In the world of amber beers, you have a lot to contend with, and this beer goes down in the third round.  Not bad, but not good or thick enough to harbor ancient dinosaur-DNA-carrying mosquitoes.

Sucker Punch Black IPA:  As black and powerful as the soul of the abyss. Gaze into the IPA, and it will gaze back at you.  Bitter yet brutally honest.  Listen closely, it foretells of doom and sorrow!  But never mind any of that, this beer is still delightful, despite its morose character.

Rating:  25 out of 32 soggy parking tickets.