Odell Brewing (Ft. Collins, CO)

At this point in the day, when we arrived at the Odell brewery, we had just finished off New Belgium and FCB, both of whom served up some stiff competition.  Hell, even at this point in the tour we’d seen some heavy-hitting beers strut their stuff, so when we finally got to Odell (which was kind of a big deal for me) I had some pretty high expectations.  If New Belgium has been eclipsed by any other brewery in Colorado, its fair to say that it would have to be Odell.  Maybe not as widely distributed at New Belgium, but they’re certainly hot on their heels.  And hey, what does distribution really mean?  If that’s a mark of a good beer, then Anheuser-Busch has them all beat, but I don’t even need to tell you about the degree of inferiority which those beers stand by. 

Odell has certainly been on the up and up over the last few years, especially with their hardest hitting beers 90 schilling, 5 barrel, Cutthroat Porter, and their IPA.  So when we got to the brewery, we brushed these “standards” aside in order to sample the plethora of other hidden treasures they had there only on tap.  Yet, no one’s perfect, and though there are some great beers Odell brews, there were also some “okay” beers.  Lets get to the snobbery…

90 Schilling:  Likely their best bottled beer.  Not exactly an amber, but not quite powerful enough to wear the kilt of a scotch ale, this beer instead lingers in limbo, but offers up such a smooth mixture of malts and hops that it indeed stands alone.  As the bottle will tell you, the name comes from the Scottish way of taxing beer, by which only the highest-quality beers were taxed the English currency of 90 schillings.  Not exactly sure how much that is here in America, where we’re really big on taxing, but I’m sure its worth it. 

IPA:  Another personal favorite.  With this beer, I’m a little suspicious that it benefits from quality labeling.  I mean, just look at that elephant dancing around, and that strangely hypnotizing orange hue on its label, as orange and seductive as the beer itself!  Maybe not the most impressive IPA in the world, but certainly one of distinction, and one of distinction you can probably find at the store.  Finely malted to match it’s hoppy soul, and potent a plenty.

Myrcenary Double IPA:  Though I’m a big fan of IPAs, I’m more importantly a fan of IPAs done right.  This one wasn’t too bad, but it came on a little too strong and fruity.  I could make a million jokes with that one, but this is serious business, people!  Serious!

Mash of the Titan:  Hold the phones!  It’s a showstopper!  We have a new champion!  This stout conquers the weak!  Rich in dankness, vanilla, dank, creaminess, thick dankness , potency, and more quality dank, this beer gave us the proverbial slap in the jowls.  Left Hand still holds a special place in my heart with their miraculous Wake Up Dead, but this one may have ‘em down for the count.

Bourbon Barrel Stout:  Holy sheep!  Wait…Wait!  We have another show stopper!  A new NEW champion!  Forgot that mash of the titan nonsense, no no, this is the beer to enslave humanity!  Take your finest stout ever, than condition it in bourbon oak barrels, and you get the sweetest, smoothest gem of dark beer possible.  If the rapture ever happens, and all those good zombies rise from the grave and queue up for an eternity of bliss, this is the beer they’ll be served while waiting.  Yeah.  Good.

Rating:  46-50 penguin chili cook-offs.   

Fort Collins Brewing, (Ft. Collins, CO)

Ahhh, the pint glass.  Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something comforting and reassuring about the average pint glass you find in a bar.  Something that queues that little Pavlov dog in my brain to salivate uncontrollably.   Something that says “Don’t worry, Daniel, your friend is here now.”  Especially when it’s filled with so much good beer. 

Just look at it.  All that beautiful liquid gold shimmering through the beads of condensation, trickling down its glassy sides.  The weight of it in your hand, a mere pound, hefty with so much delicious glory and promise.  Even the feel of it in your hand, as if your wrist and hand have been brought to a natural, neutral position for healing. 

Does this sound like the ravings of an alcoholic, lost in his own addled mind, brimming with beer and dopamine?  Some one who’s clearly lost touch with their inner child and instead spending all their time playing with their inner drunk?  Maybe the gibbering of a man trying to blog drunk?  Yes, it does, but remember one thing:  I am no mere drunk.  I’m a professional.  A professional pays acute attention to details, aspiring to a level of such mastery that nothing remains trivial.  My enthusiasm for beer goes way beyond mere enjoyment and hobby.  I enjoy it professionally, which gives me full right to waste all this space talking about pint glasses.  I’m also a little drunk.

 

Wheat Wine:  So, one of our contacts in Ft. Collins confided in us that he wasn’t that big a fan of FBC (Ft. Collins Brewery) because their beers are “too smoky”.  Well, Drew, be that as it may, but I’d call you a liar.  This smooth wheat cousin to barley wine has nothing smoky about it and is superb.  Now, unless Drew meant that these beers are Smokey, as in awesome, fearless, and passionate like Smokey the Bear, then that would make more sense.

Common Ground Amber:  Coffee infused amber beer, and surprisingly good.  Tastes either like bad coffee or good beer.

Red Hot Chili Porter:  Nacho-like beer.  Seriously.  It kind of tastes like nachos you’d get at a high school basketball game.  “Probably good with Mexican wrestling.”  Touché, but I didn’t find it too my liking.

Rating:  58-70 snail geniuses.

New Belgium Brewing (Ft. Collins, CO)

 

Sour Beer indifferent to my notepad

Ah yes, the moment you may have been waiting for.  New Belgium Brewery.  The  Mecca of micro-brews.  The New Belgium Brewery itself is something to behold.  As a company they’ve managed to reduce their carbon footprint so much that you may as well call them completely self sufficient.  The process of making beer itself produces quite a lot of waste, either in cooked barley, waste water, and CO2 from all the energy required to brew it.  But New Belgium, among other more modern breweries out there, has taken the initiative to reduce their energy use from carbon fuels by becoming completely wind and solar powered and making their natural gas usage more efficient.  By treating their waste water with aerobic and anaerobic microbes, they are able to not only clean their waste water completely, but also harness the excess methane gas to power an on site turbine that in turn produces more green energy.  They even sell their spent grain from making the wort to feed cattle.  Frickin’ awesome! 

But the beer, the beer!  To say the beer New Belgium has been producing over the last twenty years was pivotal in inspiring the microbrew movement would be an understatement.  Personally, if it wasn’t for Fat Tire, I may have grown up thinking that Amber Bock or Michelob Ultra was really good beer.  Since those fateful days of senior year in high school, I’ve been pursuing quality brews wherever they may be found, all thanks to New Belgium.  Some may argue that New Belgium just isn’t what it used to be, or that they’ve become overshadowed by other fine breweries like their neighbors Odells, but quite frankly, that’s beside the point.  New Belgium has quite possibly been the gateway beer that has attracted so many youths like myself to put down the 12 pack of PBR and spend that extra few bucks to get Fat Tire, 2 Below, Beir du Marz, 1554, Tripple, or many of New Belgium’s other craft beers.  And is it any surprise that their distribution range has expanded nearly to the East coast?  What other young micro-brewery can tout that kind of success?  For me, when I first visited New Belgium a couple years ago for the first time, it was akin to a holy pilgrimage, something that every beer enthusiast dreams of, and returning again now certainly had a similar effect. 

Elite Fat Tire assault bikes.

Fat Tire:  Just in case you haven’t had a Fat Tire in the last 20 years of its existence, I’ll do my best to critique it.  If you have, you know full well how good it is.  Maybe not the best beer ever, but what it lacks in pizzazz it impresses with in cool, collected style and taste.  It’s the kind of amber by which all others must be judged.  Sweet, caramely, and down right refreshing.  Damn, makes me wish I were drinking one right now.

1554 Black Ale:  The darkest of NB’s brews, it’s based on a Belgium dark lager recipe that the master brewer picked up on while making his historic bike tour of Belgium way back in 1989.  It was the year 1554 that it was first introduced.  Dark (duh), malty, smooth, and hypnotizing, it is one of my favorite NB beers.

Bier Du Marz:  Though Beir Du Marz is no longer made, it was NB’s “octoberfestiest” beer that they produced, and damned if it wasn’t good and deserves some space in the hall of great beers in the sky, where all beers go to die.

Kick Sour Beer:  For their in-house specials that you can’t find bottled, NB had an array of sour beers on tap.  This one was a fall seasonal sour that combined pumpkin and cranberry with the jaw-curling power of sour beer.  Its smoothest sour yet and smacking of starbursts a little.

A space bug among us?

La Folie:  Their original sour beer, this is, amongst some, the nectar by which magical space bugs travel through space and time to secretly infest our planet and suckle upon.  Personally, the space bugs can have it, but Ali thinks it’s the best sour yet.  I’ve also been a little suspicious lately that Ali is indeed a space bug.

Rating:  139 out of 203 weaponized fortune cookies. 

Equinox Brewing (Fort Collins, CO)

 After a brief reunion with friends at Funk Werks, it was time to check off yet another brewery and tack on another.  We mounted our nimble aluminum steads and set off into the setting sun to find the acclaimed Equinox brewery.  Fortunately, you don’t need to go too far.

Equinox isn’t much to look at as a brewery goes, but the over all ambiance and image that make it into more of a modern café than brew pub is as refreshing and comforting as its brew.  A little comforting was exactly what we needed as we set out to sample the two cosmological flights of beer we had ordered.  Seeing that few if any of these beers had any abv% below a 5 or 5.5 (I’d put the average more at 6.5) and IBU levels up around the troposphere, I could not help a foreboding sense of imminent revelry coming on. 

Ali's enthusiasm is striking

Imperial Heffeweisen:  Sweet, thick, potent…even a little erotic.  Seriously, you could probably sue this beer for sexual harassment it’s so good.

Atom Smasher Wee Heavy:  “If you were a giant and attacked a village and drank a brew house, this is what it would taste like.”  Ali’s keen observations on the subtle tastes of beers are always note worthy.  And in some regards, this beer kinda does taste like if you were to eat a brew house.  Maple syrupy goodness, malty and thick…this beer might come off as a bit much, but than again, you did just eat an entire house.

Eclipse Brown Ale:  Toast, walnuts, brown sugar.  Like drinking pancakes. 

Add caption

Event Horizon IPA:  Goose bumps were an immediate reaction for the both of us.  Sweet yet powerful, packing a 140 IBU’s (!).  One might think that that amount of hops would surely crush your taste buds and induce vomiting…but instead you feel somehow pulled into a new reality of an IPA, almost feel reality being crushed around you.  Pretty good.

Galaxy IPA:  And just as you feel as if the limits of beer reality can’t be breached further, that the very laws of physics will not…can not…permit it, well, you’re right.  They can’t.  At least not with this beer.  Good, fruity, refreshing if you’re good with IPAs, but Ali just couldn’t hang.  Hey, everyone’s got their own palate to satisfy.

Rating:  458.47000001211 out of pi.

Funk Werks (Fort Collins, CO)

Though it had been fun wheeling and dealing in Denver, it was good to be back on the road.  That open expanse of unseen country, unfolding before you.   New sights, people, and beers, just waiting to be introduced.  Ft. Collins was also a much anticipated destination, for the obvious reason of being home to two of the largest micro breweries in the Western United States: New Belgium and Odells.  But aside from these two giants of industry, there are nine breweries in Ft. Collins, and seemingly more popping up every year.

Ft. Collins is also a city of vision, of the future.  Bike libraries can be found throughout the city, allowing for people who register with the city to check a bike out, cruise it, and return it to where ever you find another bike library.  Magic art pianos have been installed around downtown in order to coddle any homeless prodigies out of obscuria.  Did I mention the nine breweries too?  Clearly any city with that much craft beer has got its ducks lined up pretty well.

For our first evening, we’d planned to tackle three breweries, Funkwerks, Equinox, and Coppersmith.  Funkwerks is one of Ft. Collins’ new kids on the block, having been around for a few years.  They also specialize in saison style of beers, French/Belgium farmhouse style of brewing lighter beer and then letting them ferment and mature through the winter in order to have beer reserves for farm workers during the summer.  The taste of saison (or session) beers typically tends towards lighter, less hoppy beer, but full of wonderful taste created by the malt and yeast. 

Chardonnay blonde:  Conditioned and aged in chardonnay wine barrels, this is quite possibly one of the best blondes we’ve ever had.  Crisp and sweet, this beer certainly carries the taste of the chardonnay with it to the finish. 

Keylime Saison:  Yep, infused with key lime zest.  Who’d of thunk it?  Well, these guys did, I guess.  Not bad, but you’re probably well aware of my opinion of fruit and beer fusions.  It’s like reading a band flyer that says jazz/funk/rock/dubstep fusion on it:  you’re really not sure what you’re going to get, and it’ll probably suck anyway.  This beer is so pale it’s almost crystal clear, but is able to satisfy in the end.

Hibiscus Resistance:  Brewed with hibiscus flowers, it would be tempting to mock this beer by not calling it floral, but what can I say here that’s not going to be a pun?  Another quality beer, rich in color and flavor, just like the flower.

Rating:  20 out of 25 late night back ally Mexican wrestling matches.

Great Divide (Denver, CO)

 At this point in the trip, we’d finally hit the sandy shoal of over indulgence.  We had suckled from the greatest taps in Colorado, and now were left in somewhat of a terminal velocity of beer appreciation.  Denver alone still harbored many fine breweries…but so what?  Could it be possible that we had become so thoroughly saturated on quality ales that our red noses were getting blue?  Of course not!  All we really needed was a little exercise, stretch out those drinking muscles burn off a few hundred-beer calories, and we’d be fit for action in no time!  Fortunately, the Denver area has many fine recreation centers and a damned good climbing wall.

Denver's Laser Space Defense System

Nonetheless, even after some much needed recreation that didn’t involve drinking, we were still short on time for visiting and thoroughly appreciating much of Denver’s beers. I would mention Wynkoop’s beers here, but since we didn’t fully sample their beers, I wouldn’t be able to properly praise or defame them respectfully.  What we did have was alright, but not enough to say it was good or garbage.  We did make it down to Great Divide, however, and were able to fully document the experience enough for the enjoyment of you dear readers.

Samurai Rice Beer:  Brewed with rice, this light lager styled beer tastes much better than Saporo or Kirin Ichiban, which are just lagers from Asia.  This beer has a sweet, smooth ricey finish to it, and also packs a pretty heavy hit.  If it doesn’t meet your expectations, one of the brewers will also commit seppuku in order to maintain the honor of the brewery. 

beer vats hard at work

Scotch Ale:  This Scotch tasted like someone had just received a huge ransom from a banking institution after taking a few of their 1% highest paid employees hostage and demanding millions or they’d start depositing bits and pieces of them at various ATMs: the sweet, malty bite of revenge.

Smoked Porter:  I’m not exactly sure how one achieves a smoky taste in a beer, but some beers taste like they have had liquid smoke extract just dumped into the vats with the beer, and others actually taste good.  This one teeters on the edge of both.  I think a beer with added flavors must walk a very fine line or threaten becoming a coctail, and a terrible one at that.  I leave this one up to interpretation, but I’m personally indifferent. 

Beer snobs hard at work

Yeti Imperial Stout:  I’ve learned now that “imperial” labeling of a beer means it’s been pure bred to whoop ass.  Stronger and more powerful, it’s like a Superman kryptonian style of beer; some of that 1% super rich beer; the stuff getting passed around back stage at a Snoop Dogg concert.  Usually.  This beer indeed was, but be warned, some people like to make phony back-stage pass knock-offs that can’t walk the walk.  Great Divide also does their Stout in a variety of ways, aged in oak barrels, chocolated up, or infused with espresso, so pick and choose which one’s you like.

Rating:  423 out of 789 zombie garbage trucks.

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.