USA Ale Adventures 2015 - Part 1 - Colorado

It's been a while since I updated this blog - the last post was from Australia, but this is what Jo and I did, ale-wise, on our first 9/10 days in Colorado.

We had two nights in Denver, on the first of which we were both a little jet-lagged, but we soldiered on, discovering a brewpub just round the corner from our hotel. The Lowdown Brewery (http://www.lowdownbrewery.com/) was pretty busy when we arrived - it was Saturday night after all - even although it was the early hours of Sunday morning for our body clocks.

We had picked up the Ferment magazine, which whetted our appetites a little with an article on Colorado breweries - it certainly seems to be a buoyant state, beer-wise. Certainly, Lowdown's beers went down well:

The following day, Sunday, we went for a long city centre walk, taking in the sights, but finishing, of course, with some beers. We chose the Great Divide's tap room, noisy inside, so we sat outside:

We moved south west on the Monday - up to pretty Breckenridge, high up in the mountains. Ski-ing country obviously, but it's a lot more than that - it's a year round outdoor centre, with lots of walkers, cyclists, sailors etc in the summer months. Loads of trails, one of which looked interesting:

Six breweries and a distillery within easy cycling distance - although I'm not sure it would be safe or sensible to do them all on one trip! Over the course of the week, we made it to all of them, bar two - Dillon Dam and The Baker's - but we made up for these omissions by attending this Brew Fest:

We focused on trying beers from Colorado breweries that we didn't manage to visit during the course of the week. The deal was $30 entry which included a one third pint commemorative glass, plus all the beer you could drink. Each stall, however, was very careful about the amount of beer they served each time - mostly our glasses were little more than half full, but this at least gave us the chance to sample 33 different beers from 17 breweries:

Elk Mountain - Pale Ale and Wheat

Fate - Wheat and Watermelon

Elevation - Double IPA and Farmhouse

Dillon Dam - Session and IPA

Pikes Peak - IPA and Oatmeal Stout

Wynkoop - IPA and Peach Wheat

Baker's - Brown and IPA

Renegade - Triple IPA (11%) and Session

LoneTree - Peach Pale and 11PA

Modus Hoperandi - Session and strong IPA (4.5 and 6.8)

Boulder - Mojo and Hazed Pale Ales

Strangecraft - Breakfast (7%) and 1000 Barrel IPA (8.2%)

Kannah Creek - Blonde and IPA

Tivoli - Buck beer (brown)and Helles

Butcherknife - Hefeweizen and IPA

Great Divide - Wheat

Odell - White and IPA

Why the odd number? Our very first beer was the Elk Mountain Pale Ale and we reckoned that was the best one, so I went back for another later on.

The festival was held in a lovely setting, overlooking Lake Dillon and the snow-capped mountains:

It was a good week which also included a guided tour of the relatively new small Breckenridge Distillery - free samples there:

Oregon now - bottled beers so far, but I've got a couple of growlers to fill and there's plenty of places in Grants Pass to do that - including two new ones since last year. More on this in next post.