We’re hellbent on reaching the 100-breweries-visited-in-Colorado milestone, so the reviews will be coming faster than a jackrabbit on viagra this month (ugh, bad metaphor).
This weekend saw visits to Floodstage Ale Works in Brighton, Crabtree Brewing in Greeley, Pitchers Brewing in Greeley, Echo Brewing in Frederick and Hogshead Brewing in Denver (bringing our total to 80).
Brighton isn’t the greatest town. I’m gonna level with you. It’s too far out in the plains to quite be a Denver suburb, but it’s too small to be its own proper city. It’s just there taking up space, quietly pleading to be euthanized or something.
…but it does have a brewery, and a fun one at that. This isn’t really a place for beer aficianados, though. It’s more like that one enjoyable place in town where you head to after work and pick up some cheap beer and barbecued burgers while getting plowed out on the brick patio. There’s not a lick of pretentiousness here — this is a blue-collar joint if ever there was one, and it totally works. They serve Bud Light, for crying out loud. Normally, I’d scream heresy for such an act, but Floodworks doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not. You come in, you get drunk and you mingle with folks that look like they’ve just spent an afternoon at a tractor pull.
Maybe I’m cutting it so much slack because their own brews are always $2 a pint (!)…actually, that’s totally why I’m recommending this place. $2 pints is a good deal for PBR, for chrissakes, and their beer isn’t half as bad as PBR.
Bottom line: if you have to live in Brighton, there’s no better place to drown your sorrows.
Crabtree Brewing, on the other hand, is the real deal — several GABF medals can attest to that. Currently located on the outskirts of town in a wrong-side-of-the-tracks warehouse district (but soon moving to downtown Greeley, which is actually shockingly cute), Crabtree is a brewery-fan’s-brewery. All the rough-edged coolness is here in spades, what with new beers being tested in makeshift brewing rigs right out on the floor and dogs roaming the place like permanent residents. But what makes Crabtree truly outstanding are the employees, each one a beer PhD, if such an accolade exists. Deeply informed and talkative, the bartender and the brewers themselves chatted me up the whole duration of our stay, and truth be told, educated the shit outta me. For a guy whose been to so many breweries i’m woefully ignorant on the brewing process…but after a half hour at Crabtree I feel as though I received a free brewing 101 course from the best teachers around.
As far as the beer, they serve what is amongst the best in all of the state of Colorado. Not being a hophead, I found their brews to be fantastic across the board. Not a trace of the “Hops Arms Race” (as it’s been called) can be detected. Here it’s all about balance between the malt, hops and yeast without any one ingredient beating you over the head.
We shared a flight of 8 beers on tap and the only ones that didn’t kick my ass were the sours, but I admit that’s an acquired taste I’ve yet to acquire…but the coup de grace was a taste of the Menage A Trois. Our bartender was actually sipping on a taster glass of the stuff and offered as a sip (a truly delightful and unusual thing for a bartender to do — some would be creeped out by the offer, whereas we were thrilled)…..and holy mother of god, this heavenly triptych was unlike any beverage we’d ever consumed. Part mead, part beer and part nectar of the gods, Menage A Trois easily ranks amongst the most delicious alcoholic (or non-alcoholic, for that matter) beverages ever consumed. This is not hyperbole.
Do I recommend Crabtree Brewing? Does the pope shit in the woods?
Next up on the agender was Pitchers Sports Shack and Brewery. In all honesty, this visit was just so we could cross it off the list. I hesitate to call this a brewery because Pitchers is a chain of bar/restaurants and for some reason they just decided to give the one in Greeley some brewing equipment. The beer wasn’t bad, per se, but this place really is just another sports bar with burgers and wings and the like. Nothing to recommend it by, but if it makes any difference my girlfriend did quite enjoy the peach lager.
On the way back to denver is the small “town” of Frederick, town being in quotes because it feels more like a glorified housing development than a naturally occurring human settlement. Nestled deep in the womb of this manufactured suburbia is Echo Brewing, a place that, like a gecko changing color to match its surroundings, has taken on the identity of the area…one of faceless, homogenized blandness. I hate to bad mouth an upstart brewery chasing the dream, but I would be doing our readers a disservice if I just gave every brand new microbrewery a pass.
There wasn’t anything wrong with Echo Brewing: the beer was ok, the service was, well, servicable and the atmosphere wasn’t like being incarcerated in a Columbian prison or anything, it just lacked any kind of personality. Perhaps this was due to the newness of the establishment and I should allow them some time to find their niche. I do hope this is the case because I wish them nothing but success, but as it stands it just felt like drinking beer in a white-walled office space. I could practically imagine cubicles instead of tables and hear the quiet, soul-crushing sounds of photocopy machines printing TPS reports.
Our final stop of the day was in the beautiful (and depressingly gentrified) old neighborhood of Highlands in Denver. With its abundance of 1890′s era homes and giant shady trees, the Highlands area would be perfect if not for the BMW driving motherfuckers that have infested the place like termites. Unfortunately, these termites also drink beer and were the primary clientel of the Hogshead Brewery when we arrived. Seriously — we parked between an acura, a BMW and what appeared to be one of Mitt Romney’s entourage vehicles.
I like my breweries to be as they were in the old world: a public house. A place where common people gather to relax with a soothing beverage….not a place to meet up with the executive VP of Bank of America and discuss which cufflinks are better: the ivory carved ones made from albino pygmy elephant tusks, or the ones polished with the tears of eyeless orphans.
Anyway…maybe we caught them on a bad day, but the 1 per centers had already drank all the beers on tap like so many white collar locusts and all we had left to try on tap was an english style session beer, the Lake Lightening. It was damn good. so much so that I wish we could’ve tried a few other varieties.
Had the place been empty I probably would be writing a rave review. The neighborhood view was gorgeous, the taproom itself was tastefully designed and the one beer we got to try was delicious…but dammit, I hate feeling like I’m an outsider at a place as universally welcoming as a brewery. Again, perhaps there was a stockbrokers convention in town or something and the place is usually filled with the types of miscreants whose company I prefer. Perhaps we’ll return soon so I can write a review that’s less whiney than this one was…
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