Beer Garden Party at Haystack Mountain Golfcourse

On Sept 9th, Ales for All along with friends from Haystack Mountain Golfcourse put on a Beer Garden party. We had about 75 people attend this event. Each person was asked to bring some beer, an appetizer and $5 donation for the band, 18switchbacks.

Local Colorado breweries donated beer for sampling. We setup a beer 'station' for each brewer to showcase their beer. Organic beers provided by Asher Brewing included their Green Lantern Kolsch, Tree Hunger Amber and Green Bullet IPA.

Grimm Brothers supplied us with a few year-round beers (Fearless Youth, Little Red Cap and Master Thief) and one specialty beer (Clever Hans).

Oskar Blues provided lots of their delicious beer - beers in cans and growlers of a few specialty beers. Garret Frase from Oskar Blues was on hand to answer questions and discuss craft beers with fellow beer lovers.

Geoff Hess from the Oskar Blues Hops and Heifers farm stopped by as well. Here he is chatting with a few beer lovers:

Craig Taylor from The Pumphouse Brewery was able to show off a few of his beers and enjoy the party. He even ran into an old buddy from school at the party..

Odell Brewing was generous to provide a variety of beers for sampling. The Cutthroat Porter is one of my favorites. Thanks, Amanda!

Bubba Love from Left Hand Brewing dropped off some 400lb Monkey IPA along with their flagship beer, Milk Stout. Thanks for the love, Bubba.

Boulder Beer donated a variety pack of their beers - shoutout to Dan the Chicken Man for that! You can see their 'beer station' here next to Garret from Oskar Blues.

We were fortunate enough to have MouCo Cheese company donate some of their wonderful cheese. If you haven't tried their cheeses, you really should. They have a wonderful Camembert, ColoRouge (munster-type cheese) and Trufello, flavored with truffle oil and flakes. These rinds are soft and delicious (and unwaxed) - be sure to eat the rind since this is where the flavor is at it's peak.

Beer lovers having a good time:

The band, 18Switchbacks, was awesome. Everyone seemed to enjoy them.

Oh, and there was croquet too....

Big Thanks to Maxine (shown below) and CJ from Haystack Mountain Golfcourse for the beautiful beer garden and for being co-hosts with me.

Buddah Nuvo

Buddah Nuvo tastes as pretty as it looks!

This collaboration beer was created by 14 Colorado Breweries. One of the many great things about the craftbeer scene in Colorado is that the breweries are friendly with each other. I have heard this friendliness is not as common outside of Colorado. The Colorado Beer Man arranged for 15 Colorado Beer Bloggers to write a collaborative beer review - pretty cool idea.

Pliney the Younger at the Falling Rock Taphouse

The Falling Rock Taphouse in Denver received 7 'pins' of the infamous Pliney the Younger. Pliney the Younger is a Triple IPA that Russian River brews only once per year.

I was able to get down to Denver before they opened where I stood in line with a few fellow craft beer lovers.





Beth handed out red tickets to everyone in line - this was a guarantee that we would get at least one glass.












I forgot to take my camera to Denver but the nice guy sitting next to me emailed me the photos he took with his phone. Thanks, Scott.





The Pliney was delicious and hoppy. The Falling Rock also had the Pliney the Elder on tap. I saw one guy that had a glass of each in front of him. That was a good idea that I didn't do.

I was only able to stay for one glass ($8 for a 8oz pour) because I had to get home for an online beer tasting (chocolate stouts) with the Beer Club of NJ. My friend, Scott, stayed for 3 glasses of the Pliney. Lucky Scott!

Fort Collins Brewery Hopping

This past Saturday, I went brewery hopping in Fort Collins.

Started off at Funkwerks Brewery. They were serving 5 different beers. Sampler tray was available for $7.50.

Casper - a light session beer. 5% ABV.

White - a Belgian White. Aroma of orange zest and ginger. 5.5% ABV.

Saison - their flagship beer and my favorite. 6.8% ABV.

Maori King - new imperial saison. 7% ABV.

Belgian Resistance - german munich malt w/german noble hops and their house Belgiam saison yeast. 6.7% ABV.

Hopped on down the road to Odell Brewing
to sample their pilot beers. I adore their pilot beers - they are so much fun and there are always so many good ones to try.

This time I went with the Pilot Tray sampler. 6 pilot beers for $4.

Maize Azul 5.2% ABV - brewed with New Mexico blue corn. The corn was soaked for two hours and then mixed with the barley to form the mash.

Town Pump Pail Ale 5.1% ABV - traditional British style pale ale, dry hopped.

Session Dark Bitter 4% ABV - dark ale that is kettle hopped and then dry hopped.

Odell Red 6.5% ABV - American style red ale but with a variety of American hops added.

Nitro Cutthroat Porter 4.8% ABV - their classic Cutthroat Porter served on Nitro.

Cherry Stout 6% ABV - used a debittered dark malt (Carafa Special II) that adds deep color and aroma without the bitterness. 125lbs of sweet-tart cherries were added.

The Cherry Stout was awesome so I brought home a growler.

Bounced around the corner to New Belgium Brewing where I sampled their Frambozen (Raspberry Brown Ale) and Vrienden Ale (collaboration beer by Allagash and New Belgium).

Then it was time to drive back home. Next week, I am planning on brewery hopping around Colorado Springs.

Beer and Food Pairing Event at the Sun Rose Cafe (Longmont)

Just before Thanksgiving, I hosted a beer/food pairing event at the Sun Rose Cafe in Longmont. We had a great turnout and the food/beer were excellent.




Menu:
Trumer Pils – German Style Pilsner paired with Cream of Carrot Soup with Ginger and Lemon Grass

Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere - Farmhouse Ale paired with a 3 yr Aged Gouda Cheese

Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale Ale – English Style Pale Ale paired with Antipasti



Asher Brewing Green Bullet IPA – All Organic IPA paired with Asian BBQ Duck Slider

Ska Ten Pin Porter – Made from 6 different malts paired with Grilled Flat Bread with Sun Dried Tomato Tapenade and Smoked Chevre

Left Hand Brewing Milk Stout – Sweet Stout served as an Ice Cream Float

Beer Bloggers Beer Drinkin' Roundup

As I mentioned in my previous post, I attended the Beer Bloggers Conference in early November along with about 115 other beer bloggers. Everyone was asked to bring a few bottles from their home state/region to share.

These folks are serious about their beer and man did we have a lot of beer to share. Unfortunately, we only had 2 hours.

Below is the list of 17 beers I managed to sample during the 2 hours of Bottle Night:

Upright Brewery - Four Play

This was definitely one of my favorites of the evening. This is a pinot-barrel aged sour ale with cherries. Delicious!

3Floyds - SheWolf IPA

Schlafly - Biere de Garde

Chatoe Rogue - Creek Ale (brewed with cherries)

Deschutes - The Abyss

Rising Tide - Ishmael Altbier - this was another good one.

Duck Rabbit - Milk Stout

Peach Tree Brewing - Hop Wrangler

New Glarus Unplugged - Old English Porter - this was a sour porter and another one of my favorites.

Troegs Pale Ale

Chimay Grande Reserve 1999

Kona Pipeline Porter w/ 100% kona coffee

Berkshire - Dean's Beans Coffeehouse Porter

Saint Somewhere - Pays du Soleil

New Glarus - Spotted Cow

Sun King Brewing - Osiris

Maine Beer Company - Peeper Ale

Beer Bloggers Conference and Where did November go?

Where has November gone? I can't believe it is nearly December 1st (my birthday) already.

I attended the 1st Annual International Beer Bloggers conference the first weekend of November, then immediately headed out of town to help my father move. When I returned I was working on the final touches for my first beer/food pairing event (next post) at the Sun Rose Cafe, then Thanksgiving and now head cold.

Between the long time lag, a million posts by the other 100+ attendees and my head cold, this blog post will be short.

I enjoyed the entire conference, had a great time, met some great people and learned a lot. I took 144 photos and will post a few here.

After checking in on Friday afternoon, a few of us headed over to Avery Brewing for lunch (liquid or otherwise). The folks at Avery were super nice to us and treated us to a tour of their barrel room along with a few tasters.

The Friday afternoon conference sessions were really good - Julia Hert from the Brewers Association, Jessica Daynor from Draft Magazine and SEO expert, Dustin Woodard. I thought they all did an excellent job and provided a lot of useful tips.

Oskar Blues hosted us for dinner/beers that evening. We were also treated to a brewery tour.

Then, onto Bottle Night back at the hotel. This was a blast! Everyone brought beer from their home state or region to share. Avery Brewing donated a ton of beer! There was enough beer for hundreds of people and we only had two hours.





The 1st beer I tried at Bottle night was my favorite! Upright Brewery's Four Play (Portland,OR) presented by Taplister:



Jennie Chen (Austin, TX) also known as MisoHungry made us homemade cupcakes that were to die for. A big thanks to Jennie.



Here is a photo of Jennie (our chef) and Eli Shayotovich from BeerTapTV



BeerTapTV setup live tweets from BBC10 during Bottle Night. These were in real time and super fun(ny).







Another beer I really enjoyed - presented by the Beer Babe(If I remember correctly):



One of the Saturday morning presentations (Room 214):



Erik and his crew from the Bull & Bush Pub invite us up to their suite for a beer and pizza party. We were offered Abo's Pizza, tons of beer, pretzels with homemade beer mustard and homemade beer ice cream.









Greg Koch, CEO of Stone Brewing, was our afternoon speaker. He brought us bottles of not-yet released Lukcy Basartd Ale for all us try.



Next up was Live Beer blogging - see earlier post.

Then on to dinner and a brewery tour at Boulder Beer Company.





Last photo of the night: Eric Steen from Beer and SciFi and Focus on the Beer enjoying (?) a Coors Light:



After dinner was the 'Mall Crawl' - 5 bars/breweries had agreed to give us all free beer as we 'crawled' along Pearl Street. I only made it out for a short time to the first pub, West End Tavern.

Sunday was another good day of presentations.

That's all I can write today. I highly recommend attending this great conference next year in Portland, OR and/or London, UK.