My wife and I are planning on going to Denver late next week for a Beercation. We’ll be driving to Minneapolis and flying from there to Denver. We plan on spending time in Denver, Ft.Collins, Boulder and Longmont. Our primary reason for the trip is to visit/tour breweries(I’ve got the BEST wife!!). We plan on hitting the usual suspects(New Belgium, Odell, Oskar Blues). Those are the popular ones we have heard of and tried while travelling to Duluth and Minneapolis. We’d like some insight on any other breweries in those areas that we may not have heard of, or other cool/interesting things to see and do. We are hoping to sample some interesting new beers and see some breweries we haven’t heard of. We will be in the area for 7 days, with a night or two in each town. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Boulder: Avery Brewing, Boulder Beer and Avery Brewing
Longmont: Left Hand Brewing
Firestone (near Longmont straight east): Echo Brewing - Havent been here but have heard good things.
Ft. Collins: Funkwerks and Budweiser :shock:
Fort Collins and Longmont are both neat little towns. If your heading toward the mountains stop in Idaho Springs and check out Tommy Knockers brewery and pub. It’s right off 90. Great town. Good beer and food to.
As far as Denver itself goes, DO. NOT. MISS. Euclid Hall in Lodo. Seriously amazing food, atmosphere, and beer.
+1 to Great Divide, great place to drink. I believe all of their beers are either $4 or $5/pint and there’s usually a food truck there. They do close early though (around 10), so day drinking is a good pastime. Falling Rock tap house is a landmark, and they have hundreds of beers on tap, so I would check the box there. We also really liked Cheeky Monk, order up some carbonnades flammandes with a pint of Pliny or a BPA.
My wife went to school with the guys from Denver Beer Company. Very cool nano-graduating-to-a-micro (I believe they just upgraded to a 10bbl system). GREAT place to hang out across the river in Denver. We spent an awesome afternoon there. They have great beers and are great guys.
For the geek in you, there’s a great bar in Denver called the 1Up, a craft beer bar with vintage arcade games!
Have a great trip and enjoy the sunshine (and maybe a dispensary or two…just mix it with some tobacco, you’ll be fine)!
I’ll second Great Divide. You can’t leave without trying some Yeti. We’re going down to Denver in April for an Avalanche game and GD is the one place I want to go while we’re there.
in Denver, check out a nano. a few good ones: black shirt, de steeg, and wit’s end. you’ll have every chance to chat up the brewers in their tired, proud glory (all of whom are super friendly), check out the equipment, and make some local drinking buddies.
A place to start would be to go to beer drinkers guide to Colorado.com and get a map so you can see what’s near other breweries and then decide what to hit.
+1 on the beer drinkers guide to Colorado. The map is really helpful. Also, the Denver Post has a guide to general Denver beer culture called the Denver Beer Guide. It’s an app available in the app store. I have the iPad version, don’t know if there is an Android version too.
