As I mentioned in my ‘Denver Part 1: Food’ post, my brother and I were in Denver, Colorado to experience the beer. The beer in Colorado is insanely good. I’m not sure if it was the altitude, or if it was just the excitement of hanging with my brother and not having a single worry that made every beer I had taste so damn good, but it just seemed that every beer I had was absolutely perfect. From the moment each gulp hit my tongue and rolled around my pallet, through the swallow and finish, the exhalation, and lingering presence in my mouth and nose, it was as if I was tasting beer for the first time. I know that probably sounds ridiculous to say, but I just have not had an experience like the one I had in colorado, where everything I ordered was just perfect to style, and the descriptions matched what I was able to detect.
Day one of the Beer journey took us up north to Fort Collins where my brother had locked us in for an 11:30am tour of the New Belgium Brewery. I had heard great things about this tour, and have enjoyed many New Belgium beers over the years, so I was pumped!
We rounded the bend, and sure enough – look at this massive brewery!
Ahh! so excited!
We got there with plenty of time to spare, and there was actually a pretty good crowd forming for a Friday early morning. Either many other people had the same idea as us, or that’s just how people roll in Denver. We milled around, just taking in the scenery, I wish I took more pictures of the campus of this place, because it looked awesome. here’s a nice desktop wallpaper – lol
As 11am neared (opening time) an employee stuck her head out the door and asked ‘Are you all here for the limited release of the Geisha?’ Everyone resounded with nodding heads and yeses. My brother and I looked at each other and shrugged. ‘There’s bottles for sale at each tasting bar, and there’s tastings available in the back tasting room!’ Well that’s cool, not only are we going to get a tour, but we’re going to get to sample and possibly buy a limited edition bottle of beer!
As the doors opened, people scrambled to the tasting rooms to buy bottles and leave, as well as to the back tasting room to sample the ‘Geisha’ which you can learn about here: (Link click here). We went to the back tasting room and gave it a shot!
The Geisha was a perfectly rounded sour ale, that was apparently rested on coffee beans. You could smell it, you could taste it, and it was super good. So unfortunately, I had to buy a bottle. A little more expensive than I would have cared for – but I can’t wait to bust this baby out when I’m with some people I care about.
After walking it to the car – my brother and I prepared for the tour:
Our tour guide was super knowledgable – as he should have been – and was delighted to tell us about the history of New Belgium and its founders. What’s cool is that you get to learn about how the bicycle ended up being such a large part of the company’s identity, and the story behind the company’s flagship beer – Fat Tire. Turns out the founder spent a ton of time biking around Belgium, and no one over there had seen a mountain bike before – and they kept referring to him as the guy with the ‘fat tire’ bike. It’s great to hear the stories that inspire people.
We got to see their first system:
Then it was upstairs – to the current system!
No joke!
We got to pour our own beers, and really tie one on, it was great.
The top side looks a lot less confusing than underneath:
But our minds had yet to be blown, because our next stop was the souring room –
I had never seen barrels like these! unbelievable! Over 60 of them!
And of course, we got to sample them!
Then we went outside and walked over to the bottling facility-
At this point in the game, we got the freshest bottle of Fat Tire I’ve ever had, and it was great – but the bottling line was insaaaane!
How many bottles a day? good question!
yeah – almost half a million.
It was about this point in the tour we learned that everyone who works for New Belgium gets a custom New Belgium BIKE after working there for a year, and that it’s an employee owned brewery – which really made me respect and admire the brewery even more.
That concluded the tour, and we had another beer before leaving.
I would like to say that was it for beer tasting that day, but contrary to what my doctor recommends, we kept going.
Next stop Odell’s! We didn’t get a tour of this place, but we had some great discussion and some of the best beer I’ve ever had.
Odell was really the moment that I realized that Colorado’s beer scene is lightyears ahead of other places I’ve had beer. I know that sounds like a dig on my local breweries, but seriously I’ve never had so many occasions where I took a sip of a beer and said ‘holy shit, that is incredible’. I sipped over 10 different beers at Odell, and each one was perfect. As I said in the beginning of this post – the whole experience of tasting these beers was almost mesmerizing. I could not say anything about how the beer that I tried could be improved. This is going to be the same blanket statement that will apply to my next post, which will be Denver Part 3: Beer again!