Brewery Tours
It’s only taken a month but finally an article about beer.
Nectar of the Gods!
This past Saturday I, along with Keithage and my little sis, took a trip to Ft. Collins, Colorado, with one purpose in mind, to tour the breweries of the town. It’s very possible there are many more breweries than the ones we planned on visiting, but we were only intending to tour these four: New Belgium, Odell Brewing Company, Ft. Collins Brewery, and Anheuser-Busch.
At least that was the plan.
We arrived at New Belgium at 10 o’clock in the morning, to ensure that we got a spot on the 11 o’clock tour, and we did. So with our spot on the tour set and an hour to kill we took advantage of New Belgium’s free tasters. For those of you unfamiliar with this, allow me to explain. Visit New Belgium anytime during normal operating hours and you can get a three-ounce sample of four of their beers. It’s a fantastic way to start your day of drinking.
My four samples consisted of the following brews: Trippel, Lips of Faith- Jessica’s Porter, 1554, and Mighty Arrow. Trippel is my favorite New Belgium brew. It’s a Belgium style ale, so it taste like a good European beer, (and I don’t mean Heineken.)
The Lips of Faith is a constantly changing brew. Every few months one employee gets the chance to make a beer. They can use any ingredients they want to change the flavor. This is beer can only be found at the brewery. Jessica was responsible for the Lips of Faith this time. She made a porter that tasted like most porters; there was a very close resemblance to the taste of coffee from this brew. Gross.
1554 is a dark ale, or as they describe it, an “enlightened black ale.” This beer is not for everybody. If your idea of a good beer involves the word light or lite you will be very upset with a single sip of this black beast.
The last beer I picked is a recent addition to the New Belgium stable. It’s Called Mighty Arrow, it’s a pale ale. Those two words, pale ale, got me worried. Pale ales are generally not one of my favorite beer choices, but this was surprisingly tasty. One could say that Mighty Arrow was mighty tasty.
I also got to finish the ones my sister didn’t like. These were another Mighty Arrow and Mothership Wit (or as she described them, “Eww.” And “Also eww.”)
Mothership Wit is an organic wheat beer. It’s light and there is a slight fruit taste, it’s also a bit tart. I wouldn’t recommend a full 12 ounces of it, but 3-6 is ok.
With our beers done it was time to tour the brewery. When our tour guide asked where I was from I told him Golden. He jokingly let me know there are a couple of breweries in Golden. I played dumb, and played along as if I didn’t know. Apparently I did this so well that the kid next to me felt the need to inform me that Coors is in fact in Golden.
I won’t give you a play by play of the rest of the tour, but here are the points I found really interesting. Jeff Lebesch started brewing beer in his basement in 1989. His first two beers were Abbey and Fat Tire. Almost twenty years later, New Belgium has become the 9th largest brewery in the U.S. They were named the top company to work for by Outside Magazine, and with good cause. After one year of employment you are given partial ownership, and a bike. Every year you receive more ownership. Here’s the most awesome part, after five years, Jeff and Kim, the founders, take you on an all expense paid trip to tour the breweries in Belgium. After five years with the company I’m with all I got was a fifty-dollar gift card to Best Buy.
For those of you actually familiar with Fat Tire you know that it can be purchased in bottle and keg form. But starting this summer, you will be able to buy cans of Fat Tire. The only benefit I can see from this is that you can bring it tailgating.
I hope they come in tall boys
I highly recommend taking this tour, or at least visiting New Belgium Brewery and enjoying their free tasters.
That was the only part of the original plan that we stuck to.
The Avalanche and Red Wings were playing game two in the second round of the playoffs and it was scheduled for 1P.M., which means that we had one hour until game time. With three breweries still on our list, questions were asked and choices were made.
The first question, would we have time to go to another brewery and Big City Burrito before the puck was dropped? We attempted to find out. We hit Odells’ brewery, it was helpful that it’s only a two-minute drive from New Belgium.
For obvious reasons we didn’t take their tour. We did do their tasters though. They have two more beers on their tasters than New Belgium, but it cost $4. I personally find their beer to not be as delicious as New Belgium’s, not that they don’t have some fine beers.
I wanted to save those good ones for last, so I started with the IPA, which stands for India Pale Ale, if you didn’t know. I find IPAs to taste worse than just a pale ale. And this one didn’t change that thought. Then I drank the Cutthroat Porter. A classic porter, thus classically gross. After these two assaults on the pallet, I went to one that is a little better, The 5 Barrel Pale Ale. I’ve had this one before. Sometime it taste good to me, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a very hop heavy beer. Today I enjoyed somewhat. I may have been clouded by the other more flavorsome beers I had already enjoyed this morning.
The last three beers I had at Odells’ were by far the best of their stable. First there was Levity Amber Ale. Amber ales are by far my favorite kinds of ales, and this one didn’t disappoint. Then there was their wheat beer, Easy Street. Wheat beers are like the light beers of the microbrews, except for Sam Adams Light, that’s the light beer of the Sam Adams microbrew. Finally I ended the visit to this brewery with their flagship brew, 90 Shilling. I would describe this tasty morsel as a darker amber ale. It takes the deliciousness of an amber, but adds the boldness of a stout. Mm mmm bitch!
With a stomach now filled with beer, and not much else, we headed towards the one place that makes a trip to Fort Collins complete, Big City Burrito. I pity those of you who have not indulged in a potato burrito from Big City.
We got our burritos and proceeded to meet some friends and watch hockey. They were at a dinning establishment known as C.B. and Potts. Perfect, they brew their own beer so we could continue our task of tasting Ft. Collins’ beers. The only problem I could see was bringing in outside food.
I took a direct approach in squashing that problem. After ordering our first beers, I simply asked our waitress if it was ok for us to eat our burritos in there. With a confused look on her first she told me that she has never been asked that before. She said it was ok and even brought us plates. However, while she was a tremendous waitress to our friends who ordered food, we, for the better part of our stay, were ignored.
The beers I tried here I don’t really remember. I was preoccupied by hockey. I believe I had the Blonde, Buttface, and Big Red. Nothing really stood out about them. They weren’t particularly gross, just kind of meh.
By the time the game ended, it was 4:30. We had two other breweries on our list, and they both closed at 5:30, and were not close enough to hit both. So we did what any reasonable drinker would do, decided not to go to Anheuser-Busch. That decision took us to Fort Collins Brewery. In hindsight, that may not have been the best choice.
Fort Collins Brewery also charged us $4 for their taster of six beers. All of which were awful. I’m getting queasy just thinking about them. If you want more information on these gross beers check out their website. I will say this, Z Lager taste the way your clothes smell after camping.
We quickly soldiered through these beers and ended the trip at Taco Bell.
A quick recap:
*New Belgium – Great
*Odells – Good
*C.B. and Potts – Meh
*Ft. Collins Brewery – Gross
Overall it was a great way to spend a Saturday, a less hokey way to be a tourist in my own state, and a more creative way to get drunk. If you ever have the opportunity, tour a brewery.
End of the bar, that’s just where I’ll be.
30 Apr 2008 Lee S. Hart