Related Items
Metromix tours through beer city and stops at three alcoholic hotspots
Denver Beer Fest is such a beautiful week. Seriously, who can be grouchy when there are beer events going on every night/day of the week leading up to the Great American Beer Festival? Our friends from Visit Denver invited us and 64 other media members on a tour to two of Denver’s well-known breweries…and one whiskey joint.
Media from all over the country got in on this hoppy hoppin’ event. And we’re not talking about the boring journalist types, heck no. We’re talking about people who write and specialize in beer journalism. Yes, beer journalism. One guy we met even writes for a beer magazine in London and another bunch was from Beer Talk Radio.
Our first stop was where the magic happens—Breckenridge Brewery. We sampled their popular Avalanche Ale, Vanilla Porter and toured through giant fermenters, cases upon cases of beer and listened to them rave about their amazing beers. And trust us, the folks at Breckenridge have reason to rave. They handcraft almost 30,000 barrels of delicious beer each year and distribute them across Colorado and 25 other states!
After leaving with a can of Avalanche in tow to drink on the bus to the next stop, everyone seemed to get happier and happier. Our tour guide for the trip was Marty Jones, PR extraordinaire from the Wynkoop Brewing Company. He brought his guitar on the tour bus and sang beer songs to get us in the drinking mood. Our fave song had the brilliant lyrics of, “…combine my GPA with my BAC and the numbers will show, I’m maintaining a 2.0…”
The second stop was at Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey! Yes, whiskey counts during Denver Beer Fest. Jake from Stranahan's gave us a tour of the fermenters and took us to the production brew house, still house and rack house. And boy did the rack house give off the odor of last night’s regrets from a frat party. Whiskey is strong in one bottle, imagine the powerful overtaking when you’re standing in a room with dozens of barrels.
After drinking a shot of whiskey, we were on to our last and final stop of the tour: Wynkoop Brewing Company. During our visit, the Rare Beer Tasting was going on and Pint’s for Prostates was their making money and raising awareness about prostate cancer. Wynkoop never ceases to amaze us and the beer we sampled was absolutely fabulous.
Everything was great until we went outside to catch the bus back to where we departed…only to find the tour was over. Which left us on a sobering nine block trek back to our trusty Metromix Civic. –Erica Boniface, Metromix
