Denver Beer Co.

I finally made it down to Denver Beer Company. Cool neighborhood (Lo Hi area) and great atmosphere. It's pretty close to my work so I decided to walk down last Friday and grab a couple of growlers for the team (work) before we all took off for the weekend. I had heard great things about the place. I love breweries where the brewing happens right in front of your face as you quaff a freshy. Carter's in Billings, Montana comes to mind. And Denver Beer Co. is like that.

As I write this their menu has changed. They had about 6 brews on tap so I went for the tasters since I had never even looked at one of their beers. I started out with the Hop To It Pale Ale which reminded me of a West Coast style pale. More malty than hoppy with that citrus hit you get from west coast hops. Honestly I don't what they use. Nonetheless quaffable. A bit bitter and dry. To be honest not a ton going on. But not bad either.

Next I had the Rauchbier which was a stout that smelled and tasted of black licorice and coffee. This one I liked as it was big and fairly complex. Hints of un-sweetened chocolate and a bit sweet. Kinda like burnt caramel. Also some cereal in there. It got better as I drank it.

Cartman's Ginger Saison I had a bit of trouble with in terms of deciding whether I liked it enough to blog about. At first I didn't think too much of it. But as I sat back and concentrated on the lemony flavors and subtle sourness I started to warm up to it. It's only slightly gingery and has more lemon if anything. A tad bit of funk which is usually present in any Saison or brett beer. It hangs in your mouth for quite a while too which is pretty impressive for a lighter beer. The thing I didn't like was the slight taste of sulfur which frankly almost made me not like the beer at all. For some reason I was able to look past it. Probably because it was 95 degrees out which made it refreshing.

The Rye It So Hot was pretty typical of a rye. Dry, biscuity, and that presence of rye. Which is nice to taste considering some ryes don't even have that come through. I got nice flavors of graham cracker. It was a bit hoppy which added some bitterness. I did like this beer.

So those were the beers I did think were good enough to share. My rule is I don't blog about beers I don't like. Why bother. I have no intentions of lambasting any brewery for any reason whatsoever. If they suck I just won't write about. My goal is to tell about beers that I find worth seeking out on the Front Range.

cheers

D