by Marissa

I recently visited Colorado over Memorial Day weekend and tried to visit a few breweries while I was there. The first stop was CooperSmith’s Pub & Brewery in Fort Collins. They are located in an area similar to the Haymarket but three times the people. Kelvin and I tried a sampler of their beers. My favorite was the Horsetooth Stout and Kelvin enjoyed their Chili beer & IPA. We then walked over to the Town Pump and the bartender just happened to be from Lincoln and used to work at Lazlo’s.

The next day we had a scheduled tour at New Belgium at 11 am. I highly recommend scheduling a tour. It was already crowded when we got there and it was even more crowded when we left. The employees have a lot of fun and the tour guide was a hoot. We were able to sample 7 beers and were given tokens for 2 free beers afterwards. They have a tornado slide from the second floor to the first floor and we were able to slide down. Talk about small world, we met a guy from Wayne, NE while we were there. The tour lasts 90 minutes and you can hang out as long as you want afterwards.

We then headed to Longmont for a tour of Left Hand Brewery. This tour doesn’t offer free beer but is very informative. We got to wear safety goggles and for those that didn’t have closed toed shoes had to wear galoshes.

Our final brewery for the day was to visit Tommyknocker’s in Idaho Springs. The elevation was above 7,000 feet and we were feeling light-headed, a sign of altitude sickness. We stayed long enough to eat and sample a beer.

The next day we headed to Golden to visit the world’s largest single site brewery, Coors. They offer a 35 minute self-guided tour. Although it was interesting to see how a large brewery processes it’s beer this was one of the worst tours. We had an audiophone and pushed a number to go with each location. From the time we left the parking lot to when we were on our way it took 2 hours. At the end of the tour you get 3 free samples and during the tour you get to try Coors or Coors Light right off the line. It definitely tastes better when it’s fresh. From there we visited the second largest brewery in Golden, Golden City Brewery which was located in a house with the yard being a beer garden. It was my favorite brewery. It was very family and dog friendly. You could walk up to the window from the outside and order a beer.   My favorite beer was Mad Molly’s Brown Ale.

Our third brewery visit for the day was San Luis Valley Brewing in Alamosa. This is located close to the Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado. My favorite there was the IPA, what a surprise.

The next day we visited Trinity Brewery in Colorado Springs. They are vegan & vegetarian friendly. The selection of other beers on tap was also impressive. The last brewery we visited was Phantom Canyon Brewing Company. The bartender actually spent 3 weeks in Omaha training the Upstream staff when it opened. The owners of Wynkoop used to own Upstream & Phantom Canyon. We purchased a growler of Continuum which 25% of the sales goes to save the Julie Penrose Fountain.

Although it might sound like I saw a lot of breweries I haven’t even hit the tip of the iceberg.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags: travel

• Digg
• Stumble it!
• Reddit

• Nebraska Brewing Releasing New Big Beer
• Episode 160 – Two Brothers Make Up A Style
• Episode 159 – A Good Spiced Beer