a HOT day at the Colorado Brewers Festival

Yesterday, Jeff and I went with some friends to the Colorado Brewers Festival in Fort Collins, CO.  It was an outdoor festival and it was a balmy 100+ degrees outside, awesome. 

Jeff remembered to bring the tickets and a printout of a list of the breweries and beers that would be served at the festival, but forgot his wallet.  Doh.  We channeled our inner 19-year-old selves and through trickery and deceit were able to get Jeff in!  Jeff was extra jovial and excited to make it past the ID checkpoint and couldn’t wait to fill up his mini mug with glorious beer.

We paid $20 for ten tickets; each ticket got you a 4 oz pour of beer into the mini mug.  I felt like a strong giant with the mini mug and for some reason the beer tasted extra delicious out of something so wonderfully miniature.

We always “forgot” to give our ticket to the pourers and ended up with double the amount of pours than we were allotted (we WIN at life).  And the extra tickets were then used for some pizza, brats, and waffles to keep us going strong all day.  The Waffle Lab waffles were outstanding, I went there twice but could have gone another 20 times.  I love waffles.

We tried and enjoyed the following beers:

• Avery White Rascal
• Backcountry Brewery Telemark IPA
• Boulder Beer Kinda Blue Wheat
• Breckenridge Agave Wheat
• Breckenridge Vanilla Porter
• CB & Potts Big Horn Hefeweizen
• Coopersmith’s #13 Apricot Ale
• Crabtree Ginger Bee Ale
• Funkwerks Tropic King
• New Belgium Biere de Mars
• Odell St. Lupulin
• River North River North White
• Ska Brewing Modus Hoerandi
• Ska Brewing Steel Toe Stout
• Fort Collins Weizenheimer Wheat IPA
• And I’m sure some others that we forgot about…….

There were only a few I remember not liking (the CB & Potts Hefe tasted too banana-y), but for the most part all breweries had great options.  Colorado beer is some of the best in the country, I even dare to say better than the Pacific Northwest (sorry). 

It was a great day with great company, despite the horrible heat.  I can’t wait for the Great American Brewfest in the fall!