Beers from PVD to LGA to DEN
Recapping Finback's Whale Watching and a handy Denver brewery guide
It’s 9pm Eastern Time on Wednesday night and I’m just starting my newsletter this week. It’s been busy, with a trip to Rhode Island for Finback’s Whale Watching festival on Saturday and a quick turnaround to head to Denver for Memorial Day Weekend. So I’m writing this from the patio of Bruz Off Fax in Denver, a satellite taproom of Bruz Beers while sipping a spelt saison.
Meanwhile, I struggled with what to write this week, or to write at all, given this week’s news. It sucks to feel utterly powerless to do anything, even as predictable as the news was. Even worse, those sentences could be used to describe the news during several weeks already this year. I don’t want to be here to drag you down, so I want this newsletter to be an escape from all the bad news as much as it can be — and I acknowledge that’s coming from a place of privilege as a childless white male.
Let’s drink some beer and be kind to each other.
So let’s talk Whale Watching first. It was a blast. The venue was bare-bones but worked: a parking lot on the banks of the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, with views of the river, some shady tents, a cluster of tasty food trucks, and a DJ booth by Bierwax’s own Chris Maestro. It was a toasty 90°F day, but there was plenty of water on ice, so no one seemed particularly overserved or under-hydrated. Even with a thousand people, it didn’t seem that crowded, and with an early afternoon start time, everyone was relatively well-behaved.
Let’s talk beer, though: while I had visited most of the breweries pouring, I was excited to try new-to-me stuff from California outfits Kings and Horus, Buffalo-based Froth, and Fast Fashion, the brewing offshoot of my favorite pizza spot in Seattle. I was also excited about the Rhode Island representation since I grew up in the Ocean State, and Proclamation, Long Live Beerworks, and Buttonwoods didn’t disappoint me nor the other visiting New Yorkers who were less familiar with them. My favorite beer of the fest was Tilted Barn’s Katahdin Fields No. 2, a brett-spiked table beer aged on stainless for a year that was bright and fruity and effervescent — just what I wanted on a warm, sunny day. It was so good that I drank it again when I visited the brewery a day later.
This was a festival that was more than two years in the making, thanks to Covid, and it was well-worth the trip to finally see it in action. Cheers to the folks at Finback for bringing the heat to a Rhode Island beer festival — both figuratively and literally.
A Brief Denver Brewery Guide
Since I’m sitting here at a brewery taproom in Denver, I should mention that it is, by far, the most asked-about city by friends and readers who reach out to me for brewery recommendations. Denver proper boasts over seventy-five breweries, and with a general slowdown in brewery openings since 2020 here, I’ve been able to play catch-up on my last couple trips here to the point where I can say I’ve visited nearly every brewery in town. Ask a thousand times and you will receive: here is an outsider’s guide to Denver breweries in the form of some of my situational favorites in town.
The New Kid on the Block: Cohesion Brewing
At the mention of a trip to Denver, everyone into beer who’s been here or even talked to someone who’s been to Denver recently has asked me if I’ve been to Cohesion yet. My answer: yes, three times. Probably four times by the time some of you open this newsletter. The Czech-obsessed brewery exclusively makes styles you’d be far more likely to expect in Prague than Denver, with Czech names to boot (don’t worry, there’s a pronunciation guide). This place is the new darling of the Denver beer scene and the beer and taproom aesthetic are both top-notch.
The Charming Neighborhood Brewery: Novel Strand Brewing Company
Back in 2018, when losing your sense of taste and smell wasn’t an automatic trip into quarantine, I took my congested ass here with a friend just a week after they opened. “Holy shit,” he told me, “this beer is incredible.” I never felt bigger FOMO in my life, but I’ve been back several times since to actually taste their delicious beers. Denver has a lot of small breweries on quiet street corners, but Novel Strand is the best combination of neighborhood local and brewing all-star.
The Gold Standard Lager Brewery: Bierstadt Lagerhaus
Attendees to the New York City Brewers Guild Opening Bash back in February were lucky enough to get to drink this German-inspired brewery’s iconic Slow Pour Pils. Or at least some of them were — it was the first beer to kick at the festival. No worries, there’s plenty at this booming taproom that serves up the Pils among other German styles and German food. If you’re crawling through the brewery-filled River North neighborhood of Denver and not stopping here, you’re doing something very wrong.
The Beacon in a Sea of Breweries: Ratio Beerworks
From Ratio, you could walk to about ten other breweries in less than ten minutes. Yet I’ve been to Ratio on every single trip to the River North neighborhood since they opened in 2015. Sometimes, they’re my first stop off the plane. I’ve even done work and taken conference calls from here, on account of their noon opening time every day of the week. When I’m sipping a beer off-camera on a Zoom call here, it’s usually the Dear You French Saison or Hold Steady Scotch Ale. Their King of Carrot Flowers, a carrot and elderflower saison, just came back out and I’m looking forward to drinking it on this trip.
The Hazebro Darling: Cerebral Brewing
Remember earlier this month when I said my Brewery Visit of the Week was “doing the thing?” Cerebral is doing the thing, too. Their IPAs lean hazy, their sours lean fruited, and their stouts lean strong and barrel-aged. But they’ve really branched out more recently, and today you’ll find an English Bitter, Japanese Rice Lager, Belgian Pale, and Schwarzbier on tap in their taproom, and they do them all very well. Come to Cerebral for the hazies, but stay for everything else.
The One With The Casks: Hogshead Brewery
If the northwest side of Denver was its own city, you could easily make the argument that Hogshead would be one of best breweries in that city. But fewer beer tourists are venturing out to this part of town without a good excuse. Hogshead is your good excuse. They’re a pioneer of English-style beer at a time and in a place where that is unsexy. Seven cask engines are serving styles like ESB, Ordinary Bitter, English Mild, and London Porter. Get outside of your beer comfort zone and get here.
Honorable Mentions: Our Mutual Friend for the chill vibes in an unchill neighborhood, Bull and Bush for the history and the stellar cellar, Denver Beer Co. for the energy and Graham Cracker Porter, and Station 26 for their firepole and proximity to the airport.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,688
Total breweries visited in 2022: 159
Total active breweries visited in Denver, Colorado: 75
Social Post of the Week
Long Read of the Week
At Pellicle, Ariana DiValentino profiles New York City-based Dyke Beer, the contract outfit that’s the brainchild of Sarah Hallonquist and Loretta Andro Chung. Take a read to learn their origin story, who they’re partnering with, and how they evolved from carving out a space for queer women to making beer that raises their visibility.
One More Thing
Hope you all have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day Weekend. Thanks for reading, and I’ll try harder next week!
Cheers,
Chris
Oh hey, thanks for the shoutout!! Enjoy the long weekend 🍻