Recapping the Best of the Best from 2022 WeldWerks Invitational

There are few things better than an unseasonably cool day in the middle of Colorado’s scorching summer. In fact, only one thing better comes to mind: the divine providence of a barrel-aged-centric beer festival like the 2022 WeldWerks Invitational falling that day.

After two years of COVID postponements, a crowd of excited festival-goers stretched around the block eagerly awaiting the opportunity to hit their favorites early. The WeldWerks team was once able to quickly usher folks in within minutes welcoming craft-beer enthusiasts from across the country flocking to Greeley, CO to enjoy a much-needed return to normalcy. It felt more like a family reunion than a line for a beer festival as drinking buddies met up with their out-of-state friends, some for the first time in years.

Once the doors opened, though, it definitely felt like a beer festival.

This article included input from Jaclyn Menendez, Britt Antley, Brian Phipps, Tristan Chan, and photography from Karen Mills.

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2022 WeldWerks Invitational Announces Pour List, And It Is Bonkers

After two years of postponements and rescheduling, WeldWerks Brewing Company’s highly anticipated Invitational beer festival is finally around the corner. And in case the hype wasn’t real enough already, they just released the pour list for the event–and it is downright gratuitous in its glory.

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SweetWater Brewing Celebrates Grand Opening in Fort Collins, Colorado

For a while, the trout was their only clue.

Driving past the former Red Truck Beer Company taproom and distribution center in Fort Collins, Colorado, it was clear that whatever business had once occurred there was now at a full … Read More

You Owe Your Brewers Guild A Drink | Hard Work Behind the Craft Scenes

Chances are, unless you work in a brewery, you’re not particularly aware of your local Brewers Guild. And that’s kind of the point: they’re designed to run in the background, presenting a united voice on behalf of your region or state for all things craft beer. They have conversations with state and federal government on your behalf, so that you can continue buying and selling beer with fair taxes, licensure requirements, and other things you don’t want to have to worry about. There’s one of these nonprofit organizations in all 50 states, with most states having multiple regional guilds too. And every single guild has had its fair share of headaches during the pandemic.

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2021 WeldWerks Invitational to be Postponed Until 2022

Hey, remember a couple of months ago when I confidently, naively announced that the WeldWerks Invitational was definitely happening this October? Well, much like that new Jeopardy host, I wish I could scrub the internet of my past mistakes. But alas, they live on, and I’m sad to tell you that due to rapidly rising COVID cases, the WeldWerks Invitational 2021 has been postponed until 2022.

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New Belgium Brewing | Dominga Mimosa Sour

Sundays were made for mimosas. The effervescent sips that soothe your hangover and help you deal with loud brunch crowds will forever be an end-of-weekend necessity. For those of you who can’t handle an hour-long wait at your local restaurant, though, or prefer to skip the bubbly and go right back to beer, New Belgium Brewing has a new year-round sour wheat ale that checks all your Sunday Brunch boxes: Dominga Mimosa Sour.

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WeldWerks Brewing Announces On-Site Restaurant & Colorado Springs Update

A one-two punch of good news came from Weldwerks Brewing Company today. Their Greeley, Colorado-based taproom is known for a lot of things: the funky artwork, surprise Medianoche tappings, delicious tiny pretzels in a big tub (pre-COVID, anyway), and all … Read More

Knotted Root Brewing Celebrates Second Anniversary On Top Of The World

Nestled in the foothills of Boulder, CO, the tiny town of Nederland is more than 8,000 feet above sea level. The winding road into town is about 16 miles of pure straight up, twisting through the mountains, running parallel to a roaring creek, making you feel closer to the sky than the ground. It’s fitting, then, that Knotted Root Brewing Company has made its home here. At its second-year anniversary party (which occurred this past Fourth of July weekend), it was tough to imagine any other brewery feeling more on top of the world.

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2021 WeldWerks Invitational Announces Brewery Line-Up & Ticket Sale Dates

Nearly two months after announcing the return of the WeldWerks Invitational, WeldWerks Brewing Company has the details we really need: which breweries are going, and when do tickets go on sale?

While national protocols are still far from established, WeldWerks took the past couple months to iron out some of the finer details related to the pandemic in addition to developing a code of conduct for attendees. The latter came in response to Brienne Allan’s recent movement to expose sexism, misogyny, and harassment within the industry, and WeldWerks, which was not named, decided to take the proactive approach to ensure a safe festival-going experience.

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Odell Brewing Co. Celebrates Grand Opening of OBC Wine Project

“Less snobby, more sippy.”

This is the mantra of OBC Wine Project, Odell Brewing Co.’s latest adventure of craft and creativity. Though cans of their wine have already hit distribution across Colorado and several other states, May 5 marked the official opening of their tasting room and patio located directly across from the well-known brewpub in Fort Collins, Colorado. And when we say directly, we mean directly: it takes about a dozen steps from Odell Brewing Co.’s famous patio stage to the front door of the OBC Wine Project. But despite this proximity, upon entering it is immediately clear that a great deal of thoughtful effort went into carving this space its own personality.
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New Belgium’s Torched Earth Ale for Earth Day Is, Literally, Hot Garbage

I’m not sure it’s appropriate to say “Happy Earth Day” anymore. In the face of our rapidly warming planet, the destruction of our natural resources, and the extinction of countless species, it seems more fitting to simply say, “Remember How Much We Blew It?” and reflect fondly on how the Indian cheetah used to exist. In fact, because of this grim state of the world, Earth Day is best celebrated in two ways – taking action, and drinking a beer.

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2021 WeldWerks Invitational Announces Return for In-Person Festival

It’s time to dust off your favorite esoteric brewery t-shirt and find a pair of jeans that still fit: you officially have a beer festival to attend this year.

Since 2018, WeldWerks Brewing has hosted an annual Invitational that quickly … Read More

WeldWerks Brewing Celebrates Six Years The Willy Wonka Way

If you are like me–obsessed with pop culture and generationally saddled somewhere between an X’er and a Millennial–then you likely grew up mesmerized by Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory. The dazzling candy forest, the mind-blowing snozzberry wallpaper, the questionable lifestyle of Grandpa Joe: it’s all forever cemented in my memory as a true bastion of childhood wonder. This Friday, March 26, 2021, WeldWerks Brewing Co. is bottling some of that magic for us–or should I say, canning it.

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Strong BA Series | Epic Brewing Sextuple Barrel Big Bad Baptist Imperial Stout

Some people call this magical time of year the holiday season. People who read this website probably know it more as Stout Season. But at Epic Brewing, it’s Baptist Season. And this year, they went big.

Epic Brewing, originating in Utah, is famous for being the state’s first brewery since prohibition to solely brew beer with a “high” alcohol content. Now, in Utah, that means something different than you’re probably thinking: Back in 2009 when Epic was founded, the Beehive State considered any beer above 4.0% ABV to be a “strong brew” and restricted those sales to state-run liquor stores (they’ve now increased that maximum up to 5.0%, those daredevils). But Epic Brewing didn’t just make strong beer by Utah standards; like most kids with strict parents, they rebelled and started making strong beer. Thus, in 2011, their Big Bad Baptist series was born: A Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout with coffee that was such a hit, the brewery turned it into an annual tradition and introduces new variants each year during Baptist Season.

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Faces in Beer | Purpose Brewing & Cellars

Welcome back to Faces in Beer! In our new series, we take film photographs of brewers and develop the film in the beer they brewed.

In our first round, we featured Weldwerks Brewing Company, where we developed the brew team’s portraits in a variety of beer–including their famous Medianoche Stout. The results were beautiful, though we did hear from a few of you decrying our use of Medianoche for any purpose other than consumption. (We hear you–it hurt us too, but art is pain.) You can check those photos out here.

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Faces in Beer | WeldWerks Brewing Co.

Welcome to Faces in Beer, one of PorchDrinking’s most ambitious projects ever.

Normally when a new writer joins our team, they go through a process where they cut their teeth on some easy first assignments–a beer showcase, or maybe an Ultimate 6er. Not Erik Stabile. Our newest writer pitched his onboarding project without hesitation: “I want to take film photographs of brewers and develop the film in the beer they brewed.”

Intrigued? So were we. Stabile explained he had been experimenting with developing photos in unconventional mediums and was ready to try craft brews. The pH of every beer is slightly different, and therefore each photo would theoretically reflect the unique makeup of that beer. It was going to be a temperamental process and potentially a giant failure, so naturally we were totally on board.

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Dear Abbey | Oktoberfest Edition

Introducing our new beer advice column, Dear Abbey. This is a chance for readers to send in questions about all things craft beer: brewery etiquette, bottle share protocol, style differences, you name it. No matter the topic, Abbey guarantees that she will always be right and will always be buzzed.

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WeldWerks Brewing Company | Pilsner UrqWeld

The progression of becoming a true craft beer snob is a subtle one but the path is marked by some key moments. You generally begin dabbling in IPAs, starting with a gateway local pale ale into becoming an expert on all things dank and/or hazy. Then you move onto Stouts—a bigger flavor profile, a bigger ABV and a bigger blow to your wallet. Most craft beer nerds will live in this Stout phase for a long time, perhaps expanding into Barley wines, maybe diverting over to Sours, but generally content to chase the whales and tip the scales between what is beer and what is actually just brownie batter. The mark of a true snob, though, is when you loop back around into the lightest and most overlooked styles that the industry has to offer: Pilsners.

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New Belgium Brewing Company | Voodoo Ranger 1985 IPA

By any measure, 1985 was a great year. Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” was blasting on every boombox, Back To The Future was blowing everyone’s minds in theaters, and yours truly was being born in the middle of Hurricane Gloria at a small hospital in Red Bank, New Jersey. Basically, the only cool thing that didn’t exist in 1985 was Hazy IPAs. New Belgium Brewing Company decided to pull a classic Marty McFly and rewrite history with their latest summer offering: Voodoo Ranger 1985 IPA.

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Dialed in with WeldWerks | Neil Fisher on Flights, Fan Questions and the Worst Beer Weldwerks Ever Made

Jake Goodman, the marketing and sales director at WeldWerks Brewing, was in the middle of answering a question about Juicy Bits when a loud thump thump thump reverberated through his Zoom audio. He paused and looked off-screen. “Hey, buddy, Daddy’s talking to his friends—can you please hold off on the drums until I’m done?” he asked his son. The camera cut back to a laughing Neil Fisher, the head brewer and co-founder of WeldWerks. A majestic pink dollhouse towered behind Neil; his children’s playroom had been repurposed into a makeshift interview corner. Welcome to “Dialed in with WeldWerks”.

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