Hayes’ Public House | Where Irish Hospitality Meets Minnesota Nice

Located in the heart of Central Minnesota — a state known for its fierce Scandinavian pride — is a small Irish pub that almost seems out of place.

Hayes’ Public House provides the most authentic Irish experience some Minnesotans may ever have. And that’s the point. Owner and Head Brewer Pugs Hayes and his wife spent two months touring Ireland, absorbing as much of its culture as they could. With the help of friends and family, they recreated what they saw, heard, felt and tasted in a small brewery that has become the hub of Buffalo, MN.

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Flix Brewhouse | America’s Cinema Brewery is Expanding

Flix Brewhouse opened in Round Rock, Texas in 2011 with the unique concept of combining a state-of-the-art movie theater with a microbrewery. Today they operate four locations around the country with plans to more than double that over the next year. I caught up with Greg Johnson, Director of Sales and Marketing for Flix, to learn more about this ambitious expansion. Read More

Colorado’s Primitive Beer to Serve Méthode Traditionnelle Beer in a Box

Built upon the wings of innovation, Colorado’s craft beer scene has already gained a reputation as trail blazers and pace setters for the rest of the industry. But when Longmont, CO’s Primitive Beer opens this Saturday, it’ll distinguish itself with a number of different milestones from day one.

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The Grateful Gnome Sandwich Shoppe & Brewery is Finally Open

One of Denver’s most anticipated brewery openings in 2018 has also had to endure the indelible distinction of having undergone one of Denver’s most maligned opening processes to date. Despite multiple failed general contractors, innumerable licensing delays and a scaffolding that tore through its ceiling, The Grateful Gnome Sandwich Shoppe and Brewery is finally open.

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With More Space, Off Color Brewing Expands on its Uniqueness

So, there I was, standing outside on a cold March night in Chicago watching Off Color’s social media manager Ben Ustick and co-founder Dave Bleitner (lovingly called “The Other Guy”) methodically put together the fence that would block off their soon-to-be-open patio space. There was a palpable excitement shared between Ben and Dave as they hammered each 2×4 into place. The patio meant something more than just providing extra seating on a swanky summer day. It was validation that Off Color’s grand experiment had paid off.

The new taproom space, dubbed the Mousetrap, has been a smashing success as it has provided Dave and the other Co-Founder Jon Laffler (the one you usually see in the papers) with more room to share their craft beer genius with hordes of willing Chicagoans. While 2017 was an exciting year for Off Color Brewing, with more momentum and new experiments in the hopper, 2018 is shaping up to be even better. Read More

Amalgam Brewing Finds Permanent Home in Denver After Powder Keg Closure

Philip Joyce and Eric Schmidt, co-founders of Amalgam Brewing, have never been ones to follow convention. In its first year of existence, Amalgam immediately established itself as a formidable contender in Colorado’s bountiful landscape of elite level barrel-aged blended sour producers, all without a physical taproom, its own production facility, or its own retail space, until now.

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Brewery Showcase | McClellan’s Brewing Company

Fort Collins is what some would consider the genesis of craft beer. Names like Odell, New Belgium, 90 Schilling and Fat Tire are synonymous with the craft beer movement and the renaissance of delicious drinks that have flooded the United States in recent years. The volume of newcomers to the brewing scene increases while the available real estate decreases, meaning it can be hard to set your new entry into the game apart from the rest. Rookies and veterans alike are trying to poke their heads out of a large crowd, which leads to the question: what separates a brewery from all the rest? That is a question McClellan’s Brewing Company has begun to answer.
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Brewery Showcase | 7Sisters Brewing (San Luis Obispo)

I’ve seen some environmental friendly breweries before, but nothing quite compares to the level of commitment to sustainability that 7Sisters Brewing has. The moment you walk through doorway you see a tasting room filled with repurposed materials. My favorite piece is their bar. It was built from school lockers and topped with zinc-wrapped wood from the shipping crate the lockers arrived in. Throughout the tasting room you will see lighting made from Cal Poly lab lamps and tables that used to be shop benches from LA technical college. Heading out to their patio you can see the patio railings that were repurposed from the wood forms used when pouring the concrete.

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Brewery Showcase | Brewability Lab

Many breweries begin with a familiar story: a homebrewer who’s tired of a desk job and decides to make a go at scaling up.

Brewability Lab is not one of those stories. Founder Tiffany Fixter had neither brewing experience nor a business background. What the former special education teacher did have, however, was an ambitious—even radical—idea. Why not tap into Denver’s affinity for craft beer to create jobs for adults with special needs?
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Breaking Down the 30 New Colorado Breweries that Opened in 2017

Last year, Colorado added 30 new breweries to its already impressive arsenal. That means all new recipes, taprooms and beers to explore throughout the Centennial state. How many of the new breweries did you visit last year? How many of these have you heard of? Either way, it’s time to welcome Colorado’s new class of brewers.

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Tribes Beer Co. | A New Space Emblematic of an Evolving Industry

A principal attribute of craft brewing involves the confluence of creativity and tradition. The summer ‘18 opening of the newest Tribes Beer Company location—a brewhouse, tasting room and beer garden—exemplifies that characteristic. Tribes draws on tradition while simultaneously adapting to an ever-evolving beer industry.
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Jekyll Brewing | Secret Apollo IPA

If you’ve been keeping up with Alpharetta, GA based brewery, Jekyll Brewing, you would know that their experimentation with juicy IPAs have increased overall over the last several months. One of their first juicy IPAs that gained tremendous traction in Georgia was Southern Juice. Since then, they’ve released the McLovin IPA, a NE-style IPA; 4Hundy, Milkshake Boys, Bad Breakup and Spaced Out. One of my favorites from their recent IPA trials was the Flightless Fowl, which was damn good.

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Brewery Showcase | LaGrow Beer Co. Organic Craft Beer

Don’t think of LaGrow Beer Company as an organic brewery; think of it as a family-owned brewery dedicated to using the purest ingredients imaginable, from soil to suds.

At LaGrow, the ingredients used are pure, which results in a beer abound in flavor and exceptionally crisp, clean and fresh. Even if one doesn’t care about ingesting chemicals, the resultant flavor derived from chemical-free ingredients is sure to please any beer drinker, from beer geek to macro fan.   Read More

First Look: Oskar Blues LoDo Marries Music & Beer in Downtown Denver

I am not a fan of Market Street.

Chalk it up to too many nights downtown where one of my friends convinced me to go to the latest trendy club and by the end of the night, I have spent too much money on drinks, got mean mugged by a ton of bros, and had multiple women literally look through me on the dance floor. Short, glasses, and a beer belly doesn’t attract women as well as every romantic movie I have ever seen where the awkward guy can steal five minutes of intelligent conversation with the woman to eventually convince her that he is funny, sexy, and charming. Nope. I’m the guy that hangs out at breweries off Broadway or tap houses off Blake and avoids downtown.

Until tonight.

I arrived around 6:30pm and parked in the lot down the street for $10, then walked a few blocks to preview the upcoming Oskar Blues LoDo (downtown) location. This is Oskar Blues’ second foray into downtown Denver, since first planting their CHUBurger flag in RiNo last year. Located in what formerly housed Crocs, an Ohio State alumni sports bar, the bar bookends a set of narrow brick buildings that include Two Fisted Mario’s Pizza and Double Daughters. This isn’t the part of town I typically frequent, but neither was RiNo three years ago. Read More

Ultimate 6er | 6 Reasons to Love Bale Breaker Brewing Company

The Yakima Valley in Eastern Washington accounts for nearly 80% of the United States hop crop, and the team at Bale Breaker Brewing Company have established themselves as leaders in the Yakima Valley hop scene, both as growers and as brewers. The brewery is located amongst hop fields that were first planted in 1932, and the brewers at Bale Breaker have made a point of showcasing Yakima Valley hops in virtually every Bale Breaker brew. Though a relatively young brewery (they opened in 2013), Bale Breaker has become one of the most well-known IPA producers in Washington and is a leader in the Eastern Washington brewing scene. Today we present an Ultimate 6er dedicated the people who made Bale Breaker what it is today: 6 Reasons to Love Bale Breaker Brewing Company. Read More

Brewery Preview | Denver’s Alternation Brewing to Focus on Consistently Rotating Taps

Like many beer fans, when husband and wife duo Brendan Pleskow and Jenn Sickels moved to Denver, they came in search of a great neighborhood brewery that consistently served up new and exciting beers to explore. However despite the fact that Denver now boasts over 70 breweries in the city, most do prescribe to the model of a set core lineup, that’s occasionally bolstered by rotating seasonal and specialty offerings.

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Founders Brewing’s Stevens & Engbers Cap Off Massive 20 Year Anniversary

Calagione, Avery, Jordan, Oliver, Koch, Grossman, Cantwell, Bell, Maytag, Firestone, Bouckaert, Cilruzo. Over the past 20 years craft beer has experienced its greatest boon, and with that explosive growth, there have emerged figures so iconic and influential, that they have risen to become household names. However despite their steadfast ascent to becoming the 16th largest brewery in the country, Stevens and Engbers don’t command the same celebrity as their fellow industry luminaries.

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Brewery Showcase | Outer Range Brewing Co. (Frisco, CO)

Colorado mountain towns are always something unique and special. Tucked away in the Summit County town of Frisco, just minutes away from several very popular ski resorts and some of the best hiking in Colorado, yet conveniently located off one of the busiest roads in Colorado, you will find Outer Range Brewing Company. Outer Range has only been open since December of 2016 but they’ve already been making waves in the Colorado (and even national) beer scene. Read More

Brewery Showcase | Bonn Place Brewing Company

Nestled in the southside of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania—a stone’s throw away from the Sands Casino, SteelStacks and Lehigh University’s Asa Packer Campus—is the little brewery that could. Going from a grand opening to two GABF medals in just over a year requires a lot of hard work, dedication and a metric shitload of positive thinking. The team at Bonn Place Brewing Company has all of these things, while still making the time to greet each and every patron as they enter (many of them by name).
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Brewery Showcase | Moonlight Pizza & Brewpub

Which came first, the pizza or the beer? Okay, this isn’t as philosophical as the classic chicken and the egg question; I’ll go ahead and tell you. It was the pizza. Moonlight Pizza & Brewpub opened in Salida, Colorado in 1994 and began creating handmade thick crust pizzas with a decidedly Colorado-hippy vibe. And it was good. So very cravably good.
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