On the Road in Denver - Pints and Flying Dog
I took the Brewsday road show to Denver for a little recreational drinking last week. Since I’m working on this beer cocktail series I thought I would chat up the Denver bartenders about the sort of stuff they put in their beer, but instead of blends and mixes, I found a city where it’s fairly simple to find a cask conditioned ale.
I visited five breweries within stumbling distance of my hotel in downtown Denver and that didn’t exhaust the list and three of them had something in the cask. Two of the breweries had each an ESB (Extra Special Bitter) and an IPA (India Pale Ale).
The real gem of my Denver tour was a place called Pints Pub (211 W 13th Ave). It’s a quiet British theme pub that does small batch brewing. The cask conditioned ales were tasty and authentic; I would have had a couple more if I hadn’t been distracted by the line-up of single malt whiskies.
What I know is beer. I’ve only recently started sampling whisky/scotch and mainly because several of my friends have been telling me: “If you love beer, you should really try scotch.” That’s what I did right after the new year. I went to my local, Callahan’s, and spent an evening in the company of Scotland’s greatest. I thought my local was pretty special with 48 varieties of single malts to offer, but Pints in Denver recalibrated my understanding of the term “a decent selection of Scotch” with approximately 260 varieties of single malts. (I say approximately because one bottle that we ordered turned out to be empty.)
This beer-whisky connection continued when I hoofed it over to Flying Dog for one of the weekday afternoon tours.
Turns out that George Stranahan, the owner of Flying Dog, has invested in a distillery, Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. Flying Dog makes the beer wash for the distillery (conveniently located adjacent to Flying Dog). It’s a nice arrangement and underscores the relation between these two complex beverages.
The benefit for the brewer at Flying Dog is that he has a ready supply of whisky barrels in which to barrel age his higher alcohol beers. I managed to score a bottle of the whisky barrel aged imperial porter. I’ll let you know how it tastes.
