Colorado Brewing & Trading Co.

Big open bar and dining areas ready to move the tables and crank up the band once the family hour is over. Pool table and darts upstairs. If you are looking for initmacy, keep going. If you are looking for good solid burgers and ribs, pull up a chair and put on your feed bag. Nice salad and awesome fries, too. The beer is so-so. Had a Hat Trick IPA and sampled the Old Hand Ale and Dry Hop Gold. Stick with the Hat Trick. The Old Hand and Dry Hop Gold both tasted like bubblegum. I fear the somthing was amiss with the yeast. The IPA is fine. Didn't sample any of the others. Nice service, accomodating to kids, plenty of choice on the menu and all the food coming out looked good with plenty on the portions. Just don't make a special trip for the beer.

Had to go to New Haven for Russ' surprise birthday party at Raven's Field. Now, Poughkeepsie is by no means on the way but they were doin' that "meet the brewer" deal at HalfTime with the folks from Sam Adams and they were pouring the Utopias, so we had to go to Poughkeepsie first, and as things are as they are for a reason, we were afforded an opportunity to come into Connecticut along the 84 corridor (now you see where I'm going with this)...
So, Colorado Brewing & Trading Co....
The first room you come into is gigantic. They've got a stage at one end and a good bunch of tables riddled here and there throughout but they seem to take up a small fraction of the floor space. The bar is along the back wall and has at least a dozen and a half stools running the length. They do bands here. And they can fit a lot of damn people in to see the bands that they do here.
They've also got an almost equally large back room with many tables surrounded on 3 sides by the open exposed kitchen running the length of one side, the brewing vessels on another, and what looks like a performance stage to the rear. They were doing a children's birthday party back here on the Saturday early afternoon when we rolled in.
There's an upstairs chill room that you can get to from staircases at either end, kind of.
A pretty decent menu all around. The brick oven pizza rocked!! Oh yeah, they make beer, too. They had about eight beers and a cask flowing. The stout was chewy and top notch, the IPA was quite hoppy with a nice big bite and the brown ale was good and malty chocolatey.
Remind me to get back here at night sometime when it's hopping, so I can see what it's like in full flail.

I think this place usually has more beers but there were only five when I went (brown, red, old ale, stout, and raspberry blonde). The blonde was the only real clunker of the bunch, all the others were very good, although it would have been nice to have like a pale ale or something available for session drinking. You gotta love a place that has a handpump (brown was on cask when I visited). Place is cavernous, I think it used to be a department store. Huge dining room in the rear with the kitchen out in the open so's you's can watch em cook yer vittles. A large bar/stage area up front with live music (which was echoey due to the size of the place). Pool table in the lounge area upstairs. Food quite good, basic bar fare along with steaks and pizza pie. This place is too big to feel like your home away from home, but it's definitely a fun place to go, listen to music, and drink fresh beer. When the band gets going at night, the bar switches to plastic cups which is a shame but I guess makes a certain amount of sense. This is probably a good place to bring kids for dinner, too; the menu is cooperative, they can check out the kitchen which is pretty neat, and this place is so huge that they can run all around the restaurant and still not be in anyone's way.

Place was really big and open. It had room for a band stage and it was to wide open to have good cozy feeling. Even the bartender said he could have 25 people at the bar and it still seem's empty.

The beer selection was nine in all including a cask IPA which was my first cask beer so it was cool.

Overall the beers as a whole were good.

This is a great place to watch a game with a huge projection tv in the main bar room up front. There is a more casual bar area up front, with a dining room in back. The beers are solid and they usually have a special or two (although the raspberry blonde I had last time was weak). The food is average but ample and the service and crowd are friendly. Good if you are in the area, especially to simply sample the brews and watch a game.

Just tried this one last wednesday. The Octoberfest was first rate and the steak I had was both VERY ample and delicious. The fried calamari was among the best I have ever had in a restaurant. If you are near Danbury, CT make the trip!!