Breweries to try in Colorado

In July my wife and I will be taking a vacation for a week in Colorado. We'll be sleeping in Fort Collins but we're open to going to all of the cities around Denver.

I'm trying to figure out what breweries or beers to look out for though.

We like IPAs and sour beers but very rarely partake in them. I'm also not a fan of the vast majority of flavored beers.

I am looking for almost every other style of beer though.
Bierstadt Lagerhaus will be a guarantee and I know there is the other thread for other lagers to look for.

Are there any good English style beers? I've been looking for good bitters and milds.

 

Thanks everyone for the replies. The wife and I just got back and enjoyed our trip. We went up to the mountains a couple of days and spent the majority of the rest of the time visiting breweries.

So in all where we ended up:
- Black Bottle (stumbled upon it after buying cigars)
- Bought the Grimm Brothers Kotbusser six pack
- New Belgium
- Odell
- Prost
- Rally King
- Westbound & Down
- Hogshead
- Bierstadt
- Zwei
- Equinox
- Red Truck
- Snowbank

I had a number of really good beers on this trip.

My favorite place was probably Prost.

I can go into further details about my experiences at these places if it's desired.

 

Well to start we got drunker than expected Monday.
Black Bottle was enjoyable, we had good chips and salsa and flat bread. The beer was decent. I started out with their rice lager which was probably the beer I thought was most interesting there. We also tried their IPA, dunkelweizen, porter, and a couple of other beers. They were pretty good but I was expecting the IPA to be hoppier we got a crowler of it to go with our cigars.

Then we got the Kotbusser from Grimm. It was more accurate to my understanding of the style than the other example I've had but it was not really what I was wanting.

Tuesday my wife was not feeling good all morning so we went up the mountains for a bit going to Glen Haven.
Coming back we went to New Belgium and had a handful of small pours. It was a cool place but I was surprised someplace that big didn't have their own kitchen.
I really enjoyed the Dubbel it's been the most enjoyable American made one that I've had in a long time. I also enjoyed the Single and the lagers I had of theirs.

Then we walked to Odell and had a few small pours there. I know we had a cacao fruit IPA and I think the Carter's Kölsch then the 5 barrel and something else then I had the Cloud Catcher. I also drank the 90 Shilling this trip.
Odell was a cool brewery. Great place to hang out but my favorite beers were still the 5 Barrel and 90 Shilling.

Then we walked to Prost Fort Collins. I had the Altbier and Munich Dunkel while my wife had the Keller Pils and Helles. The Altbier was more like a Münster Alt I think but it was good. The Dunkel was great. The Keller Pils had a great malty and hoppy flavor but the low carbonation made the flavors taste muddled. The Helles was very good.

Then we took a long break and walked to Rally King from our room that evening. The Dark Ale was full bodied at 4.3% abv but really sweet and difficult for me to drink. Their other beers were higher ABV and we didn't really enjoy them all that much.

That ended our Tuesday.

I'll continue when I have time our Wednesday and Thursday travails where we went up to Mount Evans and around Denver.

 

So Wednesday we were feeling better so we had bigger plans. This may be my most controversial day.

We started by driving up Mount Evans which was gorgeous.

On the way down we were hungry because we hadn't eaten much so we stopped in Idaho Springs for lunch. We ended up going to:
Westbound and Down. Very interesting place very modern restaurant feel. Very good food I had the bratwurst pita taco and it had great grill toasty flavors.
We only had 1 beer each, a hefe and a Belgian table beer. They were both very good.
My wife wants to go back here.

Then we drove into Denver and went to:
-Hogshead, I stuck with their cask ales so they were all versions of English pale ales. I had the AK Ordinary Bitter, the Boys Bitter, and Chin Wag their ESB.
I really liked the beer and the English hoppiness of the bitters. But back to back I really couldn't differentiate the AK and the Boys they seemed interchangable just different ABVs. The ESB was less hoppy and bitter but maltier. I liked it a lot but was thankful it didn't seem all that caramelly which was good.
I liked the beers a lot but I didn't think they had as much drinkability as I wanted. The hops used and bitterness weigh heavily on my palate.

Then we went to Bierstadt. I've been asking about the Slow Pour in the Germany section. Suffice to say I didn't really think their Pils was all that special. It was soft but it was oh so light tasting. It was much lower on the malt and hop flavors than most any pilsners I drank in Germany. Its malt and hops tasted good but just very light. That doesn't mean to me that it's any better than other versions.
I also had the Dunkel and the Helles and I thought they were great. But with the amount of hype the Slow Pour Pils has I was really disappointed that the main discriptors I had for it were light, crisp, and soft.

Then on the way back to Fort Collins we stopped at Zwei. I know I had the Pils and schwarzbiers and some others. They were good but not as good as other places.

Moving onto Thursday. This was our last day and we just wanted to keep it easy. So the plan was to go back to Prost but otherwise not do much.

We went to downtown Fort Collins and ended up getting some street vendor pho.

We were near Equinox so stopped in there. I really enjoyed their golden ale and Purposterous Noximus. We also had the rye IPA, hefeweizen, imperial hefeweizen, porter, and Dubbel. I wasn't a fan of the Dubbel but the others were quite good.

Then we walked to Prost. I again enjoyed it. I personally preferred the regular Pils over the Keller Pils because it was crisp.

Then we walked the long way to New Belgium.

We had a quick break at Odell which is when I had the 90 Shilling.

We saw Red Truck Brewing. I hadn't heard of them but we stopped to grab a bite to eat and I had the Red Pilsner which was decent.
Next door was Snowbank where I ordered their lager and got that and an accidental pour of their Snow Juice hazy IPA. My wife had the dillicious cucumber sour. They were pretty good.

Last we made it to New Belgium for one last small pour. I already talked about them though.

 

That is the thing. I only have this one data point on these breweries. I don't know how things have changed over the years. I also only really drank beers on tap so I have no idea how any of their packaging systems are because that has a big effect on distributed beers.

 

The Helles and the Dunkel were both very good but I thought the ones from Prost were just as good and I enjoyed the Pils there more.