Stuck in a Colorado rut

Nobody mentioned River North, Station 26, Hogshead, Comrade, Renegade or Wit's End. Hit up Colorado +, they have a great selection of limited brews from smaller Colorado breweries, get a sampler and try some new stuff. If your having issues in Colorado, you would really struggle in about 47 other states! Can't really recommend specific beers because I don't know what style you like.

 

<------ Hence my recommendations

Paradox is in Woodland Park, not Denver. Out of curiosity, which beer was it? They are hit or miss for me and the sheer volume of beer they produce (3x new beers/month) is off-putting given their price.

 

I think it was called the Catcher. It's pretty disappointing to buy a bottle that advertises the special 'Paradox fermentation' using Brett, Lacto, and Pedio, only to find out it's a pretty unremarkable belgian ipa with no sour character whatsoever (not surprising given that lactic acid bacteria don't like high ibu's). Personally, I suspect they put that on the bottle as a disclaimer in case the beer turned out to be infected. I'm not sure which is worse: getting an expensive beer that is infected and tastes like shit, or getting an expensive beer that says it's sour, but turns out not to be. Either way, the beer pretty much sucked, and did not warrant a $10/500 mL price tag. A much better beer could be made and sold for $10/6-pack (I'm thinking Devil's Backbone Congo, fwiw).

 

^^^ That catch-all phrase is on every bottle of beer they produce; it is simply advertising they have their own house yeast strain and don't use something commercially available (pretty much the norm for all commercial brewers these days). What a lot of people don't realize about Paradox is that they do not make wort in-house, it's trucked down from PPBC in Monument weekly. Paradox specializes in barrel aging, wild fermentation, etc. I don't disagree with some of their beers being shit though, and a lot of them simply taste too similar for me to go out and purchase them any more.

 

Another vote for Funkwerks....though I much prefer their flagship Saison to Tropic King, personally. Can't go wrong with either though, so no reason not to try both.

One brewery I haven't seen mentioned yet is Grimm Brothers.

 

I think Paradox has finally wised up and stopped naming their beers after styles they clearly no longer are. For all practical purposes they were all "infected" albeit intentionally. Unless you really clarify what you're doing that affects what the buyer thinks of the beer.

In terms of what to get here...I don't even know how to answer that. Short of a regional breweries and a few high profile breweries in the NE and Midwest our distro is pretty amazing. In fact, we might be one of the best pure distribution areas in the country. Even if you don't like any of the 100+ breweries on the eastern half of the state, we have access to a pretty amazing selection of beers from California and the NW, too.

 

Other breweries I don't see mentioned that distribute great stuff:
Ska, Dry Dock, Sanitas, Crazy Mountain, Twisted Pine, Bootstrap, Big Choice, Odd13, Bristol, Eddyline... Probably like 20 more...

 

Ska and Funkwerks

 

How can you possibly be stuck in a rut when at least one brewery opens per week in the state. Go out, hit up tap rooms, and sample. Easy!!!

 

Hogshead. They make the best session beers in Denver. All of them have great flavor and character without beating you over the head with BA this or a ton of hops that (not that there is anything wrong with that every once in a while).

 

I misspoke. Tropic King is a saison from Funkwerks not Crooked Stave. Still worth looking into. I had it at the West End Tavern in Boulder.