Went to the 2nd annual Gnarly Barley Brew Fest on Sat 8/7/10 over at the Larimer County Fairgrounds. This is about 20 min from my home. Got there 15 min early and were about 5th in line. By the time the 'doors' opened, there were about 50 in line. $15 to get in, which got us a mug that held about 8oz, and 6 wooden tokens each worth $1 or 4oz of brew. They had about 15 breweries, each had 2 beers on tap (some more some less [cans]) all setup under their own small tents. When we went back before leaving, it was the most crowded, and many tents were out of beer. I ended up using 9 tokens ($3 extra) to try all the wheat beers that were new to me. Also had a taste of my friends beers, when he got something different.
Got to talk to two new NoCo breweries: Equinox and Grimm Bros.
Equinox is out of Old Town, Ft Collins and grew out of the owners homebrew store. Or, I should say, grew into. They have a tasting room.
Grimm Brothers Brewhouse are in East Loveland, near Walmart. Opened 2 weeks earlier, they're still feeling out their market for the hours of their tasting room.
I'm not sure if these are anything more than a different style of brew pub. If you don't bottle and distribute... Then again, if you don't serve food, what are you?
Back to the tasting. I used 9 tokens, and chose these:
1- Tommyknocker Jack Whacker a Wheat Ale Style: Herb and Spices 14IBU. A good beer.
2-Equinox Sunrise Golden Ale. Too hoppy. I'm not a fan of hop flavor, but don't mind IBU (see Guinness)
3- Durango Wheat Beer 12IBU. Again too hoppy, but better than #2
4-Ft Collins Brewing Major Tom's Pomegranate Wheat. Best wheat yet, still not there.
5-Bristol Brewing Beehive Honey Wheat 16IBU. Solid (A)!
6-Brothers Grimm Snow Drop, a Pale Wheat Ale. Too hoppy
7-Del Norte Cinco Mexican Style Lager. This is the Mexican Light style they make, and it's what I expected having drunk Corona, Sol, etc. Nothing exciting, but a light refreshing beer.
8-Sam Adams Coastal Wheat. I rated this a good+
9- Oskar Blues Old Chub, a Scotch Ale. I cheated here as this is a favorite, but we had reached the end of the tents, and I had one token left. I said I wanted to try something new from them, but the only beer I hadn't tried were all IPAs. Guess I could have tried the Mama's Little Yella Pils. OK, I SHOULD have tried something new from them.
Also tried the Brothers Grimm Fearless Youth, a Munich Dunkel Lager, and thought it was great.
Tried the Breckenridge Brewery Buddha's Hand Witbier at Old Chicago later. Horrible. Took two sips and left the rest. Strangely, the waitress never asked about why I wasn't drinking it.
My highlight (and showing what a wimp I am) was trying Twisted Tea at the Sam Adams booth, on ice. I couldn't (at the time) taste any alcohol in this, it just tasted like Iced Tea. I think my taste buds were dead, or at least confused by this time. However, I liked it so much I sought out the Mix Pack, that has six different flavors in it. Didn't find it at the first two (big) liquor stores, but found it at my local. The second place told me they had it on order, but it had been out of stock for a month. At home I crack open the box (no date markings on the outside), and see the bottles listing their 'best by' dates being months ago. They still seem to taste fine, and still enjoyable. But, that's the topic for a different post.
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