Russian River does some amazing things.
Next time you guys from CA find yourself in CO, check out Avery, Left Hand, Oskar Blues, New Belgium (they actually do some great stuff other than Fat Tire, which seems to have changed over the years), etc. After you fall in love with our beer and our state, go and tell everyone at home it's freezing cold here and we only drink Coors Light. It'll be our little secret.
I wasn't a huge fan of Avery's normal stuff (same thing with new belgium) but their dictator series or whatever it was called was awesome. The Maharaja, Kaiser, and The Czar were delicious. New Belgium's Lips of Faith series really impressed me too. I've tried every single one they have put out, and there are only 2 I don't like. Damn good track record in my book.
Huge fan of Oscar Blues as well, my favorite is definitely Gordon (I refuse to call it G'Knight, stupid name change) followed by Ten Fidey, old Chub, Gubna, not really a fan of either Dales Pale Ale or Their Little Mammas Pills though.
I had no idea these were all Colorado breweries! I knew Colorado was doing some incredibly things beer-wise and had several good breweries, never really paid attention to realize HOW many great breweries they have.
Anyone try Epic Brewing? They are out of SLC Utah, evidently Utah recently changed their laws on alcohol so now Utah has a few breweries that are getting really good. I think it was something along the lines of you couldn't brew beer with an alcohol content over 3% or something, but now that rule was lifted. Don't quote me on that, this is second hand info from an employee at my local bottle
shop (Belmont Station for anyone that knows. I even have their shirts and (true) pint glasses!)
Epic makes some great stuff though, I've only seen Bomber bottles here, no six packs.
This
thread is making me REALLY want the weekend to come. I have a Magnum bottle of St Bernardus Abt. 12 that a friend gave me for Christmas. I've been trying to find the right night to drink it, as opening a magnum bottle of abt12 could lead to one of those nights. We'll see, maybe I'll just have to cut down on how many steins of Fransiskaner and Hacker Pschorr I have at the local German place (gustav's) before I take on that Belgian monster.
