Day 5 Colorado Beer Trip

Monday, May 25th, 2009 Our last day in Colorado… Had a great breakfast at Dixons. Totally made up for the breakfast the previous day. I had the huevos rancheros and Carolyn had an amazing avocado benedict. After breakfast we made it our mission to get to The Falling Rock Tap House right at 11am when they opened. There was a Rockies game (two blocks away) at 1pm and we thought it might get busy early. This has been rated by a number of publications as one of the best beer bars in the country. Being only a few blocks from our hotel we knew this would certainly be one of our stops. We were greeted with: “It’ll just be a couple minutes folks, we’re still setting up” No worries. We sat at the bar at the far end. We were greeted by a friendly talkative gentleman who was in his element while talking beer. Shortly after we sat down it started to rain heavily. Perhaps there would be no game. We didn’t have tickets yet but we were planning on going. We visited with this gentleman for a while. We had talked about all the places we'd been on our trip and he seemed to have a story about each of those places. He even shared some personal stories of his own. Like the time he went out and spent some time with the people at Russian River. While there he stayed at the home of owners/brewer Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo. How cool would that be?! Or how about the time he spent an afternoon bottling cage-tops at New Belgium with Kim Jordan. This guy had a story for everything and it was very entertaining to listen to him.

We later found out this was Chris Black, the founder and owner of The Falling Rock. A great article about him can be found HERE. We tried some fantastic beers here. The elusive and much sought after Pliny the Elder from Russian River was on tap so I started with that. A rich, sweet, caramaly, malty, hoppy creation that was fantastic. Carolyn started with another Russian River creation, Damnation. I of course had to try this Belgian Golden Ale and thought it was delish. Bear Republic had a blend of their Hop Rod Rye with their Racer 5 and fermented with a Westmalle strain of yeast. It was called Crazy Ivan and resembled a Belgian Pale Ale more than anything. Pretty good actually, as if I expected it not to be. It was also here that I had for the first time the New Belgium Biere de Mars. I really had a hard time defining this beer but I really really liked it. A nice dry nutty start yet fruity finish to it. I heard they had this on tap at Three Squares a few weeks ago, would have loved to get up there and tried it. Anyone reading this know if it’s available anywhere else in the Twin Cities? I enjoyed the heck out of the Tommyknocker Oaked Butt Head Bock. Never gave much attention to this brewery, perhaps I should start. But the real treat for me at this visit was the Deschutes Black Butte Porter. Wow was this amazing. I just love chocolatey black porters and this had just a touch of sweetness, I was in porter heaven. In addition to a great conversation with Mr Black, Carolyn and I made another new friend. Jose had just moved from Chicago. Literally he had just dropped his rental car off at the agency and his first stop was Falling Rock. He had visited Denver in November and fell in love with the town and so he decided to call it home. I can’t remember for how many years but Jose was the resident beer geek and bar manager at Sheffield’s in Chicago. As the rain came down and the game was delayed we just sat and talked beer. We talked about the Minnesota scene, the Chicago scene and the Denver scene and everything in between. We had a dang good time. That reminds me, I still owe him a shipment of beer. I hope to build a trading relationship with Jose as well as a friendship. Salud my friend!