Our third day in the land of great beer.

Once again we had a wonderful day. We started with a visit to the Brew Hut and Dry Dock Brewing company. We got to visit with the two Kevins at this Home Brew Shop / Brewery. The Brew Hut is a very well stocked home brew shop that Kevin DeLange bought a few years ago. Last year he and his partner Kevin Kellogg decided to expand their business into the building next door and fire up a brewery. This might be the smallest professional brewery I have every seen, but don't let its size fool you. These guys can make some really fine beer. My favorite was their ESB that won a gold metal in the World Beer Cup. After we left the Kevins we went to find the Apple store in town. There are actually 3 Apple stores in the Denver area, but we went to the one at the Cherry Creek Mall. Even if you are not an Apple owner you can always find some cool stuff to play with at one of their stores. We where getting hungry so we stopped at a little deli for some sandwiches, then it was on to Fort Collins for our tour of New Belgium. First we stopped and picked up John Holder one of our friends and a great home brewer from the Denver area. We had scheduled a tour with Peter Bouckaert the Brew Master at New Belgium but when we arrived we were met by a fascinating and enthusiastic co-worker named Eric Salazar. James got a great interview with Eric while we waited for Peter. Eric it turns out is one of the people involved in the production of their wood aged sour beer La Folie. James is a big fan of La Folie so this worked out great. When Peter arrived he took us up to the bar in Brew House #2 to share some special brews and talk with us about his brewing philosophy. James got a great interview with Peter who is very passionate about what he does. He explained to us that for him brewing is art and that what they make at New Belgium is art. After tasting the fine special brews they had on tap I could not agree more. One of the beer we tried was something called Eric's Ale which was a blend of sour wood aged beer and some peaches, yum! Then it was time for our tour of New Belgium and Peter turned that over to Chris McCombs who is a Project Coordinator for NB. We could not have had a more complete and detailed tour of the place. He even took us up on the roof and all the way to the top of the fermentors where we got to watch a beautiful sunset and check out all the expansion plans they have. After our incredible day at New Belgium we headed off to have some dinner before heading back to Denver for the night. We found a nice place called Coopersmith Brewing company and enjoyed a great meal along with some really nice brews, I would suggest you give it a try if you are in the Fort Collins area.

Until next time, cheers!