Part 2: Denver Brewery/Distillery Tours

After a night of trying to find a good pub in Boulder where everyone wasn't watching the Rockies game we awoke the next morning and made our trek back to Denver for the final leg of our tour. Along the way we had to stop at a liquor store, I think it was Superior Liquors, not sure though. I picked a some SA Imperial Pils, Stone Levitation, Oak Aged Yeti, Dale's Pale Ale, and something else I can't remember. It was a decent store but there are better stores in Nebraska for non-American brews.

Our next stop after lunch was Flying Dog on Blake St. in downtown Denver. We walk into the tap room, which is incredibly small, and start drinking waiting for the tour. By the time the tour starts we are packed in like sardines but once started you didn't notice. They started the tour talking about the Ralph Steedman labels and the relationship that the owner/creator of Flying Dog had with Hunter S. Thompson, pretty cool stuff. We walk into the brewery and head to the grain mill. I am stopped dead in my tracks when I see a brand new MoreBeer 2050 sitting there. It seems they got one just a couple months ago for test batches, a homebrew dream system for sure. Right next to this is their keg filler that is hand operated, ridiculous when you think about how much beer they sell. We then walk around the corner and see this:

This is their Mash Tun and Boil Kettle respectively in the picture, with the Hot Liquor Tank just on the right edge of the picture. This is one of the larger systems I have ever seen in a craft brewers place, heck even Boulevards used to be much smaller than this. It is a nice piece of equipement to say the lest. I didn't write down the barrels and such but it is large for sure.





Then further down the "cellar," they call it, are the conicals and conditioning tanks. This is the entry area of that and the other picture is on the other side of the HLT. As you can see they have a large amounts of large tanks and it really is a cool thing to be standing in. We got a direct pull from a Pale that was about to be bottled, nothing like fresh beer!! From the cellar we proceeded back toward their bottling and distribution area. Their bottling line they called Frankenstien because of the several pieces and parts not only holding it together but the different companies and systems they used. It was definitely a different line compared to Avery's, especially considering the amount of beer that Flying Dog makes compared to Avery. It works for them and that is all that matters. I found those differences cool in their own way. That was about it for the tour of Flying Dog. We then walked out of there and went next door to Stranahan's Whiskey. We walked in to find out when the tours are and the smell of whiskey oak barrels knocks you over and makes you want to have a drink. We wait for the tour to begin and the first thing we see when it starts is the stills. These stills were hand made in the US about 6-7 years ago I think. You can only imagine how much they cost. The guy in the picture is the assistant distiller, I guess that is what they are called. This is where the beer goes through the intial distilling. Flying Dog makes an 8% unhopped beer that they pump over to them. Then the process begins here. After it goes through this still it goes to the next one. In this picture you see a SS tank and copper tank, the SS tank is where the beer is pumped into and the copper tank is where the final distilling process takes place and where they cut it with water to get the proper proof.

From here we walked into their cellar, this place was pretty cool. It was about 70 degrees and about 70% humidity but smelled wonderful. The aging process takes 2 years before they are legally able to sell the whiskey. In comparison to other distillery's they only have 600 barrels going at any given time and Jim Beam will have a million ready to sell at any given time. This explains their $60 price tag on their bottles. Here is a picture of their cellar. There were other barrels but this picture came out the best. After this we tasted the whiskey, it was fantastic. I don't think I have ever had a single malt whiskey before and man, while very warming as would be expected from 94 proof, it was really smooth and something that you could definitely sip on or have with a splash of water. I highly recommend a tour of this place if you get the chance, it is short and sweet but it is pretty cool, especially if you have not been to one before.

The final stop of the day was the Great Divide tap room. The beer was fantastic and I picked up some cool schwag. I would say their Oak aged Yeti and their Hibernation were the best beers that I had there.

Well this ends the GABF trip, hope you enjoyed and I hope you can post some of your own tours sometime.