You can usually judge how large a city is by how many stops it has off of a freeway. San Jose, for example, has about 10 or 11 exits accessible from 101. Fort Collins has 4 exits but what I didn’t know was how wide the city is. It could very well be comparable to San Jose but when it’s your first time there, it seems big. While being home to a few tech giants such as Intel, AMD and HP, Fort Collins’ major claim to fame is that it is a college town, home to Colorado State University. Of course if you’re a beer lover, you’d also know that Fort Collins is also home to New Belgium Brewing Company.
With the late start in the day Sammy and I drove to the downtown area of Fort Collins to meet up with our hosts Bonnie and Mike for lunch. As with many other cities, the downtown area of Fort Collins is concentrated on one main street with many other businesses spread across parallel streets. In my viewpoint, the downtown area seemed to be bookmarked by CSU on one end and Old Town Square like development on the other. Parking is a little scare during lunch and we were fortunate to find a 2-hour spot off of the main road. When Sammy and I got out of our rental, we noticed a strange smell in the air. If you’ve ever on I-5 and approached Coalinga, you know exactly what kind of smell I am talking about. We parked next to a public toilet and chalk the smell up to that.
Because Fort Collins is a college town, you will find downtown has more than it’s share of bars. The restaurants range from cheap to pricey and there seems to be no lack of “mom-n-pop” shops. As convenient as “big box” stores and restaurants are, the smaller “mom-n-pop” places will always have a place in my heart because of the intimacy and character of each place. Granted, some suck ass, but the good ones tend to stay open and stay popular with the neighborhood folks. Those are the hidden gems I enjoy going to and supporting.
The four of us had lunch at Taste of Philly, a cheesesteak place. It’s a low-frill place. We all ordered half sizes of the cheesesteaks and they were enough, especially when you add a soda and side of fries. I like this cheesesteak place. The sandwiches had a good amount of steak and cheese and whatever else you wanted stuffed in. The steaks are thin and chopped up with spatulas right on the grill and are well balanced with whatever ingredients you decided. I had an orginal cheesesteak but there’s mushrooms, pizza, etc. Someplaces will skimp out on the steak and add hella onions and peppers and cheese, while other places go crazy on the cheese and skimp out on the meat and veggies. The bread portion of the sandwich is sometimes overlooked by lesser cheesesteak joints but Taste of Philly has chosen a good tasting bread to stuff everything into. I would look to come back to this place whenever I visit.
But of course this is a beer blog and not a foodie blog or even a travel blog. If you are here, it’s because of the beer. So let’s get to it.
CooperSmith’s Pub & Brewing, 5 Old Town Square, Ft. Collins, CO
CooperSmith is located in Old Town Square near one end of downtown. It’s a little odd in the sense that it is actually two buildings. The first building is where the restaurant is located and that is referred to as “Pubside”. The second building is called “Poolside” but instead of a swimming pool, there are numerous billiard tables. Oh, those people are clever. At the time of day we walked in, which was an early Thursday afternoon, both sides were pretty much dead. The pubside had more people but we ended up having a few samples at poolside.
The brewery seemed to be split between the two buildings but I am not certain about that. It would seem they would brew on one side, possibly ferment and store in the other. I noticed brewery equipment in both buildings but I never cared to ask about their set-up or for a tour. What I did ask for though, was a sampler tray of their beers. Here are my notes:
- Octoberfest, 6% – Very nice. Clean flavors, rich Vienna malt characteristics with medium bitterness. Refreshingly good octoberfest, especially after my disappointment at Faultline.
Albert Damn Bitter, 4.8% – Creamy texture with toasty, grainy malt character. Pale amber in color with beige colored, creamy head. Bitterness is moderate, balance leans slightly towards the hop side. Uses Cascade hops. Very drinkable, sessionable English bitter-style beer.- Punjabi Pale Ale (IPA), 6.3% – Medium body, medium/medium-high carbonation. Slight toasty, bready malt profile. Medium/medium-high hop bitterness. Hop flavors are citrus-like, slight floral characteristics. Balanced for the style.
- Hanjabi Pale Ale, 6.3% – Hand-drawn Punjabi Pale Ale, hence the clever name “hanjabi”. It’s actually pretty funny. I giggled for a while on the name. Yes, I know I’m in my early 30s but my mind didn’t really get past the early teens in maturity level. So sue me. Basically, the same flavor as the Punjabi except the body appears to be thinner and the carbonation is much less, giving this beer a smoother and creamier mouthfeel.
- Raspberry Mead, 7.1% – I didn’t try this one but Sammy did. Her description, “Sweet, slightly tart taste.Strong raspberry aroma right off the bat. Light to no honey flavor.”
Sigda Green chili, 5.4% – I was skeptical about trying this beer. After the Cave Creek Chili fiasco, I almost swore off of chili beers altogether but I thought about giving this one a try as we were already here. Besides, this beer medaled at a past GABF for this brewery so it should be pretty decent, if not good. This beer is pale gold with no head. There is a very noticeable chili aroma that is reminiscent of younger, almost ripe chili peppers. No discernable malt or hop characteristics in the aroma. The flavor of the beer is dominantly chili, reminds me of Lays “spicy chili” flavored chips. There is enough heat to let you know it’s a chili beer you’re drinking without being overwhelmingly spicy. Not a bad beer, much more balanced than others I’ve had in the past. Still, I wouldn’t order a pint of it just because I don’t like spicy food. If you are, give this beer shot.
On a separate trip, we returned back to CooperSmith’s for appetizers and to hang around. I also ordered a sample of their RyePA and pint of their Not Brown Ale but didn’t take any notes. During the day, it’s pretty dead but at night, both sides are packed. I guess this is where all the kids come out to play as there were a lot of college kids at poolside. So much so, the four of us started to feel old so we cut out into the crisp night air to walk around the downtown area before calling it a night.
Overall, I think CooperSmith makes good beer. A lot of their beers tend to be English style ales, even their IPA weren’t nearly as hoppy as their American West Coast counterparts. While not nearly the best beers I’ve tried so far, their beers are easily accessible to lots of people (e.g. college students) with the general flavor profile leaning towards the malt end of things. Worth checking out if you’re in Fort Collins, especially since there are only 4 places that brew their own beer.
New Belgium Brewing Company, 1900 East Lincoln Avenue, Fort Collins, CO 80524
Visiting New Belgium ranked high on my list of places to visit here in Colorado for a number of reasons. First, I enjoy most of their beers. Like many other people, I started off with Fat Tire. At the time, it was different than anything else they had at the bars. Of course, you start with one beer and make your way down the line. I am a big fan of their 1554 and Mothership Wit. I also enjoy picking up their seasonals when I am able to as fresh beer is good beer. Second, New Belgium is a leader when it comes to green initiatives and processes for the brewing industry. I could go on about how they have an efficient, closed-loop system for their brewery or that they use wind power. I could also extrapolate on their use an on-site generator that supplies 15% of their total energy demands or how they treat their brewery waste water before they release it back into the water supply. I could tell you all of this but they explain it much better themselves on their own website. Lastly, New Belgium has some very good people that work for them. In case you didn’t know, New Belgium is an employee-owned company. After working there for a minimum of one year, you are gifted ownership in the company. Whenever people own something, they tend to work harder, are more productive and, generally, are more happy about their working environment. It’s a point of personal pride, I think. Also, knowing that putting in a hard, 8-hour day means more when you know it’ll benefit you instead of some nameless shareholder or stodgy CEO someplace.
Sammy and I rush to New Belgium after leaving CooperSmith. I know that the brewery tours only last for a certain amount of time before they cut them off for the day and we were fast approaching that cut off point. In fact, when we arrived, Sammy and I were able to pick up “passes” for the last tour of the day (the passes are just cut up pieces of their six-pack holders). Having some time to kill, we saddle up to the bar and take a seat. Feeling somewhat dehydrated, I drink nothing but water until the tour starts while Sammy has a tiny sample of their Sunshine Wheat.
The tasting room of New Belgium is busy, near capacity really. Lots of people, many up from GABF. The decor of the tasting room is a bit eclectic but not without a theme: bicycles. No big surprise there. The European cruiser-style bike on the Fat Tire label is basically the mascot for the company. The bike theme is everywhere. There are bikes everywhere as New Belgium is a huge proponent of cycling to work instead of driving. If you’ve worked at New Belgium for 5 years, you are gifted one of those sought after European, cruiser-style bikes. Nice. The furniture is also bike related. Many of the chairs are made up of old bike rims welded together while the pencil holders at the bar and tables are hollowed out sprockets from the rear hub. The the left of the bar, straight back from the entrance, there is a huge window into the brewery.
As the legend goes, New Belgium founder Jeff Lebesch takes a cycling trip around Europe in the late 80s. Jeff comes back to Fort Collins enthused, infused and ready to make beer. As a homebrewer, his early attempts at brewing Belgian ales results in a dubbel, which he names Abbey, and an amber ale we all know today as Fat Tire. There’s a lot that happens inbetween then and now but it’s all basically history, as the saying goes.
As far as brewery tours go, the New Belgium tour is pretty cool. It’s very “high-level” stuff in order to appeal to the mass public. It might be a little boring for folks very familiar with the brewing process but it’s interesting nonetheless. We start off in the room visible from the tasting room. This used to be the main brewery. It is here we hear about the history of New Belgium. Tucked into a corner of the old brewery is a collection of the original equipment Jeff used to brew all of New Belgium’s beers. As someone who lives in California and grew up without a basement, it’s somewhat hard for me to fathom that you could have all this equipment in your basement making beer for a living but that’s exactly what Jeff and his wife did in the beginning.
From there our tour guide Pete takes up to the new brewery. At the time of our tour, they are in the middle of brewing a couple of beers and the aroma of wort being made is in the air. Yummy. The New Belgium brewing facility is unique in many ways. Like most breweries, they have a mash tun and a lauter tun but instead of a boil kettle, they have this thing called a merlin. In all the brewery tours I’ve taken, the brew kettle will go one of two ways: a direct fire system and a steam system. Most places opt for a direct fire system because it is cheaper. As the name implies, a direct fire system relies on the boil kettle being heated directly over open flame. While I cannot tell you all the pros and cons of this method, I can say that from a homebrewing background, it’s the easiest to set up and the main drawback is that you can scortch your wort at the bottom of the kettle. The second method is the steam method. In this way, a separate boiler heats water until it boils. The resulting steam is piped through a coil that is in the middle of the wort. In this instance, the wort will eventually hit boiling temperature but you will never get scortching. From what I’ve been told, this is also cost-efficient in the long run.
New Belgium’s merlin system is different from both of these methods. Instead of using steam or direct fire to boil the wort, a huge metal plate is placed within the boil kettle and heated. Wort is then piped up and allowed to cascade down the heating element in a thin film of wort. This is how they bring their wort to a boil. It’s efficiency arises from having to heat that thin film of wort instead of the entire batch. Their brewhouse is also a closed system in that they are able to capture what would be lost energy in other systems and store or redirect it in other areas. The result is a the use of less energy to get things going.
The next main area that we are taken to is their bottling plant. It’s is the largest bottling plant I have seen to date. In many of the brewery tours I’ve taken, most places have a relatively small portion of their main building devoted to kegging and bottling. New Belgium and an entire building devoted to it. When you’re the 3 largest American craft brewery, you tend to do things on a much larger scale than most people. While impressive, we are not allowed to actually be in the bottling plant floor. They are a fully operational plant and having us down there would proably be a big OSHA no-no.
On our way back to the main building and tasting room, tour guide Pete points out a large, white balloon in the distance. That ballon is where they collect the waste gas produced when bacteria treat their waste water. Enough waste gas is produced to run an on-site generator to supply 15% of the brewery’s total power usage.
If you really want to read about New Belgium’s sustainability efforts, click here. They can school you much better than I ever could.
Back at the tasting room, Sammy and I stake out a spot at the bar to begin sampling their beers. We are given a “menu” of sorts where we can pick up to 4 beers each to taste. As part of the submission process, we are asked to give a name for a beer. I decide to call mine the Autumnizer and I image it would be an Oktoberfest-style beer. I forget what Sammy calls hers. All in all, we end up trying 9 beers that day. Here are my notes:
- Abbey Grand Cru (Belgian Style Dubbel) – We are given this beer while on tour. As we are on tour, my notes are very quick. Sweet malt, some dark fruit notes, a little acidity, medium-high carbonation, medium-high body. This is a special beer that they don’t brew too often and when they do, it’s mainly for on-site consumption.
- Mothership Wit (witbier) – Organic wheat beer. White head, pale straw and hazy. Spicy, banana with corriander and Curacao peel. Wheat malt flavors, spicy yeasty notes with corriander and citrus on both the aroma and flavor.
- Blue Paddle Pilsner – Light in color, clear gold. Good lacing. Slight hop flavor. Clean mouthfeel. Slightly astringent, grainy notes in flavor. Medium-hop bitterness.
- Sunshine Wheat – Brilliantly clear, bright gold with a white head. Clean, wheat malt character and aroma. Slight orange pith bitterness. Slight spiciness in flavor from corriander? Clean, light and effervescent.
- Old Cherry – Sour cherry aroma, sweet malt characters… caramel. Tart cherry sourness dominant. Uses Montmorency cherries. Some slight wood notes? Chocolate? Almost no hop bitterness or flavor. Cherry favor is balanced by sweet malt character.
- Trippel – Brilliantly clear, bright pale amber with off-white head. Pear fruit notes, spicy yeast notes, white pepper… balanced by sweet malt aromas. Slightly grainy malt flavor is balanced by spicy yeast notes. Dry finish with slight astringency.
- Loose Lips (Ben’s Saison) – Loose lips is an in-house program where one of New Belgium’s employees can get their beers made by the company. In this instance, employee Ben had a saison that was mass produced by the company. Hazy amber/orange color with off-white head. Spicy, yeasty notes, some “barnyard” aromas. Sweet, slightly tart flavors, some “fruit preserve” notes. Slightly dry and astringent in the finish. Sweet-ish citris flavor, some fruit-like sweetness.
- Giddy-Up (Espresso ale) – Brilliantly clear and bright with white head. Looks like a cola. Black coffee/espresso aromas dominate. Black coffee/espresson flavors up front in the flavor with amber ale qualities in the finish. Slight caramel notes with medium/medium-low hop bitterness. Medium body, medium-high carbonation.
- Mighty Arrow – Pale amber in color, brilliantly clear and bright with off-white head. Slight citrus and floral hop aromas, grapefruit-like. Sweet citrus flavors, slightly bready, malt character is balanced out by citrus hop flavor and medium/medium-high hop bitterness. Medium body, medium carbonation.
One of the things I found pretty funny that day was that of all the beers New Belgium makes, their flagship Fat Tire, seems to get the most flak. Some people will say they enjoy it while most others will say it’s not their favorite. Even our tour guide Pete nearly admitted it wasn’t high on his list of favorites. The one thing no one in the company will dispute though is that without Fat Tire, New Belgium would be nothing. It is because of the success of Fat Tire that they are able to do interesting beers like Giddy-Up or Old Cherry. New Belgium is definitely the house that Fat Tire built.
Another very interesting thing to note at New Belgium is that all of the employees seem genuinely happy to be there. As busy as the tasting room was, everyone who worked there seemed to have a smile on their face. It’s almost odd really. Everyone was laughing and joking with each other and the customers as well. It was definitely a positive vibe in that place. There are so many things that New Belgium does correctly as a company that it would be nearly impossible to work there and not have a smile on your face. It’s a stark contrast from my day job, let me tell you. I’m sure the grass isn’t necessarily greener on the other side, the brown spots may be in different places but you wouldn’t be able to tell based upon the employees.
Overall, New Belgium is definitely a place worth visiting. Even if you are pretty familiar with brewing already, I seriously doubt you’ve seen a place quite like New Belgium. Their brewery is efficient, their processes are geared with social and environmental responsibility in mind and their beer aren’t half bad. Of all the beers we tried that day, I think my favorite may have been the Giddy-Up as it’s still in my head. In any event, I highly recommend visiting New Belgium Brewing Company if you are ever able to make it to Colorado.
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