Spotlight On: Wilbur’s Total Beverage

Almost the entire time Sammy and I were in Fort Collins, Mike and Bonnie kept saying how we could just pick this up and that up at Wilbur’s. By the way they spoke of the place, you’d think that Wilbur’s is just another corner liquor store in a small college town. You’d have thunk wrong.

Wilbur’s Total Beverage is probably the best bottle shop I have ever seen. They are huge, easily surpassing BevMo in terms of square footage as well as selection. In the better BevMo’s, you will find maybe 4 aisles of beer with most of those beers on shelves. At Wilbur’s they have one aisle; one, very, long aisle. An aisle as long as the the store is as deep. And it’s refridgerated. Refridgerated! They also have another “standard” (standard as is relative to aisles in their store) that has some imported beers from Belgium and England as well as Belgian-style beers from American craft breweries.

In my awe, I forgot to take a picture. I was like a kid in a toy store; eyes big as platters with a grin to match. I couldn’t believe such a place existed. Great beer selection? Check! Great beer selection refridgerated? Check! Man, I could’ve easily spent hours and hundreds of dollars in there.

In the end, Sammy, Bonnie, Mike and I created a “mixed six-pack” to drink back at the house. Here are my reviews for the beers we drank. Keep in mind that we didn’t go through all six but here are the ones we did go through:

• Wilburfest, Ft. Collins Brewery – This beer was specifically brewed for Wilbur’s Total Beverage by Fort Collins Brewery. A märzen/oktoberfest style beer, Wilburfest pours beautifully clear, caramel in color with an off-white head. European hop character, slightly earthy with a toasty malt aroma. Slightly sweet with a toasty malt character, this beer has medium-low/medium hop bitterness. Very clean, low esters.
• Major Tom’s Pomegranate Wheat, Ft. Collins Brewery – Ft. Collins Brewery was the one brewery we didn’t make it to while in Ft. Collins. We just ran out of time. Brewed with pomegranate concentrate and lightly filtered. Major Tom’s pours out blonde/straw color. Light malt aroma – light sweet taste, medium-low hops. (Reviewed by Sammy).
• Wet Mountain IPA, Il Vicino Brewing Company – Sweet malt aroma and flavor characteristics with a citrus and floral hop aroma and flavor. The bitterness is medium-high/high but not long lasting. While I thought this beer was fairly good, this beer reminded me of those perfume knockoffs that get sold to tourists. They smell just like the brands they’re supposed to be but don’t last nearly as long. Same with this beer. It has all the right notes but they just don’t play the song for very long. Il Vicino is a wood over pizza joint with mulitple locations but it seems that all their beer is made at a single location that gets distributed to their other locations.
• Rocky Mountain IPA, Ft. Collins Brewery – Strong floral hop characteristics with sweet malt underneath. Sweet malt flavors give way to floral hop flaovrs and a high hop bitterness. Medium-high body and high carbonation.
• Nectar of the Hops, Redstone Meadery – Bonnie has been asking us about the bottle we brought over for some time now and this was as good as a time as any to crack this baby open. This sparkling mead was sweet smelling with slight hop aromas. The flavor is crisp, clean, sweet with hop undertones and a slight caress of hop bitterness. Not big fans of mead, Mike and Bonnie took a liking to this mead mainly because of it’s sparkling nature.

Yes, I do realize the irony of my review. I talk up on how awesome and diverse Wilbur’s is and then all I do is pick up Ft. Collins Brewery beers. I didn’t really realize it until I wrote the post. What can I say? We missed visiting Ft. Collins Brewery and picked up some of their beers instead. I just wish we picked up more of their beers. In any event, if you are ever at Ft. Collins, Colorado, give Wilbur’s a try. Let me know if you walk away just as impressed.

Related posts:

1. Spotlight On: Sweet Spot Pub & Grill This post is way overdue, almost by two weeks. Things...