Colorado Brewpub Tour 2012 - Stop #1 - Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery

Stop #1 of the Chris and Vanessa Colorado Brew Pub Tour 2012 took place Saturday at the Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery in downtown Boulder. Located right on Pearl Street, this place definitely gets its vibe from the local culture. If this place went out of business, if you put up a curtain in from of the kitchen, you could turn it into a bookstore in about 45 minutes. It's basically just a small storefront where they threw some booths and tables in front, and a kitchen and wall of taps in back. It's pretty obvious they don't brew their beer on-site due to size constraints, and unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to ask anyone where they do brew.

Food: Just like the location/atmosphere, quite a bit of the menu fits in with the local culture, in addition to the "normal" burgers and chicken sandwiches that you'll find at most restaurants, you'll find offerings like the Tempeh Reuben and the Boom Boom Sandwich (you can look up what that consists of, but needless to say, you won't find it in small town Wisconsin). I had the Spicy Pollo Asada Burrito, it was very good, but if you are averse to anything beyond a medium spice, this isn't for you! Vanessa had the Monterrey Chicken Sandwich, she says it was very satisfying, not as spicy as she thought it would be, but it had a nice charcoal-y flavor to it.

Beer: I only got to try three of the beers (their FYIPA, an Oatmeal Stout, and a White Ale, the later of the two are not on their website and I'm blanking on their names), but they were all very high quality.


Verdict: I definitely recommend this place if you're in Boulder. The atmosphere is great and the food and beer aren't too far behind.

Linky - http://www.mountainsunpub.com/

Amberguity and The Great Pumpkin Beer

The two newest beers to be added to the 19 North "family" are Amberguity and The Great Pumpkin Beer.

This would normally be the part where I list out the ingredients to the recipes, but seeing that we are traveling around Colorado at this point, I don't have ready access to the recipes. So I'll update this post after we get home with them.

That all being said, due to by stress levels from multiple sources, I wasn't able to give proper announcement to these beers when they were brewed. Amberguity was brewed in mid-August, shortly after C4 Chocolate Stout, so that shows the delay I'm on. The Great Pumpkin Beer was brewed in late August, and was bottled last Wednesday, so it's official debut hasn't actually been made yet.

Amberguity - How to describe this beer... (Quick side note, one of the things Brian always wants to do is make something unique, that we can't just go to the store and buy, he succeeded here.) Using the word Amber in it is probably a mistake. The color turned out a little darker than expected (Brian now knows how to estimate grains at the Wine and Hop Shop!) due to extra steeping grains, but we can get past that. The real source of "oddness" comes from the late boil hops. We used 1 oz of Williamette hops, which is a hop you would normally think of being in an American-style IPA, think of the floral aroma/taste you get in an IPA. Getting that taste in a darker beer is confusing to the brain. It may seem like I am degrading this beer, but in reality, it's a very good beer, just one that is hard to define.

The Great Pumpkin Beer - This one is of my design. It's safe to say that it's a lot easier brewing a new beer (which to this point has been all of our beers...) that either Brian or John put together. If it tastes bad, then the blame (we wouldn't actually blame each other) would fall on one of their shoulders. When I have to put together the recipe, especially one that we've been talking about brewing since we started, let's just say the stress level is taken up a notch or two. You'll try to find recipes of what other people have done all over internet, compare what they did, change things a bit, fit them into what we have time for, and then finalize the recipe. The one thing we did that I would change if we do this again (we likely will) is to roast our own pumpkin instead of canned pumpkin, which was forced on us by time constraints. As I said earlier, we haven't officially tasted this one, but based on our small taste during bottling, there's a good level of pumpkin taste, but you also get the warmth of cinnamon and nutmeg at the end. I'm very excited for this beer!

Follow-up on C4 - This one turned out great! With the amount of chocolate that was put in, it would be easy to think that we would have ended up with something too chocolatey, but the balance in it is great. It's a perfect fall/winter beer for a cold day.