"Denver" news and stories

A weekly look at the draft selections in beer-friendly bars across the country.

What?! What's On Tap has never visited Denver, Colo.?!? That's practically Beer City, USA.

So this week, in an effort to make things right, What's On Tap looks at what both BeerAdvocate and RateBeer.com -- the two largest online beer communities -- rate as the best beer bar in Denver: Falling Rock Taphouse.

Bartender Jason Quinn helped explain why Falling Rock has garnered such a great reputation while serving the Denver community. "Chris Black [one of the three owners] has been in the beer business for almost 30 years," Quinn pointed out. "He worked for Red Hook a long time ago. He's known everybody forever."

Read on about Falling Rock Taphouse and find their most recent draft list after the jump...

• Seven soup recipes from seven new cookbooks help Denver residents stay warm this season.
• Seared scallops, salad and rib-eye are the way to go at the newly revamped Simms Steakhouse.
• The Colorado Beer Festival descends on Colorado Springs this Saturday, and offers more than 70 beers to sample, as well as a designated-driver program.
• The Wynkoop Brewery will hold its own Beers of the Year mini-festival on Saturday, also.
• Dublin-made cream liqueur Coole Swan, which gets its name from Yeats' poem "The Wild Swans of Coole," is finally for sale in Colorado, and one food writer -- who claims it's the finest cream liqueur he's ever tasted -- couldn't be happier.
• A "gastropub" opens in Cherry Creek, inspiring food critic Tucker Shaw to explore the etymology of the word.
• A knife-wielding blogger discovers the bounty of the duck.

The Great American Beer Festival kicks off today in Denver, Colorado. Featuring over 1800 beers from 400 breweries, those who've made the trip are surely excited.

If you're reading this cursing yourself for being nowhere near the greater Denver area, don't get too down: The festival set a new record this year by selling out two weeks in advance, so if you didn't plan well ahead of time, you'd probably be, literally, locked out in the cold.

Still, if you want to get a taste of the action, grab a six-pack of your favorite brew and live it vicariously via the web:

1. A good place to start is the official Great American Beer Festival page.
2. Follow Draft Magazine on their flight to the fest.
   
3. Or for a more homey approach, check out Hoosier Beer Geek for their GABF roadtrip.
4. Charlie Papazian founded the festival, so he's a good one fill us in on all the pre-fest prep.
   
5. The Brew Lounge provides advice on "How to Tackle the GABF."
6. My Beer Pix hopes to present a live "beercast" from the festival floor on Friday and Saturday.
   
7. Want to know the winners? My Beer Pix's Beermolly purports to be Twittering them as they come in.
8. And it's too late to join this year, but if you want to get really interactive in 2009, try the Beer Fantasy Draught (yes, that is a pun).

[Photo Credit: greatamericanbeerfestival.com]

We've probably all seen crop circles and we've all been exposed to pizza flyers, but recently Papa John's innovated a unique combination of the two.

According to the Fire Wire blog, this advertisement for Papa John's new whole wheat crust is cut into a wheat field near the Denver airport. It'll be seen by everyone flying in to the Denver area, just in time for the Democratic National Convention. The pizza chain apparently wanted to get in on the convention sales, but wanted to have fun with it.

I actually really like this ad. It's a lot more fun and less obnoxious than other Papa John's ad campaigns. What's your take on the pizza ad crop circle?



[via Neatorama]

Denver is the home of Coors Brewing Company, and this summer the city will also host the Democratic National Convention. Beyond that locational proximity, what could the two possibly have in common? Beer! Well, waste beer to be more precise.

According to RealBeer.com, the Dems will be shuttled about in flex fuel cars using waste beer as the bio-diesel. Coors will be donating all the waste beer-ethanol needed by the fleet of GM flex fuel cars.

Not only is beer good fresh, but perhaps waste beer would be a good alternative to corn based ethanol (ignoring the hops shortage for the moment). I'm not saying that beer can solve all the world's problems, but it might not be a bad place to start.

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