Rocky Mountain Brewery August 2019 Visit

August 23, 2019 Mike

I’ve been to Rocky Mountain Brewing a number of times, but usually it’s to visit James in the homebrew store next to the brewery, and although I’ve had many of their flagships both onsite, and a various festivals in town, it’s been quite awhile.

The timing on this week’s trip worked out really well for us, we both just bought and received our Colorado Springs On Tap Craft Brewery Passport, and one of the two remaining Colorado Springs Breweries we haven’t written about is on it. We even decided we were going to Rocky Mountain Brewery before we even received them. On top of all that, our buddy Rob was able to join us this week!

If you haven’t gotten your passport yet, hurry up, it’s available now for $22.99 at the Fox21 News store, and it’s a great value. You get a free flight of beers at 10 local breweries.

When I arrived, Jesse was already at the bar ordering his flight, so when it was my turn, I just told the friendly beertender that I wanted whatever he didn’t get. She lined them up, and even gave me a spare taster to finish out the tap list. So we were able to have everything available! What a deal!

One note, it’s my understanding, or at least my impression, that they serve their beers closer to the English style, a little less carbonated and a little warmer, than many people are accustomed to. The beers aren’t flat and warm by any means, but they are closer to it than you might be used to.

UPDATE: After the original post went live, we were contacted by Rocky Mountain Brewery’s head brewer, Nick Hilborn and he offered to answer any questions we may have, so I took him up on it. See the updates and addendum’s below.

The Blonde Lager – 4.9% – I didn’t catch the lager part of the listing, and thought it was just a regular blonde, assuming it was an ale. It wasn’t until I looked on their website that I realized my mistake. According to an entry on Untappd, it’s a Helles. It’s really light, with low hop aroma and flavor. Nice balance to it. I caught a hint of sulfur, which of course reminded me of a lager, which is good because that’s what it is. Moderate dry finish.

Spirit Hill Amber – 5.2% ABV – Slightly malty and light, with a pretty dry finish. It’s definitely on the lighter side for an amber, but still what you would expect. I didn’t get much in the way of hop aroma from it, and it finishes moderately dry.

Passion Fruit – 6% ABV – I don’t know what style the base beer on this one is, but it’s very tasty. Lots of passion fruit flavor, and at the finish it almost makes me think of candy. Pretty light as well.

UPDATE: One of the questions we had was “What is the base beer for the Passion Fruit and PB&J Sammich beers?”. It turns out that the Passion Fruit is a part of their gluten free Cider Flavored Beers (CFBs) series. Some of the other flavors that they can year-round are Strawberry, Pineapple, Blueberry, and Peach, but Nick said they have some weirder flavoer (his words, not mine) in the tap room occassionally. For example he said they have a special one called Car RamRod that tastes like bacon and syrup on tap at the time of this posting.

The PB&J Sammich is one of their Bakeshop series along with Da’ Yoopers, Eat A Peach, and America! Apple Pie. The base for these, Nick explained, aren’t really a beer style, but just one that is very bready and malty.

PB&J Sammich – 6% ABV – Again, I can’t tell you what the base beer on this one is, but it has a really nice grape flavor that reinforces the jelly aspect of it. I didn’t really get any peanut butter from it though. I started with a sampler, and then ended up ordering a full pint. The pint had a really light bready aroma and flavor that I didn’t notice in the sampler, keeping with the sandwich theme. This was my favorite beer of the night for sure.

Red Head – Irish Red Ale – 5.2% – The Red Head didn’t have quite the malty backbone that I would expect from a Irish Red. If I sampled it without knowing it’s an Irish red, my guess would have been a light amber. It was still really tasty though.

I have to admit, I might have been having an off night as far as taste buds go, both the Red and Amber didn’t seem as malty as I would have expected, and I didn’t really notice a lot of hop flavor. The beers were certainly tasty none the less, and if in fact my taste buds were working, they would be exceptionally approachable to a new beer drinker.

[Jesse]
Unlike Mike, this was my first trip to Rocky Mountain Brewery. I have had some of their beers before (and even a small poster that my lovely wife sweet-talked someone out of at the All Colorado Brew Fest a few years ago), but no more than a taste here and there.

As Mike mentioned, I was the first of the two of us to arrive and, as is our custom, I ordered my flight straight away. I was feeling adventurous so I ordered a lot of their seasonal or temporary beers with only one flagship. I had mixed results with that strategy.

Accidental Cat IPA – This beer seems to have an interesting back story. It’s a single hop IPA using Zythos hops. I have to be honest, I didn’t care for this beer. I found it to have a very harsh, astringent flavor that seemed to linger for quite a while. I had Mike have a taste and he didn’t notice anything amiss, so I’m beginning to suspect I’m hyper-sensitive to either certain malts or some other component used in the brewing process.

Eat A Peach – 5.5% ABV – If you’re into fruit beers and you like peaches, this beer is a must have for you. I was amazed at the amount of peach flavor they were able to pack into this beer. Very peachy, quite sweet and very light. This would be just the thing to compliment a day of yard work. I’ve been seeing some people making beer floats lately – I’m thinking this might be a good candidate…

Jables – As I was ordering my flight, I was struck by the lack of information provided on the tap list. Normally, they list the name and the style (sometime the ABV, IBU, etc.) but this one was listed simply as “Jables”. I asked the beertender about the this beer and I believe she said that Jabels is an Indian sugar..? I blame myself for not asking clarifying questions and taking better notes. Regardless, this was an interesting beer. Not bad, but I don’t know if I’d like a whole pint. It was quite malty and that flavor hung around quite some time. However, even with the malt, this beer was still pretty light and didn’t have a heavy mouthfeel.

UPDATE: More from the short Q&A with Nick. Jables is one of two beers brewed in honor of Tenatious D coming to Red Rocks. The other beer, Kage, is no longer available but a blend of the two was called The D. This is a Belgian Dark Ale with jaggery used as the adjunct sugar. Popular in southeast Asia, it imparted the maltiness I was tasting.

Brunette Brown – 5.5% ABV – This American Brown was the one flagship beer I tried in the flight. It started nicely malty (but not as malty as the Jables, to be honest) and finished very light. The malt flavor does not linger. I am loathe to use the word, but I would consider this a ‘sessionable’ beer since your palate wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the malt. I’d probably order a pint of this.

Mountain IPA – 7.25% ABV – Once we were done with the flights, we found that we had more talking to do, so we ordered a pint as well. I decided on another of the flagships, the Mountain IPA. I did not regret that decision al all. This is a solid IPA. It’s quite good. It’s nicely balanced where the hops are certainly present, but aren’t too aggressive.

Beers we’ve reviewed at Rocky Mountain: