Downtown Colorado Springs Pub Crawl – June 2019

Jesse and I decided that we should do a pub crawl downtown. There’s so many places to hit down there, and it seems like a pub crawl is a logical conclusion, right?

So we started with a pretty ambitious goal, 7 stops, including 5 Breweries and 2 craft beer locations. We started out at about 3:30 in the afternoon, figuring we would miss any crowds, and we could grab some food downtown somewhere.

[Jesse] For those not familiar with downtown Colorado Springs, see the map at the bottom of the page for the breweries we planned on visiting and the route we took.

Any rules? No, not really. We were going to limit ourselves to one pint of beer at each stop, and otherwise play it by ear. We had the CoBrewtalk wives drop us off downtown, and we were going to catch a Uber or Lyft back home.

Brewer’s Republic

We started out Brewer’s Republic, it’s near the north end of our crawl area, and seemed like a great spot to kick things off. Neither Jesse or I had been there. Turns out it’s a great choice! They have a great tap list, and the staff there are just excellent!

My one beer was Cocoa Rojo from Cascade Brewing. It had lots of Brett aroma, moderatly tart. The Elderberry adds impressions of sourness, berry flavors and the cocoa comes out as it warms. Delicious!

[Jesse] This is a great taproom, my only regret is that I don’t live closer so that it would be more convenient to visit regularly. I am glad that we visited early in the day before the “cool people” started going out for the evening. I can only imaging that this place is jumpin’ on the weekend. It has a great vibe.

I opted for the Alesong Brewing Touch of Brett with Galaxy hops to start the evening. Excellent choice. A great farmhouse Saison with a definite tropical flavor profile thanks to the Galaxy hops.

Oskar Blues Grill and Brew

Just a short jaunt down the road (.1 Miles) is Oskar Blues. I didn’t realize it, but it had been the downtown location for Old Chicago a while back. At this point in our travels, it was starting to rain a little bit. It was one of those rains with sporadic, yet humongous, rain drops. No worries though, we stayed pretty dry.

This place is pretty cool! There’s all sorts of levels and bars behind bars behind game rooms. We ended up in a bar in the basement, after walking through a pretty sweet game room which had a Bocce ball court set up in it. I’ll have to make sure to head back there sometime, with someone who knows how to play, and see if it’s any fun.

My one beer here was Guns ‘n’ Rose by Oskar Blues. It’s a very approachable sour beer, only slightly tart, really light in body with a clean finish. It has a slight corn flavor, and it’s just delicious. Also, the color is beautiful.

[Jesse] I agree with Mike that the layout of this restaurant was intriguing. Going down the stairs and past the game room and into another (!) bar gave it a ‘speakeasy-esque’ feel.

I went with the Left Hand Wheels Gose ‘Round Sour this time. So far, I was batting .1000 as far as the beers went. Great sour beer with a clean raspberry flavor. Left Hand is definitely one of my favorite breweries.

Phantom Canyon

6 minutes on foot gets us from Oskar Blues to Phantom Canyon Brewing. we’ve beer here before, but it’s good to be somewhere familiar. There’s some sort of terrible music playing on the stereo, so we ended up moving, but hey, we’re enjoying ourselves, and it’s no problem. We’re only around for the one beer anyway.

The wait staff takes decent care of us, and my I have Nikola, a Farmhouse Ale (Saison). It has a nice saison character, and it’s super light. Coming in at 4.1% ABV makes it a great sessionable beer.

[Jesse] I chose the Daydream IPA at Phantom Canyon. This was a pretty good IPA, and maybe it was the fact that it was on nitro, but it just didn’t hit all the right notes for me. I’ll have to go back and try this one on CO2 if they have it.

Brass Brewing Company

10 minutes away from Phantom Canyon is Brass brewing. This is the longest leg of the trip, and it’s a piece of cake. The weather was holding out for us. It the rain that hit us at Oskar Blues had gone away, and it wasn’t too sunny or hot. turned into a really nice walk.

Although the weather was holding out, our willpower with the one pint per stop wasn’t. We threw that out the window and decided that we’d go ahead indulge a little here at Brass.

I had the Warpath Blonde Stout, which was pretty great since I had just brewed a Coffee and Cocoa Blonde Stout on May 4th at the Big Brew, this was kind of a preview of what was to come. It’s of course, not dark, had a really nice coffee flavor and aroma, with a slightly sweet finish. The mouthfeel was what you would expect from a stout. Just what I needed to fortify me for another walk.

Then I followed that selection up with the Fury Elderberry Braggot. This was the first braggot I’ve ever had, and I didn’t quite know what to expect. It had nice strong berry flavors, with a thick mouthfeel. It was delicious and I’ll gladly try more braggots in the future.

[Jesse] As Mike said, we decided to eschew the one-beer rule here – maybe because we’ve already had a few and were starting to get into the “pub crawl” vibe or, more likely, it’s because Brass is an awesome brewery and we wanted a few of their beers. In fact, not only did I have the agreed upon two pints, but I also had a taster of the Fury Elderberry Braggot. I enjoyed this as much as Mike did.

The first pint I tried was the 55/95 Blood Orange Belgian. Blood Orange, you say? Belgian, you say? Sign me up! It didn’t disappoint. The blood orange was present, but not overbearing and I could definitely taste the Belgian character. Absolutely one of my favorite beers of the night.

I also had the 10-42 Strawberry Rhubarb Milkshake IPA. That sounded just “weird” enough to pique my interest. I wasn’t sure what to expect, fearing that the rhubarb would be a bit too much, but I was worried over nothing. I don’t think I’m overstating it by saying that this is one of the best milkshake IPAs I’ve had. The strawberry and rhubarb flavors complimented each other very well (as anyone familiar with the pie knows) and just strong enough. I particularly enjoyed the mouthfeel of this beer. It earned the milkshake moniker by having a creamy feel.

Local Relic

9 Minutes Away

Here I had the Chili Wheat Sour. I loved it. Lots of delicious brett flavor, a little chili spiciness. It was just plain delicious.

[Jesse] I realize now that we probably did ourselves a disservice by going to Local Relic this late in the crawl. Their beers are probably a bit too complex to really appreciate after having several others. If (or likely, when) we do this gain, we should consider making this stop #1.

Having never been to Local Relic before, I was gearing myself up for some “different” flavors, so i thought I’d give the Brett Gruit a try. This was just what I was looking for. It had the Brett characteristics I was expecting and it was slightly dry. Very tasty.

I was able to break the only rule of pub crawl at this stop as well and ordered another beer while Mike was attending to the call of nature. I tried the Blegian Brett Wheat this time. While I certainly got the Brett in this beer, I don’t think I got the Belgian characteristic I was expecting. Still quite good, however.

Iron Bird

What did I have here? I don’t have any clue. By this point I wasn’t taking any notes, pictures had stopped awhile ago, and we were just talking and having a good time. We spend quite awhile at Iron bird, and I don’t know how many pints we had. Probably just enough.

We even had the whole place to ourselves. At one point a group came in, had a shot, and then left. It was an even match between patrons and staff.

[Jesse] I was apparently running on autopilot by this time since I was able to log both of the beers I had into Untappd. Like Mike, I was pretty wrapped up in conversation and enjoying myself more that I was into rating the beers, but I apparently liked them quite a bit.

I had the Bushwhacker Cream Ale to start. I don’t recall having a strong reaction to this either way other than I remember enjoying it.

I also had the Pascal in Paradise Belgian Tripel which I finished the evening with. This was a very good tripel. Belgian characteristics as expected.

FH Beerworks Downtown

Sadly, we didn’t make it to FH Beerworks. When we decided to leave Iron Bird, we realized FH would be closed when we arrived.

Conclusion

It was a heck of a good time, and it was really pretty easy to hit all of our stops, if we had started earlier we could have still made FH Beerworks. As soon as Pikes Peak’s Lager house opens up, we may have to try it in the reverse order.