Fossil Craft Beer Company – September 2019 Visit

September 24, 2019 Jesse

Now that we’ve achieved our (admittedly, very modest) goal of visiting all of the breweries in Colorado Springs, we asked ourselves “What do we do now?”. Do we start visiting the taprooms in town? Probably. Do we widen our area of interest and start hitting some of the excellent breweries in Castle Rock, Denver and parts beyond? Eventually. However, one thing that we agreed we wanted to do sooner than anything else was to re-visit some of the places we crossed off our list early and haven’t been able to get back to because, well, we had already been there. Fossil Craft Beer Company was near to the top of the list of places we decided we were going to visit first.

This week, we were joined by our friend, Bill. We were pleased to hear that a change in his work schedule might allow him to join us more often. Not only is he a great guy to chat with, but it’s nice to hear his opinions on beer since he has such different tastes that either Mike or I.

Wild Card Belgian – 4.7% 10 IBU – I have to admit, this one was not one of my favorites. This one was pretty light, but I was really missing the Belgian character that I would expect from a beer classified as a Belgian pale ale. It was a bit hoppy, however. To top things off, I was getting a bit of a harsh off-flavor at the finish that threw me.

Megalodon Blonde – 4.7% 22 IBU – This one was a bit too light for my liking. I knew going in that it would be light (blonde, duh), but this was a bit too light. It was sweet with a slightly hoppy finish.

Hazy Trails – 6.6% 32 IBU – This NEIPA is a collaboration brew with the Trails and Open Space Coalition. A portion of the sale of each pint is donated to TOSC. I quite enjoyed this IPA. It was hop forward with a piney hop flavor, but well balanced. Definitely would recommend this.

[Mike]

We’ve had the opportunity to visit Fossil before, but it was so long ago that we were creating individual posts for each beer. We both remember leaving Fossil Brewing Company fairly impressed with their beers.

Not quite so much this time. Maybe it was something in the air, or maybe it was an off night for either Fossil or for us, but either way, the beers we enjoyed most were the IPAs. I understand that this is brewing beer, not some assembly line, sometimes you have off days, or beers that aren’t quite up to the normal levels of excellence, and hey, what can you do?

Overall, the beers were OK, we had some good conversation with friends, and a great Grilled Cheese sandwich from Milky Way food truck, in my book, that goes in the win column. The service and staff were as great as ever, and we’ll just have to hit them again at another time. No harm, no foul.

Strawberry Bonanza – Cream Ale – 4.2% ABV – This was pretty light, as you would expect, and the fruit flavor was really mild.

Red Rock Amber – American Amber / Red Ale – This was pretty tasty. I would have liked to have some more in the way of malt flavors, but it was still very drinkable and light. Slightly Dry finish.