So, I am going to be spending 3 weeks in Loveland, CO for some job training. I will hopefully get a rental car (they are assigning 1 per 3 people), and I am going to try to travel on the weekends and get to some of the nearby towns. But I was hoping one of you guys could recommend me a nice neighborhood pub where I could get good food and a solid pint.
i think the is new ale house (sure on the name), the pumphouse in Longmont is pretty good but there are about 16 breweries between Loveland, Greeley, Fort Collins, and longmont. plus a few in some of the smaller towns nearby. In Fort Collins, Mayor Of old town is great (100+ beers about half from CO), choice city is good, of course CB and Potts/coopersmiths brew good beer and have good food.
it really depends on how far you want to drive away from loveland. Fort collins and longmont about 20min each
Agreed on Coopersmith’s in Fort Collins, the food is good, “American” with some British leanings (bangers & mash, shepards’ pie, etc.). But more importantly their beer is usually high quality. I haven’t eaten at them, but I know Boulder Beer and Oskar Blues serve food at their locations, and both are in the Boulder greater area. Other places in Fort Collins that I recommend are Equinox, New Belgium, and Odell’s, no food though.
Avery Brewing in Boulder. Great tap room, great tour, and right next to the brewery is an awesome deli that delivers to the tap room…
A number of new breweries have opened right in Loveland (Grimm Bros?..but I haven’t been to any of them), but yes, you can’t go 50 miles in any direction without hitting many…
North (fort collins): Coopersmiths, New Belgium, Odell’s, FtCollins, Pateros Creek, A-B (go for the draft horses/free tour), Funkwerks, and probably more that I can’t think of…there are some that are coming on line any time now…
South: (Longmont) Oskar Blues, Left Hand, Pumphouse
East: (Greeley) Crabtree
West: Estes Park
Southwest (Boulder): Avery, Boulder, Walnut, Mountain Sun…and many, many more:
South south west (Golden): Golden City Brewery, Coor’s (free tour)
Feeling randy? (far south in downtown and Lower Downtown (many in walking distance of each other)Denver…45 minutes +/-): Great Divide, Wynkoop, River North, Denver Beer, Prost, Trve, Rock Bottom, Pint’s, Chop House, Brekenridge, Strange, Renegade, Wit’s end, vine street…(and that doesn’t count the ones between boulder and Denver, and the ones in south denver suburbs.
Bring an extra Liver and count on some sick days (or vacation days if you can swing it)…you have a lot of work to do.
We only got to New Belgium, Odell’s, and Equinox in about 1.5 days. Will have to go back again to hit someothers.
I think those are the best three in terms of quality and variety. What did you think of Equinox?
The beers we tried were all well crafted and hit the style as stated. In some ways those beers were like excellent homebrew, as they were not compromised by production constraints, i.e. same base malt for many different brews, beyond where that malt should be used. I found the beers similar to some of Odell’s as far as the amount of craft in them.