BOULDER, COLORADO
During August ’07, did full brewpub tour, starting at outskirts with SOUTHERN SUN (sister restaurant-brewpub of quainter Mountain Sun). Opened autumn ’03, Southern Sun’s a spacious family-oriented lodge located at Table Mesa Mall in red brick freestanding building with white grain silo, big side patio, couched lounge area, and silver brew tanks. Tomes and liquor bottles bedeck oak book shelving of left side L-shaped bar. Pub fare included nachos, hummus, soups, salads, and fabulous burgers.
Diligently skirting traditional categories, brewer Curt Meyer served tart peach-candied corn-dried biscuit-y wheat light body Quinn’s Golden Ale, Seltzer-like cherry-tart raspberry-oxidized dry-hopped Raspberry Wheat, subtle dried-fruited cereal-grained chocolate-nut-tinged wood-burnt Annapurna Amber, and banana-fronted lemony-clove clean-watered solvent-like Ruckus Witbier.
Admirably analogous were sharp spruce-juiced apple-pear-sweetened grapefruit-soured floral-tinged Colorado Kind Ale, bitterer resin-hopped peach-y grapefruit-lavished Illusion Dweller IPA, and piney Chinook-hopped candy apple-grazed orange peel-grapefruit-dried floral peach-dabbed FYIPA. Pleasant chipotle-jalapeno notes counter coffee bean dryness, chocolate seed bittering, and Kahlua murk of Isadore Java Porter while equally dry nitro-fused Old School Stout (and its more grainy tapped version) extended hop-roasted black coffee illusions to Band-aid-wafted black cherry nuance. Lacquered ginger-eucalyptus-wintergreen-freshened lemongrass-chamomile-impinged citric-hinged Jah Man Ginger tests experimentalists.