DENVER, COLORADO
Had dinner at WYNKOOP BREWING, Colorado’s first brewpub (1988), now housing brew master Tom Larsen (taught the art of brewing by North Star’s Kyle Carstens), August ‘07. Across from Coors Field in Denver’s Union Station midtown section, Wynkoop has tremendous capacity and certain upscale elegance reinforced by beautiful wood bar, finely prepared dishes (venison medallions; ranch steaks; lamb; trout; burgers), embossed copper tile ceiling, and second floor billiard room.
Located inside grand JS Brown Mercantile building, Wynkoop’s glass-encased brew tanks served maize-dried yellow-orange-fruited Light Rail Ale, the sweeter Marzen-styled Railyard Ale (with its peppery-hopped tea-stained orange-burnt floral wheat setting), and airily carbolic cocoa-bitter chocolate-roasted stewed-pruned B3K Schwarzbier.
Perky German-styled, lemon-banana-clove-spiked, daintily hop-fizzed, vanilla-bubblegummy Wix A Wheat and cask-conditioned orange-peeled piney-hopped currant-dashed Monkey Fist IPA got heads up. But thin vegetal-fig-vexed St. Charles ESB did not. Peculiar jalapeno peppering girded earthen dried fruit murk of Patty’s Chili Beer (more approachable than Fort Collins-based Coopersmith’s similar Sigda’s Green Chili).
On the dark side, mildly creamy Splatz Porter tempered black chocolate entry with cherry puree, hazelnut, and cappuccino illusions. Meanwhile, black chocolate and black cherry fronted fig-dried wood-charred walnut-tinged Sagebrush Stout.