Three Great Colorado Craft Beers for Summer
It’s time to crack open a cold one and welcome warmer temps with frosty Colorado craft beers.
While you might have first visited Colorado for its fantastic winter, chances are, if you stuck around, it was because summer in this state is so pleasant. It doesn’t get much better than enjoying warm days exploring the mountains, rivers, and lakes, followed by cool evenings watching thunderstorms and sunsets. The only thing that makes these days better? Colorado craft beers.
These are three terrific options from Colorado craft breweries to try this summer.
Hot Day on the River Refreshment: Ska Brewing Mexican Logger
Durango’s largest brewery, Ska Brewing, has been making their seasonal summer brew for over two decades. This was the first Colorado lager to be canned in the state, and it gives a strong craft feel to a Mexcian-style lager that tastes especially great after floating down a river on a hot day. Brewed with Saaz hops, which add flavor but don’t make it a “hoppy beer” by any means (20 IBUs), this 5.2% easy-drinking beer can get dressed up with a lime wedge or go down just as well without.
Hop Head’s Delight: Sanitas Brewing Experimental Hop Series El Dorado Double IPA
Sanitas Brewing has made a ton of great progress in recent years mastering the way hops are expressed in their IPAs. The latest edition of the company’s Experimental Hop Series is proof of this: It is one of the better double IPAs to come out of Boulder in a while. With loads of tropical and stone fruit notes and a very sessionable 80 IBUs, chances are IPA lovers will drink the limited-edition beer with gusto. Just remember to take it easy, with a 9.7% ABV, drinking a lot of these will catch up with you quicker than a long day exploring at a high elevation.
Crazy Good Sour: Crooked Stave Get the Funk Out
The brewers at Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project are known for creating intense, complex, powerful barrel-aged beers of all sorts. The best, at least according to this author as well as the Great American Beer Festival, is their Get the Funk Out series. The first edition, Get the Funk Out Vol.1, earned a prestigious Gold Medal in the Belgian Style Sour Ale category at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival. Honestly, however, all four currently-available “Volumes” of Get the Funk Out are, quite simply, top notch. If you want to break away from traditional beer flavors this summer while,say, savoring a colorful Colorado sunset,, you can’t go wrong with a bottle of this tasty stuff available at Crooked Stave’s Denver and Fort Collins tasting rooms.
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