
DENVER, COLORADO
Had dinner at
WYNKOOP BREWING, Colorado’s first brewpub (opened 1988 and closed 2015), at the time 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.
www.wynkoop.com