United Nations of Beer

Crested Butte Brewery

by Lucia Novara
(Beer Delegate, CO, USA)

Crested Butte Brewery
Crested Butte, CO, USA

My latest adventure in the twisty, turny and occasionally blurry path through Colorado's beers took me deep into the heart of the Rockies.

I visited the town of Crested Butte with 15 of my stalwart drinking and skiing buddies. Our fabulous three-day weekend coincided with the drinking-est day of the year next to St. Patty's: The Superbowl.

For our international readers, the Superbowl is the National Football League's final match to decide who rules to sport of American football. The name comes from the Greek prefix "Supa", which means "to consume" and the Latin suffix "bole", which means "Flamin' Nacho Doritos".

It's a special day in American culture and in order to celebrate properly, we needed to make sure we were well stocked.

My fiancé (now husband) Craig "White Chocolate" Harcek did some research and discovered that Crested Butte had its very own brewery.

The very aptly named Crested Butte Brewery claims that optimism and creativity are inspired by their brews.

A mighty claim, to be sure, but it did inspire one of our crew to try to climb the 200ft ridge behind our condo and snowboard down after three hours of drinking it in the hot tub, so I guess the optimism claim could hold some water.

Crested Butte Brewery was started by the Garcia family, with patriarch Gary Garcia distributing the beer the old fashioned way: door-to-door delivery from his horse trailer.

It is currently owned by none other than the actor Tom Skerritt, who many of you will remember as "Viper" from Top Gun. You may be less familiar with his most recent project- a TV mini-series titled "H2O II: The Trojan Horse". I eagerly anticipate the spring release of his Steel Magnolia Stout. (I jest, I jest... but not about the name of the mini-series. You can’t make that up.)

Crested Butte Brewery sells its beers out of the Idle Spur Restaurant from the tap, bottle and keg. Being the highly-motivated individual that he is, Craig got two kegs: a half-barrel for the weekend and a quarter-barrel for himself. When asked if anyone else could drink off his keg, he replied, "You'll have to pry it out of my cold, drunk hands."

Links to my beer reviews from Crested Butte Brewery:

Red Lady Ale

Paradise Crisp Golden Ale

New Belgium Sunshine Wheat

Boulder Brewery's Singletrack Copper Ale

Grand Teton Brewing's Bitch Creek ESB

Sking, Superbowl and suds for all, oh, what a weekend it was! Yet, as I look back over our three days of debauchery I can't help but wonder... could we have finished a keg of the White Buffalo Peace Ale too?

And if we had ordered three, would Tom "Viper" Skerritt have brought it to our door in a horse trailer from the Crested Butte Brewery itself? Questions for the ages, indeed.