The Brew SiteVisiting Avery Brewing in Boulder, Colorado
At the beginning of this month my wife and I spent the weekend in Golden, Colorado, and on the day we arrived we took a side trip up to Boulder to visit Avery Brewing Company. To be sure, there are plenty of brewery side trips to be made from the Golden/Denver area, but on this trip Avery was high on the list—it’s Rumpkin season, after all, and I’ve been a fan of the brewery’s beers for ages.
Founded in 1993, Avery won its first GABF medal the following year, and opened its first taproom in 2003. 2011 was the first year the notorious rum barrel-aged pumpkin ale, Rumpkin, was released, kicking off the brewery’s annual barrel series, and naturally Rumpkin along with several other barrel beers were on tap.
The current brewery and restaurant opened in 2015; according to Wikipedia: “In 2015, the brewery closed the doors of its original brewery and opened their new $30 million, 67,000 sq. ft. brewery, nearly doubling their brewing capacity and providing space for a potential expansion to 500,000 barrels per year.”
And, one year ago, the Mahou-San Miguel Group purchased a 30% minority stake in Avery, which I was unaware of; this is the same brewing group that owns 30% of Founders Brewing.
The brewery offers guided tours at 4pm each day, which are free, but if you don’t want to wait or are on a different schedule, you can take a self-guided tour any time. Yes, you can take your beer with you. So, we started with lunch and beers in the tap room before finishing the visit with a tour.
The tap room has a full kitchen and sports 30 taps of Avery beer; it’s comfortable in the American brewpub style, with plenty of natural light, airy open ductwork, concrete floor, and handsome wood tables with barstool-height seating. With the cornucopia of beer available, I opted for several five ounce pours across a range of the offerings, while Sherri got a snifter of the 2018 Rumpkin. This year’s vintage of Rumpkin is 16.3% alcohol by volume and delicious; and a fun fact—you can fill a growler for $64!
A note about beer ordering: the servers all order your beer and food right at your table, via smartphone app. When the order goes in, the bar pours the beer and whomever is available runs it to your table. The beers we ordered we delivered while we were still chatting with our server! Yes, I was impressed with the system because it was the first (and so far, only) time I’ve seen one like it. But now I wonder why all breweries/tap rooms aren’t doing this.
The beers I ordered were Fall Day IPA, Ellie’s Brown Ale, Samael’s (rotating vintage), and Avery IPA.
Here are my notes on the beers:
- Fall Day IPA – “our classic IPA infused with Colorado spruce tips” – 6.4% ABV. Pretty prominent spruce, piney flavor, adds a nice bitter component to an already-solid IPA.
- Ellie’s Brown Ale – a classic! – 5.5% ABV. Light roast, malty, light hops, a textbook well-brewed brown ale which is a rarity these days.
- Samael’s – “A resurrection of our demon strength ale aged with oak chips” – 14–18% ABV. Because it’s a rotating vintage I don’t know what specific year or strength. Oaky, boozy, sweet, intensely “barleywine” with the alcohol definitely present but not hot—smooth. Flavor is boozy with oak, vanilla, a cloying sweetness and then some heat rising into the back and nasal cavity. For all that, it’s balanced and drinkable.
- Avery IPA – another classic – 6.5% ABV. Classic IPA with a solid bitterness and good hop flavor—herbal and floral, some citrus peel, bold. Tasty.
Lunch was excellent, too. I ordered the Salmon Sammy, with fries, and Sherri got the Fried Chicken Sammy with a side salad. It’s not a huge lunch menu, but has a satisfying variety of options. And the service was excellent and helpful.
When we were finished eating, I ordered a pint of Old Jubilation Ale, the brewery’s classic English strong ale seasonal, to accompany us on the self-guided tour. First stop: the taproom upstairs, the bar of which is open all day while the restaurant opens at 4pm. Through there is the gift shop and entrance to the brewery for tours.
The self-guided tour was constrained to an overhead level that spanned the brewery, starting at packaging and conditioning and running through fermentation to the brew deck. At the far end a private event was taking place but there was a pleasant seating area overlooking the brewhouse, and throughout it was a fascinating view of the operation at work. Of course I enjoyed the Old Jubilation throughout the tour; I would recommend accompanying every brewery tour with a full beer.
The gift shop featured the usual clothing, glassware, and swag, and offered a cooler full of packaged beer to go. We picked up a bottle of Rumpkin to drink at some point on the trip. Downstairs from the gift shop was the main brewery entrance (as opposed to the tap room entrance), with a view through glass into the barrel room.
Overall this was a very good visit all around; beer, food, service, and tour were great and my only regret is that I wouldn’t have more time to try some of the other specialty and pub-only beers on offer. I guess that means another visit in the future!
Avery Brewing Company
4910 Nautilus Ct.
Boulder, CO 80301
Here is the full gallery of photos:
