 Fort Collins is frequently listed in "best place to live" articles in national magazines. For those of us who don't live there, you can still visit, and here's a great excuse to make the trip: Fort Collins takes biking very seriously. Ditto, beer. Taa daa! Brewiking!
Just the thing for a fun outing with my two daughters. You see, I had great company, a fool-proof designated driver (Vivian, 19), and the prospects of a great educational field trip, since I had to do research for this story RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM.
You don't have to even bring a bike with you, we learned. The city supports a bike library (fcbikelibrary.org) where anyone can borrow a bike for an hour or a week. Twenty seven miles of off-street bike paths basically circumnavigate this flat town. The Armstrong Hotel, a 1923 downtown landmark renovated in 2004, provides loaner bikes for its guests. A self-guided tour pamphlet spells out in detail how to tour the breweries by bike; pick it up at Old Town Square in the Cafe Bicyclette (970-419-1050), one of the bike library's two locations.
My girls and I raced through all four breweries in one day. Based on that experience, I recommend that you take two days and pace yourself—it's a good rule for beer drinking, brewery touring, and life in general.  New Belgium Brewing Co. (newbelgium.com)—This is the largest of the craft beer companies in town, and it gets 140,000 visitors per year (sign up early for guided tours because they do fill up, or take the self-guided option). The tour guides are evidently selected for their extroversion and humor, and all the other employees smile and say hello as you pass by. Happy workers, tasty beer—is there a connection?
The building itself is designed in a style we might call “prairie industrial,” or a riff on a flatland ranch: metal roofs, vertical siding, and faux silos. And it's green, too. Ask about “daylighting,” energy co-generation from waste, and recycled building materials, including beetle-killed pine, something Colorado will have in great abundance over the next few years.
New Belgium's tasting room provides up to four 4-oz. servings of a wide selection of brews. Since I was traveling with minors, we appreciated the non-alcoholic seltzer; it was unlike any I've ever had before.
By the way, even in bike-crazed Fort Collins, the New Belgium people are particularly serious about their biking. They sponsor the Tour de Fat bike festival, September 6 this year. Expect costumes, the largest bike parade that you'll ever get to ride in, and prizes. It's strict frivolity. (Okay, there is a “bikes heal all ills” subtext to the event, but the event never gets preachy.)
 Fort Collins Brewery (fortcollinsbrewery.com)—The building could be described as “strictly industrial,” but that doesn't lessen the personal devotion given to every detail of the process by the owners, Jan and Tom Peters. (Jan says that part of the magic of brewing in Fort Collins is that all the independent breweries get along well, and are inclined to treat each other as friendly and familiar neighbors). Since this brewery is super-small, you may find yourselves getting a petite tour by one of them.
In the tasting room—and some wag noted that most brewery visitors are interested in a tour that takes them straight from the front door to the tap—Fort Collins Brewery offers eight tastes for $4 or 6 tastes for $3, with various specials. Peters says that “craft beers have put the flavor back in beer,” and there's no better way to prove it than to sample.
 Odell Brewing Co. (odells.com)—If your main interests include the history of beer, the steps involved in making beer, and the defining characteristics of a lager versus an ale versus a stout, then go to this (and, really, all the breweries) early in the day. It gets busier as the day progresses. And, like Fort Collins Brewery, Odell is at capacity and may expand soon.
At this point Odell is running a 50-barrel brewhouse, but it has kept its original equipment so it can make experimental or specialty batches. When we visited, staffer Amanda Johnson was brewing up a personalized batch for her fall wedding. Odell has a brewmaster, of course (that's Doug Odell), and a microbiologist on staff. But Johnson says there's “a lot of input from everybody” on experimental brews, and it's through such collaboration that they come up with new products.
In the tap room Odell makes an effort not to undercut local bars in pricing, so its tasting room charges $4 for six tastes. A modest fee didn't seem to keep people away on a recent Wednesday; maybe that's because Wednesdays have live music.
 Anheuser Busch (anheuser-busch.com)—The maker of Budweiser and dozens of other brand names has 12 manufacturing sites around the country, Fort Collins among them. As a company, AB now produces 50 percent of all the beer sold in this country. Our guide, Luke Ragland, explained AB's success by saying the goal has always been to “make a beer that everybody likes to drink.” Clearly, a good idea.
The tours are slick, packaged, and yet possibly the best chance in town to really get to know how beer is cooked up, fermented, finished, and bottled. We're told that often fewer than 10 people are on a tour in the fall, so it can be a personal experience in an otherwise impersonal facility.
In the AB tap room, visitors are welcome to two 12-ounce samples at the end of the tour. For younger visitors, root beer or energy drinks (all AB products) are available. We spent our tasting room time debating the merits of using rice in a beer, as Budweiser does; die-hard traditionalists may fight that. On the other hand, what could be more traditional than the Budweiser recipe that hasn't changed since 1876?
As my girls and I chatted on the way home, we reviewed three take-home lessons.
Number one: Craft beer is a bargain. At $1.50 retail for 12 ounces, it's a third the price of a fancy-pants coffee of equal size. Number two: water matters. Sitting on the Cache la Poudre River, Fort Collins has a great, fresh, snow-fed supply. Third, not much has changed in the world of beer making in the last hundred years (except energy conservation), and that's a good thing.
 Enough about beer. At some point, you’ll need to eat, lest you get giddy from sampling the wares.
Prepare for lunch by stopping at the farmer's market in downtown Fort Collins at 200 W. Oak to buy fresh produce, possibly fruit trucked over from the western slope. It's open Saturday mornings until October 18. Then go to the Fort Collins Food Co-op at 250 E. Mountain Avenue (ftcfoodcoop.com) and buy locally produced Nita Crisp “bread crackers” and cheeses from Fort Collins' MouCo Cheese Co. (mouco.com). This small firm offers three soft cheeses-- a Camembert, a rouge, and a new  blü-veined product--and is winning all kinds of awards for them. Watch the shelf life; it starts out firm and as it gets softer it gets stronger, but it won't improve indefinitely.
Josh Bock, a MouCo employee, says that “beer is the preferred pairing for cheese,” so with fruit, crackers, cheese and beer, you're set for an all local, all fresh picnic.
 For dinner, I asked seven local people for their recommendations; all seven offered as their first choice CooperSmith's brew-pub right on the Old Town Square. Seven for seven—how can you go wrong? The menu is extensive, the atmosphere casual, and the beer is brewed on site. In case you haven't had enough brew talk, the staff is highly knowledgeable as well.
If you want to go upscale, try Plank (181 N. College). A local sommelier opened this small plate restaurant recently, and it features great wines, local brews and a clever rendition of “macaroni and cheese” made with MouCo's camembert.
As for us, we're generally not much of a beer-drinking clan. But it's fair to say that when I do buy, from now on it will be beer from Fort Collins. Why ship a bottle of liquid any further than you have to, especially when the local brewing scene is so fine? Wendy Underhill, a writer, parent and community do-gooder, has set a goal for 2008: "Have more fun." Traveling the byways of Colorado is one of the big ways she's fulfilling that goal. |
