THE COCKTAIL HOUR: Denver Pub Crawl, Part 2

Last week, we started the crawl with three pubs on or near the 16th Street Mall.  Today, we'll finish it with a couple of joints in LoDo and then move onto our last stop on Colfax Avenue, just east of downtown.

Watch the Video!

Going upscale for our first stop, it's the Denver Chophouse and Brewery which is adjacent to Coors Field in the old Union Pacific building.

This is no ratty dive bar. It's a very nice restaurant, with great food, that happens to also brew beer...as you do in Denver. The food is awesome.  We have a lobster club sandwich, Cesar salad, new york steak, fries, sweet potato fries, and a bacon-cheeseburger for Tim.

The beers are all in-house brews.  We have a Dortmunder lager, a crisp refreshing German style beer, and their wheat ale, which is filtered unlike most of your wheat beers and has a clear, clean look.  Both were very good, the bitterness of the Dortmunder just right...even Letty liked it...and a very crisp taste to the wheat ale.

Next, it was a quick hop over to Blake Street for one of our favorite stops on the tour, the Falling Rock Tap House.  Not a brewery but what a selection! Their slogan is "No Crap on Tap" and it's fitting.  You'll not find the likes of Bud, Bud Lite, Miller, or even the state's biggest beer, Coors.  Like sitting in someone's converted garage, we relaxed on worn leather chairs while the fresh air wafted in from the large doors.

 Tim and I had New Belgium's Mothership Wit, a wheat beer very similar to Hoegaarden, and Letty had the La Folie, also from Boulder's New Belgium, a tart, sour ale which turned out to be her favorite of the trip.  A bit too sour for me and way to sour from Tim (be sure to see his reaction in the video above, it's priceless).  Letty, always a fan of the sours, really seemed to like it.

Our last stop was supposed to be our first stop last week.  We had trouble finding it but found I had transposed a couple of numbers on the address.  The Cheeky Monk on Colfax, about 4 blocks east of the capitol, is a Belgian Cafe with a large number of great Belgian brews on tap.

We were lucky to get there between 11 and 2 when almost everything is half price and there's a great selection of delicious lunch plates for only $5.99.

To eat, Letty and I had a penne with a gorgonzola cream sauce and bacon, while Tim had sliders with a side of fries cooked in truffle oil.

Our first round of beers was two dubbels...Maredsous for Tim and La Trappe for me.  Both had a musty, yeasty, and smooth taste that were almost identical.  Letty had a Bacchus sour ale, which she liked, but it just had an initial jolt of sour, which quickly dissapated.

Next, I had a St. Bernardus Quadrupel, which had a banana taste and weighed in at a hefty 12% ABV.  Tim had an Ommegang Rare Vos, which again was quite smooth and delicious, while Letty had a Kasteel Rouge, another Flanders sour ale but this one was actually way more sweet than sour, tasting like a fermented Dr. Pepper.

 And that's the end of the crawl, be sure to check out the video embedded above to follow our exploits across the pubs and breweries of downtown Denver.

-Darryl