The Cocktail Hour: Oktoberfest Brews

We love Oktoberfest, the celebration of King Ludwig's marriage, here at The World on Wheels. We make it a point to attend one of our local celebrations each year.

We also love the special brews breweries make for this occasion each year.

One of my favorite selections from the 72 taps of T. Phillips Alehouse is the very well balanced Spaten Oktoberfest. Smooth, a tiny hint of sweetness, with just a hint of caramelly hoppiness, a pint goes down so well any time of year but it's of limited availability.

Recently, we had a barbecue over at my mother-in-law's house and tasted a few others to compare.

Widmer Brothers Okto was nice but a bit blander than the Spaten offering. OK but not worth the extra two bucks our local store charges for a six-pack over the other Widmer offerings.

Next, it was on to the Sam Adams Octoberfest beer (notice the Americanized spelling). This is better. Pretty tasty and I can drink it easily all night but noticeably sweeter than the standard-bearing Spaten.

Last was the Leinenkugel Oktoberfest from Wisconsin. With their overly sweet summer shandies, I wasn't expecting too much from this but it blew me away with just a tinge of caramelly sweetness finely balanced by a decent hoppy bite.  I'd like to find some more of this before the season's over.

Cheers!

Darryl

THE COCKTAIL HOUR: Oregon Ale Taste Off

It's Oktoberfest season and here at The World on Wheels we're celebrating by focusing our Cocktail Hours on beer...

Tim and I are back again, this time tasting two Oregon produced ales.  Why?  Because this is what I found in the clearance basket at Albertson's!

The first ale is Drifter Pale Ale, produced by the Widmer Brother Brewery of Portland.  They're more famous for their hefeweisen and I'd never even heard of this ale before.  According to the brewery, there is supposed to be notes of citrus in the flaver.  It's an amber colored brew with a slight off-taste, probably that citrus essence they're going for.

Watch the Video!

The second is Dead Guy Ale, produced by the Rogue Brewery out of Newport.  A cloudy, golden ale, this was made in celebration of the Mayan Day of the Dead.  The skeleton on the label makes it popular with Grateful Dead fans.  Smooth, and tasty, we liked this one the best.

Cheers!

-Darryl

THE COCKTAIL HOUR: St. Pete Pub Crawl, Part Two

Last week, we took you along for our warm-up pub crawl in St Petersburg, Florida. Today, we delve in a little deeper, hitting four pubs and a pizza joint. All are within a block from our hotel, in fact, we just walked across the street, went up one block, crossed over to the next one, and walked back to the hotel...all in one square block.

Easy walking and easy drinking.

Watch the Video!

Another good thing about the bars along this route is that they seem to be in a perpetual happy hour during the daylight hours. I know, but we're beyond our nightlife days and enjoy an earlier party life now.

First stop, the Del Mar Gastro Lounge.  Almost all the bars on our walk had $2 beer specials on select varieties. Here, one of those varieties is Rolling Rock so it's a little better than the usual Bud or Coors Light specials you see. They're also 16 ounce tall boys, which went well with the pulled pork sliders we got to go with them.

The sliders and beer were delicious, cheap, and the cold beer really hit the spot in this Florida heat.

Next up is Mastry's, which is the alcohol pouring outpost of Mastry's sportfishing not far from here over on the bay. According to the signs inside, this is the city's oldest bar...and also voted the best dive bar in St. Pete.

I'd have to conduct a much deeper investigation to see if that's true but it is a nice, dark, cash-only spot where we get a shot of whiskey and some wine...served in disposable plastic cups.

Back out into the light and up the block, it's the Five Bucks Drinkery. The name says it all, although my drink...a Captain Morgan on the rocks...was considerably less at $3.

Letty met a couple of friendly dogs here, too.

Coming around the corner into the home stretch,  MacDinton's Irish Pub has just opened for the day. Inside, to the strains of AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, we have some beer and Jameson shots while having a lively discussion with the bartenders.

Lastly, it's Pacifico and slices of cheese pizza at Joey Brooklyn's about 100 feet from the hotel lobby. the Pacifico is good as always, the pizza...well...it'll do.

Cheers!

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved

MIDWEST BASEBALL TOUR - LEG 2: St. Louis, Part 2

If you haven’t read Tim’s reports on preparing for this trip (this is his first time planning a trip), be sure to check out what it took to plan and prepare for this trip in a wheelchair.

In Part 1 of this report, we arrive in St. Louis to a fabulous hotel, get frustrated at a very inaccessible national park, and take a cruise on the Mighty Mississippi.  Now, it's game time.

Watch the Video!

It’s a short, two block walk to Busch Stadium from our hotel. Knowing us though, we walk to the part of the stadium furthest from our seats, so we need to walk around it back to home plate to find the Will Call booth to pick up our tickets. We do and head on inside.

Our tickets today are in the Infield Redbird Club. This is a semi-private (meaning anyone can buy tickets to it but only ticket holders have access to it) section next to the press box overlooking homeplate from the first base side to the third base side. It’s the second deck up. We sit on the third base side in the closest accessible seats to home plate. There is an overhang from the deck above but it does not block our view in any way. We have great views of the city, the arch, and our hotel just beyond center field.

The club also has an expansive indoor area with tables and booths. There is a large food court with ballpark staples like hot dogs, beer, and popcorn. There are also more specialty foods like pulled pork, barbecue, salad bar, and an Asian stir-fry bar that my wife took advantage of.

Each end of the food court area features a full bar. Unfortunately as you might expect of a team owned by InBev (and Anheiser Busch), all the tap beer is Budweiser, Bud Lite, Bud Select or some other variety of the town’s most famous product. It all tastes like water to me. They do serve a nice selection of microbrews and other brands, but only in the bottle.

Another knock on the stadium is that the food and drink prices are the highest we’ll encounter on the trip. Knocks aside, this is still a great stadium in one of the great baseball towns. Stadium toured, food and drinks purchased, it’s time to play ball as the Cardinals are hosting the Houston Astros…one of the worst teams in the league right now.

Ryan Ludwick scores in the first inning on a Matt Holliday ground out to give the Cards a quick 1-0 lead. Houston kills the no-hitter hopes in the third as Tommy Manzella gets a single but no runs are scored. Ludwick scores again as David Freese gets an RBI single.

That’s where the game stays until it all comes apart for St. Louis in the 7th. Carlos Lee of the Astros gets on first due to a throwing error. Hunter Pence doubles, sending Lee to third. Starter Brad Penny loads the bases by hitting Houston third baseman Geoff Blum. Two runs score on a Tommy Manzella sacrifice fly to right field. Pinch hitter Cory Sullivan brings Pence home on a single. Sullivan scores when center fielder Michael Bourn bunts a single.

Penny is taken out after this inning and replaced by Jason Motte. While the Cards were able to get another run in the bottom of the 7th, Motte gives up solo homers to Lance Berkman and Hunter Pence bringing the final score of the Cardinals loss to 6-2.

As any fan can tell you, a loss is tough but it’s still better than not being at the game. Being out-of-towners, we aren’t heartbroken and still have a fun time. On the walk back, we see this strange looking truck. A closer look shows there are two (clothed) strippers working a pole. It’s a moving billboard for several local strip clubs.

On a warm morning, fortified from our hotel breakfast, it’s time to explore the city. There’s a riverfront district called Lacledes Landing that looked interesting when we first got into town. We walk to the nearest Metrolink station about 3 blocks from the hotel. Metrolink is the trolley system here in St. Louis. My wife complains that it was just as far to walk to the station as it was to Lacledes Landing. Close, but I still think the trolley was closer plus I wanted to check it out for a future transit report.

Metrolink is 100% accessible. Every station has an elevator or is ramped. Each car has 4 locations where a seat can be folded up and a wheelchair put in its place.

We get day passes for my wife and I. It’s cheaper to buy each ticket separately for disabled riders ($1.10 for the trolley and $1 for the bus vs. $8 for a day pass) for the amount of rides we will take.

At Lacledes Landing, it’s a bumpy, cobblestoned area full of restaurants, bars, and just a few shops. Mostly closed restaurants, bars, and a few shops. I guess it’s more of a late night destination rather than a daytime jaunt.

Back on the trolley, we head to the end of the line at Shrewsbury on the southwest side of the city. By this time it was hot and muggy making the ½ mile walk we took excruciating. We were going to Ted Drewes Frozen Custard shop on the old Route 66.

We’ve heard about this place on many shows on the Food Network and the Travel Network as one of the icons of Route 66. This is particularly interesting to us because we live adjacent to a stretch of the Mother Road.

It’s hot and the custard is good but it’s halfway melted before we find a place to sit and eat it. By the way, Ted Drewes does not have a dining room, a dining area, or anywhere with tables or chairs. There are some bus stop benches on a nearby sidewalk, but that’s it. A bit of a disappointment after coming all the way out here.

On the way back, we stop at Union Station which used to be the massive St. Louis railroad station. It’s still massive and the old train barn is as huge as some of the stations I’ve seen in Europe such as Munich or London. Only thing is, it’s not a train station anymore. Now, it’s a mall with a small man-made lake, some restaurants, and a Marriott hotel. It’s very quiet and not bustling with life at all. It would have been nice if at least one or two platforms could have been saved. Amtrak now stops and a small platform near Busch Stadium.

I’m a bit disappointed in it.

We go back to the hotel, have dinner, and take a swim in the 8th floor pool and call it a leg.

Stay tuned as we head out to leg three of this Midwest Baseball Tour…Kansas City, Missouri.

Darryl
Copyright 2010 – Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

The Cocktail Hour: The "King" of Beers?

Let's admit it...life's too short to drink bad beer but now Budweiser has a new variety that they claim has...wait for it..."Taste!"

I guess that means that for all these years Budweiser never really had any. Can't argue with that.

Watch The Video!

Anyway, Tim and I had to put this to the test. On a nice, sunny Southern California afternoon, we decided to settle it. I went to our local liquor dealer, got a can of original Budweiser and a bottle of the new Budweiser Black Crown, a darker amber 6% alcohol beer.

Watch the video above to see the results.

Never say we don't take one for the team here at The World on Wheels...

Cheers?

Darryl

THE COCKTAIL HOUR - Paso Robles Beer Tasting

While the Paso Robles area is justifiably famous for its vineyards, wineries, and wine, one of America's most popular microbreweries resides here.  Firestone Walker, makers of the Double Barrel Ale (DBA) has a decent sized operation south of town.

They also have a restaurant to the south in Buellton, but we're just here to taste the beers.

Watch the Video!

Here at the brewery, they have a nice tasting room with 14 taps (just installed the day before we were here). For $6 you can taste 4 of their brews.

 

We taste the DBA, Solace...a wheat beer, a hefeweizen, a porter, a honey blonde, and IPA, and a red ale.  While we enjoyed the DBA, Solace, and the honey blonde, the rest were average to a bit heavy for us.

So we're kind of indifferent to Firestone Walker. The beers in Denver were much better as was Sierra Nevada up north in Chico, which also serves a vast variety of tastes at no charge...but wait...what's that across the street?

Watch the video above as we find a very nice ringer, right across the street from the FW premises.

Cheers!

-Darryl

The Cocktail Hour - Cincinnati Pub Crawl

Kicking off our Midwest Baseball Tour last year, we started with an impromtu pub crawl along the Ohio River.  The "Cincinnati" part of the title is a bit misleading, it's actually in Newport, Kentucky at the Levee District, just across the river from The Great American Ballpark, home of the Reds.

Watch the Video!

We started before the baseball game going on that night so we got a lot of the pre-game party flavor.  We didn't go to the game that night (our tickets were for the next day), so we stayed behind at a bar called Bulldogs, watching the game on TV.  That was a bit surreal, the actual game was a thousand feet away.  We could hear it both from the stadium and on TV.

So here is the crawl.  We start off at a place called the Beer Sellar, which sits on a floating barge in the river that it shares with Hooters.  There's a large patio crowded with baseball fans getting ready for the game with their two-dollar Huddy Light specials.  They will soon depart for the game on a ferry that leaves right from the barge.

Next, it's over to a branch of Munich's famous Hofbrauhaus, just up the street, where we sample their delicious beers in about as authentic of a German beer garden you'll find in the states.  It's not quite up to Munich quality but darn good for over here.  We sample the hefeweizen, dunkel, and meibier.

Ending up the crawl, we're at Bulldog's where we try the Shafly wheat and rasberry ale from St. Louis and the house brand light beer, pretty good and a deal during the game at $2.50 for a 24 oz. mug.

We enjoyed them all, probably the Hofbrau brands the best.  Enjoy the video.

Darryl
Copyright 2010

MIDWEST BASEBALL TOUR - LEG 1: Cincinnati

If you haven’t read Tim’s reports on preparing for this trip (this is his first time planning a trip), be sure to check out what it took to plan and prepare for this trip in a wheelchair.

Now that the planning and booking is done, it’s time to go. We start off at Ontario Airport, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. It’s a 6:55am departure meaning we wake up at 4am and rush to get going. We arrive at the airport at 5:30am.

Watch the Video!

After check in (at the curb) and security, we head to the gate. I ask the gate agent if there are any better seats available on the plane, we’re in row 19 of the Continental 737, and none are available. Waiting at the gate to pre-board, the crew that would have to take Tim to his seat balk at having to transport him to row 19 and says they will load the plane first, then us.

Really? Row 19 is that bad? I’ve had airlines sit us in the back of the plane with no complaints, but…

This gets us bulkhead seats when they kick the people assigned there out (not my idea, theirs) but in this day and age of paying for every piece of luggage, being last means the overheads are full and everyone seethes as it takes time for us to get seated. A friendly flight attendant puts our bag up in first class…it’s important to have on the plane because it has medication and bathrooming gear we’ll need on the flight…and off we go.

(Note: Continental Airlines has since been merged with United Airlines since the report was originally written-Ed)

We change planes in Houston and have no problems pre-boarding on the second flight to Cincinnati. The flights themselves are fine, comfortable, and on time but I did not care for the minor boarding fiasco at Ontario. Note to self: do not use Continental (soon to be part of United) out of Ontario anymore.

We arrive at the Cincinnati airport, which is actually in Kentucky, at 5pm local time, pick up our rental car (Ford Escape), and head to our hotel, the Comfort Suites in Newport, Kentucky…just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.

The room at the hotel is a “studio” suite, which means a larger room but not really a suite. There’s a king-size bed, sofa bed, and accessible restroom with bathtub and portable shower chair provided by the hotel. A hot breakfast (waffles, biscuits and gravy) is provided but it’s just adequate. In fact that word describes the hotel…adequate. Not great but not bad. It’s a bit expensive for that at around $150 per night.

After settling in, we walk to the nearby area of shops and restaurants known as the Levee at Newport. It’s a very lively area and we find a real gem, a branch of Munich’s Hofbrauhaus with a real German beer garden out back.

It’s small by Munich standards and the sausages are good but not quite on par with Germany, but here we go…an honest-to-goodness German beer garden three blocks from our hotel with its own brewery producing real Hofbrau beer, served in the liter sized glasses just like in Munich.

This is the perfect way to end a long day of travelling so we walk over to the riverfront and head back to the hotel.

It’s a Saturday and our tickets to the ball game are for Sunday so we take a drive to Louisville to see the Louisville Slugger Museum and take the factory tour. A 90 minute drive, we pass the Kentucky Speedway and a mysterious sign that states “site of fatal bus crash. May 14, 1988.”

It turns out that on that date, the worst bus accident in the country’s history took place when a drunk driver hit a church school bus. 27 people were killed, 24 injured, and several of the victims banded together and eventually formed Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.

Once in Louisville, we pass a minor league stadium for the Louisville Bats, an affiliate of the Reds. You’d think they’d be called the Sluggers, but no. The stadium is named Louisville Slugger Stadium, however.

Not hard to find, just head to the riverfront, turn left, and look for a giant bat sticking up over the skyline. Park in the structure in the back and head into the Hillerich and Bradsby Company, better known as the makers of that necessary piece of sporting wood, the Louisville Slugger.

Inside is paradise for baseball fans. A long, narrow lobby from the front to the back of the building includes a room for special exhibits, the bat vault (where every major leaguer has a template bat locked up…the “Fort Knox” of baseball), sample bats made to major league player specifications that you can test swing, a batting cage (10 pitches for a dollar) where you can try out a major league players bat, a current league standings board, a gift shop, and that giant bat out front.

All very interesting but the main attraction is what you actually have to pay for, the museum and factory tour. It’s ten dollars for adults ($18 in 2022-Ed) and you get to enter the museum and take an informative and entertaining tour of the factory (no cameras allowed on the factory floor).

Entering the museum, the first thing to see is one of the very first bats made by Bud Hillerich for Pete Browning, one of baseball’s first professional players, in 1884. Browing quickly got three hits with it in the next game and christened it the “Louisville Slugger.” Next is an area where you can hold a game-used bat. Gloves are mandatory. Tim held David Ortiz’s bat. Me? I went with Mickey Mantle.

Several other artifacts are on display. Honus Wagner’s jersey and bat; Joe Dimaggio’s bat; Babe Ruth’s bat; and on and on. The factory tour shows each step of the process, from lathing the wood, burning in the insignia to lacquering the bat. We are informed that players are very particular about their bats. For example, Ted Williams had one person make his bats and they had to have eight lines of grain per inch. With the highest batting average on record, Williams must have known what he was talking about.

At the end of the tour, everybody gets a small wooden bat to take home as a souvenir. One of the best 10 bucks I’ve ever spent.

On our way out of Louisville, we go by Churchill Downs…a week to the day after the Kentucky Derby…but couldn’t find any parking so we left town and went back home.

For dinner, we head down the river to the Beer Sellar. We thought it was a restaurant, but it’s just a bar so we have a two dollar, pre-game beer special and chat with some of the fans getting ready to go to tonight’s game. We’re not going until tomorrow, but we have some fun talking and then watching them depart by boat from the adjacent dock to go to the stadium across the river.

Actual food is found at Bulldogs, just around the corner, where we have some delicious fish and chips while watching the game going on across the river on TV. It’s interesting when someone hits a home run, you can hear the fireworks coming in through the windows and on the television. You can also hear the cheers coming from all the numerous bars in the area and from the stadium across the water.

Sunday…Game Day. This trip is all about baseball and the main attraction is the game. It’s Mother’s Day and we’re going to see the Reds host the Chicago Cubs. It’s about a mile walk to the game. Over the bridge to Ohio, then along the riverfront to the stadium.

Behind the stadium is an art installation of a giant paddle wheel, along with a couple dozen posts that vent steam on a random basis. There are also speakers in the posts where you can hear people on river boats.

We are behind the stadium in center field and there is no accessible entrance here. We have to walk around, 2 blocks, to home plate to go to the Will Call booth, pick up our tickets, and enter.

Great American Ball Park is a smallish feeling stadium (42,000 capacity) overlooking the Ohio River towards Covington, Kentucky. As you would expect, Red is the dominant color scheme. There is a faux river boat in the outfield and fireworks shoot out of its smoke stacks at the beginning of the game, when a Reds player hits a home run, and upon a Reds victory. Steam comes out when the home team pitcher strikes out an opponent.

The food choices here are basic and mediocre. Hot dogs, pizza, and burgers are mostly it, with ice cream and candy for dessert. There is pre-made sushi at a little convenience store by home plate, but we don’t want any sushi that’s not made in front of us. The tap beer selection is vast and reasonably priced. Since we’re walking home, we take full advantage of it.

Our seats are at the top of the field level deck, about 2/3 the way from home plate to first base. There is a slight overhang from the club deck above but it does not block our view in any meaningful way. The price for this seat is $47 for this premium game against the Cubs. If you go to see a less meaningful opponent, say the Marlins, it would be five dollars less. There is accessible seating throughout the stadium, from the bleachers to the nosebleeds, along with the more premium seating on the field and club levels. The lowest price is $5 going up to $235 for the first five rows behind home plate. We had no problems getting more than one companion seat.

Ryan Dempster steps on the mound for the Cubs to start the game. There’s no score until the second inning when Dempster gives up an RBI double to Johnny Gomes. The Reds, led by pitcher Mike Leake, have the game in hand until Leake goes wild in the 7th inning, giving up a run on an errant pitch. The Cubs will go on to take the lead by one but the Reds take it back in the bottom of the inning on a Joey Votto 3-run homer. The Reds win the game 5 to 3.

We decide to walk around the area of the stadium to see what festive activities we can find. The answer? None. It’s dead quiet in downtown Cincinnati so we head back across the bridge to Newport to find a lively atmosphere and settle in at an Irish Pub for dinner.

And that’s a wrap for Cincy. The highlights were the baseball game, of course; the fascinating and fun Louisville Slugger museum and tour; and the Kentucky side of the river across from Cincinnati is a lively and fun entertainment district. This leg of the tour left me with a strong desire to visit Kentucky again and explore it a little more fully.

Stay tuned as we head out to leg two of this Midwest Baseball Tour…St. Louis, Missouri.

Darryl
Copyright 2010 – Darryl Musick

Classic Trip: Denver, Colorado - Part 1

In our quest to see every Major League Baseball stadium, we can usually do 2 or 3 in a trip because they tend to be in clusters…San Francisco and Oakland; Yankees and Mets; Cubs and White Sox…one destination has eluded us for a while because it stands alone.


Denver, where the plains meet the Rockies in central Colorado, has no other MLB stadium for hundreds of miles. 


We finally bit the bullet, got some cheap tickets on Southwest, and decided to make a long weekend of it.

Watch the Video!

It’s just a bit over two hours to fly from LAX to DEN.  With the low fare, $199 round trip each – tax inclusive, it was cheaper than driving which would be 1,000 miles over two days each way with our current $4+ per gallon gasoline.


Our hotel would again be the Drury Inn and Suites, our pick for last year’s hotel chain of the year, in Englewood.  That’s 8 miles south of downtown.  We picked the Drury because of the great experiences we’ve had with them in the past. The room was a large two-room suite with an accessible bathroom, king size bed, queen size sofa bed, two large screen LCD TV’s.  Drury also throws in a full, hot breakfast buffet, a lite dinner, cocktail hour, Wi-Fi or wired Internet access, long distance phone calls, and all the soda and popcorn you can eat for free.


The bathroom had a tub and I had called to reserve a bath chair.  Roll-in showers are also available, but for our use, a tub and chair are just as easy so I usually skip the roll-in to let someone who really needs it have one available.

Except this time they didn’t have a chair. After some back and forth negotiation, I had them put in one of the pool chairs and they knocked $180 off of my entire room rate for the inconvenience.


Even though they offered to find me another room at another hotel, I didn’t want to move because we had no car and this hotel is adjacent to the Dry Creek light rail station.

The next morning, after breakfast and showering, we head over to the rail station which actually turned out to be quite a walk. Each light rail station has a ramp at the driver’s end for wheelchairs. When the train pulled in, the driver deployed a ramp and Tim rolled in.

There are dedicated spots with pull-up benches for two wheelchairs and a third can get in the space behind the cab.  This is also the place for strollers so you can see there can be a maximum of three strollers or wheelchairs on each train, even though each train is designed to carry 12 to 18 (depending on if it is a two or three car train).


Although the light rail is accessible, and we never had a problem with it, they really missed the boat by not making the entire platform at train height to increase capacity. We did see a couple of people left behind because there was no more room.

We took the train all the way to Union Station in Downtown Denver. It’s time to play ball!


Coors Field is three blocks away but construction around Union Station forced us to add a couple of blocks to that. Even so, it wasn’t a brutal march and we arrived in plenty of time for the game.

It was cold and gray but Tim got us great seats behind home plate that had just enough overhang from the deck above to protect us from the rain that would come later without blocking too much of our view. It was a chilly 43 degrees that would drop to a cold 38 by the time the afternoon game would finish.

The stadium is nice and retro-modern in the way so many baseball stadiums are these days. The food was decent but nothing to write home about. The draft beer selection was dominated by the namesake Coors brewery and most really craft brews were in bottles but there was still a decent selection on tap. Wine, cocktails, and hard liquor are readily available if you don’t like beer.  Both food and beer prices were pretty reasonable for a major league stadium.


Denver is known as a home run park, due to being a mile high. In fact, if you look at the top deck, you’ll see a row of seats painted purple. This marks the exact mile high elevation spot.

Even with a center field a deep 415 feet away, we saw several balls leave the yard.  The Rockies pushed ahead 7-1 but a devastating error by starting pitcher Jhoulys Chacin in the 7th inning led to a big comeback by the visiting San Diego Padres, who went on to win 9-7 on that cold, rainy field.  

MLB stadium number 21 was now in the books as our second coldest game, behind an April game at Chicago’s Wrigley Field where the temp was 26 degrees with a wind chill factor of 16.  Still, it was a lot of fun and Denver is a nice stadium.


We didn’t eat too much at the game and we were hungry afterward. A two block walk took us to the Wynkoop Brewery on the corner of 18th and Wynkoop.  Although the place looked full, there were actually quite a few tables open at this huge dining room so we were seated immediately.


Denver likes to call itself the “Napa Valley of Beer” which is a pretty apt description. With over 100 microbreweries and a couple of majors, I think it should be called the Belgium of the USA, but that might be a little beyond some people’s understanding. 

Wynkoop is one of the oldest of the microbreweries. You can taste their different varieties for $1 for each 5 ounce taster. We tasted a few with our dinner of gumbo, bratwurst sausage mac ‘n cheese, and a delicious buttermilk fried chicken. 


Our first major meal in Denver was quite a success.

Meal over, it was back on the light rail to the hotel and time to rest up for the next part of our trip.

-Darryl


Copyright 2011 – Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved