|  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.
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MAY/JUNE 2009 FEATURE ARTICLES
