When man found out that fermented grains produced alcohol, beer soon followed. And the world has been imbibing copious amounts of the foamy beverage with gusto ever since.
One U.S. state with a long and storied brewing history is Colorado. The Mile High State has been brewing beer for 164 years. The tradition can be traced all the way back to the Gold Rush, when Eastern Europeans immigrants arrived in the mid-19th century prospecting for gold “in them thar hills.” These newly-minted Americans brought with them arcane knowledge in the brewing arts.
Perhaps no other beer brand is tied to Colorado more than Coors. In 1873, Adolph Coors and Jacob Schueler established their first brewery in Golden, Colorado. The two bought Czech immigrant William Silhan’s pilsner-style beer recipe, which became their first bottled concoction, and the rest as the cliché goes, is beer history.
Fast forward to 1978, U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed H.R. 1337, which allowed the ordinary Joe to, without fear of legal repercussion, brew his own beer at home; and the artisan product craft beer was born. Today, Colorado is the third largest producer of craft beer in the United States with an average annual output of 1,522,834 barrels.
Fort Collins, Colorado, sometimes referred to as the Napa Valley of beer, is also home to what is called “The Brewmuda Triangle,” where a three-sided combination of large, regional, and small breweries produce 70% of all the beer brewed in Colorado.
Beer is such a popular tourist draw to Colorado that a Denver company – Denver Pub Crawl – offers an experience unlike any other. For a fee, you’ll get a more than 4-hour guided crawling tour through 4 to 6 downtown Denver bars. Cheers Colorado!
