Barley's Angels and Boulder Beer

Barley’s Angels Colorado had an event at Boulder Beer in Boulder on Sept 2.  There are two reasons why this was a rare event, 1) only 3 angels were there including me, Boulder Beer said it was okay so we went with it, 3) this is the first event that a man was included, my husband Larry.  Boulder Beer hosted a beer and food pairing.

Chicken Dan, Larry, Eola, and Kirsten

Our tour guide was Chicken Dan, yup, that’s what he called himself. He told us how he was bestowed that monicker, apparently it has to do with that 70’s Commodore song, “Brick House”  and the line, “shake it down, shake it down, shake it down down”, someone changed it to “Chicken Dan, Chicken Dan, Chicken Dan Dan.”  He is quite a character to say in the least.  Dan has been employed at Boulder Beer for 13 years and is in Marketing.

He took us on the tour of the brewery and it was very interesting. Their facility is still very hands on which is odd since most of the biggies have gone to mostly automation. They have a bottling and canning line plus they wash other breweries kegs with their keg washer. We asked about that after seeing Bootstrap Brewing kegs. They even have a few Bourbon whiskey barrels which surprised me, I didn’t know they had a barrel-aging program.

Canning line.

After our tour, we got down to business with pairing beer with small plates of food.  First course was a large soft pretzel that is brushed with Mojo IPA, sprinkled with kosher salt and on the side is chili con queso dipping sauce. This was paired with the Mojo 
IPA. My husband thought that the hoppy bitterness of the beer cuts the hotness of the queso. I didn’t really like this pairing because the queso was really hot in my mouth and no milk to cut the capsaicin.

Second course was a special that isn’t on their pub menu, a Cuban sandwich that was paired with Dragonhosen Imperial Oktoberfest. The name of the beer comes from their brewer who invertedly said he didn’t know what to call the Oktoberfest cause he’s just a guy dragging hoses around. Ha!  The Oktoberfest paired well with the Cuban sandwich, the sweetness of the sandwich contrasted with the richness of the beer.

The last course was a complementary pairing of their Shake Chocolate Porter in liquid form, beer and in frozen form,  ice cream.  Of course, this was a good pairing.

Great thanks to Jaime, the taproom manager for going through with the event for our small group of Barley’s Angels.

Jaime, tarproom manager.

It was a nice evening of conversation within our small group. I hadn’t been in the Boulder Beer taproom in many years and who knows, I might go there another time but much sooner.