Road Trip - Colorado Springs, CO

Since PB and I still have kiddies who are in school, we are obliged to take care of them. For our youngest, we take him to various swim camps and meets. One swim camp was in Colorado Springs, CO, and we were kind of excited because Colorado has a pretty happening brewery scene. One of our servers told us that Colorado Springs has 39 craft breweries, which to me seems a bit much, but oh well. As this trip was all about Dex, we couldn't ditch him and pub crawl, so alas, we only got to visit two  breweries, one cocktail bar, and one gastropub (which I didn't know was an actual word). We just combined our food and brewery experiences. Here's a brief (hopefully) glimpse into our adventure.

Our first stop was Storybook Brewing. I wasn't sure if we had the right place when we pulled up, but looks can be deceiving. Storybook is highly rated, and the reasons are obvious: their staff is great, we felt completely at home, and the beer was tasty. Their flights come with six pours. We got everything except the sour. Haven't had luck with sours, but that's neither here nor there. 

The beer was quite tasty. There are always ones we like more than others, and we don't always agree on which one is the best. It would take entirely too long to go through each beer. Let's just say it was worth tasting all 12. Storybook isn't an eatery, but there was a food truck outside.
People can play games or relax outside. There are also several colorful chalk drawings that added a flair to the joint. If we lived here, it's possible we would become regulars.

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For dinner, we went to Colorado Mountain Brewery. This place is gorgeous. We had a lot of luck with the servers again. Kari B. was our bartender, and she was knowledgeable and friendly. We are talkers, and she even pretended to be interested in what we were saying. It was refreshing. Our kids don't even pretend anymore. 

CMB has six signature beers plus monthly seasonals. There wasn't a single beer I didn't like, but I LOVED the seasonal: Lemon Poppy Seed Wit. So. Very. Good. My favorite of the signatures was the Unifrau Hefeweizen. PB enjoyed the Panther IPA quite a bit. The food was also fabulous. Excuse the food porn, but it was all part of the experience. I highly recommend this place for both the food and the beer. 

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When we asked a gentleman at the hotel for a good beer/food place, he recommended 719 Gastropub. My hometown doesn't have anything labeled as a gastropub, so I was unsure I heard him correctly. Thanks to Google for helping us out with that. 719 Gastropub has over 100 beers on tap. They also serve food. Voila! Gastropub. I get it now.
Desiree was our server, and she took really good care of us. We also got some bonus tastes because she was just that amazing. She made me a special taster of a chocolate peanut butter porter (Horny Goat Brewing) with a splash of Blueberry Cyder Ale (Rocky Mountain Brewing). It tasted like a PB&J. I loved it enough to visit several liquor stores to find the porter, so I could replicate it at home. And I have. Several times.

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By the last day of the trip, I was getting beer-ed out. I like beer, don't get me wrong. I just felt like I was floating in a barley sea and needed a change. I got it in the form of a cocktail bar named The Wobbly Olive. I adore speakeasies and cocktail bars. Makes me feel classy in my sweats and Life is Good hat. We sat at the bar and chatted with the bartenders: Johnathon and Whit. PB ordered a beer. He's a beer man, and cocktails just aren't his cup o' tea. But they are mine. We enjoy sitting at the bar because we learn things. Whit was being trained, and we listened in and learned loads. 

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The first cocktail I had was a Violet Hour. This is a gin-based drink, and it was quite tasty. I am not a big one for nature floating in my drink, but I appreciated the rose petal. Next he made me a Sazerac, which is one of my favorite cocktails. No pictures - it was gone too quickly. While I experimented with cocktails, PB asked the gents about food. Turns out the food is just as amazing as the drinks.

For my last cocktail, I had a special request. I asked Johnathon to make me a rum-based drink I wouldn't despise since I don't like rum much. He totally made something up as he went along. It wasn't even one on the menu; he just winged it. The result was a spicy pomegranate delight that even PB liked. The Wobbly Olive - look it up, visit, dwell in the delight it brings.

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Colorado Springs has a lot to offer. We didn't even come close to scratching the surface, but what we found made us wish we had more time to visit. Maybe Dex will need to go back. A lot. Here's hoping.