Wow, it’s hard to believe it’s been well over two years
since I’ve been away from Colorado, nearly three if I exclude the 10 days or so
I spent in the Denver area after my return from Asia in June 2014 . Quite a lot
has happened in my life since then with my father’s death in February 2015,
several extended trips abroad since then, and helping look after my mother when
I’m back. I have to say I really miss the west. Living in a retirement village
in New Jersey doesn’t quite cut it for me, but it makes general sense to base
myself there until my mom goes and things are squared away before deciding
what’s next.

I usually prefer to travel to new places than return to ones
I am familiar with, and to some degree that includes returning to Colorado to
see friends. So I got to the point where I was due for a physical exam and
would not be able to get two prescriptions refilled without getting one. Do I
go back to Denver and get an exam there paid for by my insurance, or do I just
find a doctor in New Jersey for a physical exam and pay for it out of pocket?
That was not a difficult decision. Of course I’m ready to go back to Colorado
for a visit and see friends and needing to get a physical exam with
Kaiser-Permanente is a great excuse for doing so!

My week in Colorado between October 4^th and 12^th
involved little in the way of touring and a lot in the way of meeting up with
friends I hadn’t seen in a while, so there’s not much to tell about in a travel
blog entry . The one exception was my trip north to Fort Collins where I saw my
friend Kelly for the evening and then went on the tour at New Belgium Brewery
around noon the following day.

The tour at New Belgium Brewery has been “on my list” for a
quite long time. Of course, I like beer, but that’s the whole of it. New
Belgium is the fourth largest “craft” brewery in the U.S. by production and one
of the few that specializes in Belgian-style beers. Being half Belgian, I quite
favor the rich variety in styles and flavors in beers from Belgium and probably
consume more American-made New Belgium products than beers from any other maker
when I’m in Colorado. And not only that, their brewery tour with tastings is
free and has a great reputation, so much so that you usually have to reserve a
place months in advance for weekends or during the summer season. I was luckily
able to reserve a spot for lunch time on a Tuesday less than two weeks in
advance.

And a great tour it is! Most brewery or winery or distillery
tours involve a quite standard walk around the facilities ending up at a
tasting room where you get kind of a hard sell on the products by a somewhat
pretentious guide who talks way too much . Oh, and they usually charge about $5
or so, sometimes more at more snooty wineries. At New Belgium, though, the tour
is free, lasts about an hour and a half, and involves four stops for tastings
scattered through the facility. Being the fourth largest “craft” brewery in the
country, New Belgium is also a quite impressive place physically with beautiful
landscaped grounds as well as much hype about how “green” their production
processes are using largely renewable energy resources. And the tastes are
reasonably significant four ounce pour in sampler glasses, not just a little
sips. Hey, that works out to about a pint of free beer!

It all starts with checking in at the booth at the entrance.
“Go in and grab a beer. You can take it on the tour with you!” So I went inside
to the tap room and tried a few samplers for $1.50 until I found one I liked
best before ordering a pint of Citradelic Tangerine IPA to sip on my tour.

New Belgium is best known for its Fat Tire Ale, sold in cans
as well as bottles and the basis for its “Tour de Fat” promotional bicycle
races around the country. Fat Tire was the last of the four beers sampled on
the tour in a room overlooking the canning facility from high. But first we
tried the Abbey Ale, a Belgian-style double that was the company’s first
product about 25 years ago. It’s one of my favorites, although I probably drink
more of their even more alcoholic trippel (7 .8% ABV) when I’m back home in
Colorado.

Second stop was in the aging room where more than 70 massive
wooden barrels age their top-of-the-line Belgian sour beers. Sour beers are a
style quite unique to Belgium, with Rodenbach (based in the town of Roeselare not
too far from my mom’s home town in the West Flanders) being the most famous
producer there. Rather few microbreweries in the U.S make beers in this style.
Naturally we got to taste a full glass of their Le Terroir beer, a unique
flavor that tastes quite a bit like grapefruit juice despite containing no
fruit at all. That was quite generous, since the 25-ounce bottle of Le Terroir
I ended up buying as a gift sells for $17.95 in their tap room.

The final sample was their new product which had just been
bottled earlier that morning and not been released yet, a Cookie Dough flavored
beer being marketed in conjunction with Ben and Jerry’s. Yes, a cookie dough
beer, if you can believe it. I suppose when you consider all the other beer
flavors out there nowadays, it’s not all that wild, and I have had cookie dough
flavored vodka before . I’m still don’t think it’s something of which I’d drink
a six pack while vegging out at home with a movie.

Anyway, if you like beer the tour and the beers at New
Belgium don’t get any better. Definitely plan to visit if you’re going to be in
northern Colorado but reserve your place way, way ahead of time.