Summit County Brewpubs
Opening spread raw ingredients courtesy of Beer at Home
There’s something special about beer in the High Country. Spend a day driving around Summit and in each town, often in the first building on its main street, you'll find a brewpub crowded with locals and tourists alike, at this time of year most of them fresh off the slopes. Each of the five breweries in the county has its own jumble of ales, IPAs, hefeweizens, and stouts — the signatures of the microbrewery industry — here named with ski-bum aplomb: Avalanche Ale, Peak One Porter, Pallavicini Pilsner … Pallavicini being one of the advanced lifts at Arapahoe Basin.
The Rockies, of course, is famous for its beer. Coors in the early days, now microbreweries like Tommyknocker and Fat Tire, the latter of which has grown so well-liked you can find it on tap around the country, have popularized the notion that beers from Colorado are brewed closer to the source, making them as rugged and pure as the mountains from which they came. That might be a bit of a stretch, but don't press the point with anyone in Summit, a year-round community of 29,000 that easily supports five breweries within a 15-mile radius of each other. Do the math and that breaks down to a barrel of beer per household. As for the quality of that beer, you can judge for yourself. Here’s a list of what Summit has on tap.
The Breckenridge Brewery
Summit’s oldest brewpub, the Breckenridge Brewery was founded in 1990 by Richard Squire, a self-proclaimed ski bum with an affinity for crafting homebrewed beer for his friends in his free time.
When the side gig outgrew the garage, he moved his operation to a behemoth, two-story brick building at the head of Breckenridge Main Street, where he started brewing his staples on a larger scale: Avalanche Ale, Breck Lite, Agave Wheat, Oatmeal Stout, and Vanilla Porter. Remarkably, few things have changed at the brewery since its early days.
The staple brews are still the same, as is the bartender serving them: the timeless Kent, who still looks in his rugged late twenties. Today the brewery offers two levels of seating; two patios, both with unrivaled views of the Tenmile Range; a host of flat screen HDTVs; and a traditional menu of all your favorite pub food. According to Audrey Vogt, a long-time manager, “You can never go wrong with a burger, especially not here.”
“The brewery is definitely a fixture of town,” adds Jeff Andrews, a server at the brewery for 15 years. “It’s the locals’ place for lunch, and all winter long the skiers come here first. It’s good. You gotta support the local brews.” www.breckbrew.com
The Backcountry Brewery
Ten miles to the north, at the first lot on Frisco Main Street, stands Summit's second oldest brewpub, the Backcountry Brewery. As co-founder Woody Van Gundy tells it, the brewery is a product of a bunch of guys consuming too much beer and pizza one night in Frisco and getting excited about the idea of launching a brewery in town. Unlike most poker-night proclamations, however, the Backcountry Brewery actually came to fruition.
Today, 12 years later, it has the largest brewing capacity of any brewery in the county — you can see some of its mash tuns, kettles, and fermenters through the glass windows on the ground floor.
They routinely have nine beers on tap, including the most lagers in the county. Lagers take 60 to 90 days to smooth out, rather than 30 days for ales, so only larger breweries can afford to brew them. House regulars are the Telemark IPA, the Switchback Amber, the Ptarmigan Pilsner, the Wheeler Wheat, and the Peak One Porter.
The brewery offers deck seating for summer, a pool table, a kids’ game room, and a large menu of pub favorites.
“Everything starts with the beer here,” says Bill Kiester, the Backcountry’s brewmaster.
“We do a lot of dry hopping, lagers, spices in the wheat beers. I think everyone in Frisco sees the benefit of buying our beer versus a Coors. Everything returns to the idea of community.” www.backcountrybrewery.com
The Dillon Dam Brewery
Dillon may be the smallest town in Summit, but it supports two of the county's five breweries, one of them the conspicuous Dillon Dam Brewery. Conspicuous because the two-story gargantuan of a brewery squats at the base of the Dillon Dam (on the dry side, of course), one of the first buildings you spot when exiting I-70 at Silverthorne. Inside you’ll find the most extensive list of beers in the county, everything from a Dam Straight Lager to a Wildernest Wheat and a Sweet George’s Brown, which won the gold medal at the 2002 World Beer Cup.
The brewery was co-founded by Mike Reed, a former brewmaster at the Breckenridge Brewery. He brought a growler of his Christmas Ale to a Christmas party in Dillon in the mid-'90s, and the rest is history. Today brewmaster Corey Forster carries on the tradition, putting a particular emphasis on seasonal beers like pumpkin, chili, and raspberry ales. The brewery offers an extensive pub menu, two pool tables, and a big screen TV for special events.
“Our beers have always been excellent,” says George Blincoe, the brewery’s co-founder (and the man who was originally taken by that first Christmas ale). “But what really sets us apart is our customers. We have a great nucleus of locals, people who moved up here because they want to ski until they’re buried, and drink good beer along the way. They’re like an ambassadors group when you come in, making you feel at home.” www.dambrewery.com
Pug Ryan’s Brewery
The distinction of smallest brewery in the county falls on the shoulders of Pug Ryan's, located a few strides off of Dillon’s Main Street, a snug dark-lit brewery with an oversized attitude when it comes to its beer. Brewmaster Dave Simmons was a busser at the restaurant in the 1990s when its owners decided to add a brewery. It was Simmons who helped build the addition by hand, then took over as brewmaster a few years later.
His beers have won 16 medals at festivals since then, his Pallavacini Pilsner being his most acclaimed brew. It's a Bohemian-style Pilsner (Simmons usually imports the hops from the Czech Republic) that regularly medals at the Great American Beer Fest. Other regulars on tap are the Morningwood Wheat, the Over the Rail Pale Ale, and Ryan’s Irish Stout. As for the restaurant, it’s a surf and turf steakhouse known for its seafood and its center cuts.
"Summit is a great place to brew beer," Simmons says. "People aren’t scared to share secrets here. One brewmaster will chat with the next. That's the beauty of the brewing world right now is how different everyone's beer is. Every brewery is unique. Every application of every ingredient is different. So even if I tell you exactly what ingredients I use, good luck trying to duplicate my beer." www.pugryans.com
Wolf Rock Brewing Company
Summit’s newest brewery Wolf Rock, opened at Keystone Resort in August 2006. The brewery presides over River Run Village, where every summer thousands of people flock for the annual Bluegrass and Beer Festival. Wolf Rock doesn't supply the festival with all its beer — indeed, breweries come from around the state for the event — but according to Cory Forster, Wolf Rock’s brewmaster, his young brewery can hold its own against the stodgier old-timers. Forster used to work with Matt Luhr at the Dillon Dam Brewery. Now he’s brought his own gusto to Wolf Rock, where his Paymaster Pilsner, Wolf Rock Wheat, and Leroy Brown Ale are local favorites. The restaurant is the most upscale of any of Summit’s breweries, offering everything from Colorado game meats like elk steak to prime rib fresh off the restaurant’s open fire rotisserie. It’s also a popular location for après ski thanks to its proximity to the slopes.
“We’re excited to have joined the brewery scene in Summit,” says Cameron Douglas, Wolf Rock’s manager. “It says something about a place that already has four breweries and can accommodate a fifth. But we’ve got our own style at Wolf Rock, and we're filling a much-needed niche in Keystone.” www.wolfrockbrewing.com
Andrew Tolve is a former Frisco-based writer now living in San Francisco.
