Colorado Strong

As I type this, I'm drinking SheppyBrew's Colorado Strong Pale Ale.

The recipe was based on the beer that Left Hand's Brewing Foundation came up with to help raise money for the Colorado Strong Fund.

Many breweries across Colorado have brewed their own versions, donating a certain percentage of the sales to the fund.

They all start off with the recipe and basic ingredients. They are free to modify the recipe to make it their own, but the basic recipe is similar across all the breweries.

As part of my civic duty to support local businesses, I have been picking up quite a few to-go crowlers from local breweries, and I've been searching out the various versions of this beer.

Colorado Strong Pale Ale (Batch 257)

With all the Covid-19 Shelter-in-Place and Safer-at-Home directives, the small local businesses all struggled to stay in business.

Colorado craft breweries obviously were affected.

Left Hand's Brewing Foundation came up with a fund raising idea to try to help local breweries ... The Colorado Strong Fund.

Basically, they came up with a recipe and bought ingredients for breweries to brew it. Several of the local breweries I visit signed up.

Seeing this, I asked if I could get a homebrew recipe, and the answer was "yes". I made a donation to the fund, and they sent me the recipe.

The recipe they sent included locally produced malts, hops, and yeast.

Of course, I made a few minor modifications, but for the most part stayed as true to the recipe as I could.

Because the idea is to raise a little money, I am not posting my recipe on the SheppyBrew Website yet ... but there is still a "recipe page" here ...

Colorado Strong Pale Ale

J is for JoyRide Brewing Company

You may remember that as I was composing the list of Denver breweries that I had not visited, it struck me that most of the letters of the alphabet were covered by the beginning letters of the brewery names.

It has been awhile since I've done one, but I decided to work through the alphabet visiting breweries.

I started with A ... A is for Alpine Dog Brewing Company

Next up was B ... B is for Baere Brewing Company More breweries for C; D; E; F; G; H; And the last one was I is for IronWorks Brewery and Pub.

Yes, it has been a long time since I've done one.

But, on a snowy late-April Saturday, my wife (aka the SheppyBrew Beer Model) dragged our kids to another one ....

J is for JoyRide Brewing Company