Boulder Beer Company - Never Summer Ale

This winter seasonal from Boulder’s Looking Glass Series was a Gold Medal winner in the Strong Ale category at the 2004 World Beer Cup, and once you’ve sampled it, it’s easy to see why. Look for a clear, deep-amber/reddish color on the pour with a medium khaki colored head. Moderately sweet aromas of light caramel are apparent, along with an apple and berry-like fruity note. There’s a subtle spicy quality along with a faintly grapefruit-like hop note and an impression of brown sugar. On the palate, Never Summer Ale opens quite complex; look for the fruitiness on the nose to come through in the mouth, evolving into a deep toasted grain flavor with a moderate caramel undertone. There’s a delightful and hard-to-pin-down spiciness throughout, as well. We enjoyed the bold, sweet malts in perfect balance with the very firm hop bitterness, and though this winter brew is fairly warming at 6.5% ABV, it’s a bit more sessionable than some other fuller-bodied and more alcohol-laden winter brews. Perpetual winter? Well, if they’re serving this, sign us up!

The history of Boulder Beer Company goes all the way back to 1979, when it became the first microbrewery in the state of Colorado. Two professors at Colorado University, David Hummer and Stick Ware, founded the brewery, which at first was located on a small farm outside Boulder. In fact, the small one-barrel brewing system was forced to share space with a few goats! (The brewery itself notes that “When a company is founded by guys named “Hummer” and “Stick” in a goatshed, you kow it’s gonna be crazy.”) But, success would eventually change that rather unconventional situation, and five years later a new brewhouse in Boulder was built to house the expanding Boulder Brewing Company operations. After being a publicly traded company since 1980, the brewery came into the private ownership of Gina Day and Diane Greenlee in 1990, who changed the name subtly to Boulder Beer Company and convinced Brewmaster David Zuckerman of Portland, Oregon’s esteemed Bridgeport Brewing Company to come out to the blue skies and snowy mountains of Colorado and join their operation. Upgrades to the entire brewery followed, including transforming their small tasting room into a full brewpub restaurant. Now boasting a 50-barrel brewing system, the brewery can churn out 43,000 barrels of awesome craft beer annually. There was another name change in 1993, when they adopted “Rockies Brewing Company,” but in 2005 they went back to their roots and switched it back to Boulder Beer Company while also establishing their annual “Goatshed Revival” outdoor summer beer festival, which is one part birthday bash and one part charity fundraiser and pays homage to their humble origins as one of the country’s first craft breweries. To learn more about the brewery, the brewpub, and scheduled tours, call (303) 444-8448 or check out their web site at www.boulderbeer.com.