Oskar Blues and Left Hand

A couple of weekend back, Tibor, Dennis, Chris and I journeyed north to Longmont to have lunch at Liquids & Solids and make stops at the Oskar Blues and Left Hand breweries.  Liquids & Solids is the restaurant owned by Oskar Blues and they have a very nice menu of both beer and food.  Oskar Blues also owns a farm and the spent grains from the brewery are feed to animals on the farm, and the animals are processed for meat that is used by the restaurant.  I ordered the Black and Blue Burger with sweet potato fries.  I also enjoyed a couple of Oskar Blues beers that I had not tried before - Velvet Elvis (6.1% ABV), a stout, and Home Skillet (5.6% ABV), a black IPA.  Both of these were very tasty and Chris also had me taste the One Nut Brown and Dennis had a wheat beer.  The food and the beers were very good and I will go back to Liquids & Solids.

We left Liquids & Solids and Tibor (designated driver) drove us to the Oskar Blues tap room called The Tasty Weasel.  We took a brewery tour and there were a few busy people brewing this year’s version of Ten Fidy.  We saw a lot of stainless, grain bags, the hop room, the canning line and a new can 19.2 oz.  The person providing the tour “hinted” that the new can would be coming out in the near future and would probably have Dale’s Pale Ale in it first.  I am thinking they will debut it during GABF - time will tell.  The tour was great and we met some nice people on the tour and in the Tasting Room.

The next stop was the Left Hand Brewing tasting room and we arrived too late for a brewery tour.  I enjoyed a Bard’s Ale (2.5% ABV) and English Mild ESB, and a Chainsaw (9% ABV and 72 IBU) an American Strong Ale.  We also had to have some Nitro Milk Stout (6% ABV and 25 IBU), a Milk / Sweet stout as the brewery was running a special with a complimentary pint glass.

We then made the journey back home and it was an enjoyable day with the guys.  Special thanks to Tibor for being the designated driver and taking the group to Longmont.  If you have the opportunity to tour a small craft brewer I highly recommend it - the people are nice and the beer is tasty.