Q&A: Brian Hutchinson and Jason Stengl of Cannonball Creek Brewing Company

The award-winning Golden brewers chat about their success at GABF this year and what's next for their tiny brewery.

On the last day of the 2016 Great American Beer Festival, the vibe inside the Bellco Theatre was subdued. Halfway through the awards ceremony, the packed house of industry representatives pushed through their hangovers to offer applause for their award-winning brethren. But the mood changed the moment the winner of the Session IPA category was announced: out of 118 entries, Cannonball Creek Brewing Company‘s Trump Hands Session IPA emerged as the victor, and the crowd erupted with laughter and raucous cheers.

It wasn’t the Golden brewery’s only win of the day—heck, it wasn’t even the brewery’s first GABF award. Since opening in 2013, Cannonball Creek has been making a name for itself thanks to much more than its witty beer names; it’s racked up six GABF medals and a dedicated fan base to match. We caught up with Cannonball Creek co-owners and long-time brewers, Jason Stengl and Brian Hutchinson, to talk about their seven-barrel brew house, Trump Hands’ success, and what’s coming up on tap for the popular Colorado brewery.

5280: Trump Hands is such a great name for a beer. What’s the story there?

Brian Hutchinson: We hadn’t made a session IPA before because, as a brewer, I always questioned making one when I could just make a good pale ale. I’ve always thought pale ales were better. But I had a couple of good session IPAs when I was in San Diego doing a collaboration beer with Pizza Port. I came home and started working on one, and we were pretty happy with it. In fact, this is one of the few beers that we didn’t change much after the first go around. Then, as is always the case, we had the beer in the tank but no name for it. We were trying to think of something small to name it after since it’s the smallest beer, ABV-wise, that we’ve ever brewed.

Jason Stengl: It just happened to be right at the time when certain current events were happening… and Trump Hands turned out to be the top beer we poured at this year’s fest.

With a win for Trump Hands and a gold medal for the Solid Gold Belgian Golden Ale, your total GABF medal count is up to six. It also continues your streak of winning a medal at the fest every year since you opened. What does that mean to you guys?

BH: Competition isn’t everything, but we put a lot of work into this stuff—it’s really all we do. To know that other people recognize in our beer the quality we’re shooting for is awesome.

JS: We’re proud and feel very fortunate about winning again. It also shows that our products are consistent.

Currently, the only way to get a taste of Cannonball Creek beer is to visit the brewery. Any plans for expansion or packaging in the near future?

BH: No, we don’t really have any concrete plans for packaging or expansion. There are a lot of things that we still want to work on in this space. As we grow maybe our interests will change but nobody is going to force us to grow. We’re very happy and grateful that we’re busy all the time—recognition helps facilitate that—but we’re not going to hit a level where suddenly, whether we like it or not, we have to be something else.

JS: We’re fortunate that we get to make the decisions, and that we’re busy enough to be selling everything we make right now.

Can you give us a sneak peak at any special new beers on the horizon?

BH: We’re always doing new stuff. At this time of year, we’re getting excited about the bigger, maltier styles. Our annual Belgian Dubbel, called Chain Shot Abbey Ale, comes out soon. We also just brewed an Imperial Almond Chocolate Stout that’s 11 percent ABV and barrel-aged. I’m also on a mission to make a better Imperial IPA, so I think you’ll probably see more of those from us in the future.

JS: Our anniversary party is coming up on January 21; we’ll be celebrating four years. We’ll have an anniversary beer and a bunch of specialty tappings. Stay tuned to our website for more details.

393 N. Washington Ave., Golden, 303-278-0111

10 Epic GABF Booths

At last weekend's Great American Beer Festival, the breweries went big on their displays. Here are 10 of our favorites for you to seek out next year. 

There are more than 4,000 breweries in the U.S. today, which means that players in the ever-growing craft beer industry are constantly working to find ways to creatively stand out from the pack. The same was true at the sold-out Great American Beer Festival last weekend, where around 800 breweries poured some 3,500 brews for thousands of attendees. At this year’s fest, breweries from all over the country pushed the boundaries (and the height restrictions) with their festival booth designs. From flashy to statement-making, here’s a recap of our 10 favorite booths from GABF 2016.

Destihl Brewery

This Illinois brewery paid homage to the nomads of the world by serving their brews from inside a custom camping trailer equipped with a small draft system, and a (fake) fire pit and seating area.

New Belgium Brewing

Colorado’s most recognizable brewery went all out on its GABF booth this year. The Fort Collins-based brewer added giant blow-up beach balls to its handcrafted booth which boasted big, rotating letters on the top.

Uinta Brewing

Adventure and the great outdoors are the principle sources of inspiration for this Salt Lake City brewery, and its booth was one big, beautifully crafted representation of that. This endcap booth was an ode to hiking, camping, and the scenery in Utah’s Uinta National Forest.

Fate Brewing Company

Fate Brewing Company made the most of their small space in the Brewer Pavilion this year by putting together a tall and flashy booth decorated with hop vines that drew in curious beer drinkers all weekend.

Epic Brewing Company

In an attempt to recreate mini versions of their taprooms, many breweries at GABF 2016 handcrafted their booths with lots of reclaimed wood. Salt Lake City-based Epic Brewing Company displayed one of the most creative approaches to this trend.

Crazy Mountain Brewing Company

Crazy Mountain went big this year—literally. The brewery opted for a tall and colorful booth made up of reclaimed oak barrels and massive blown-up images of the beautiful artwork found on its beer cans.

Shorts Brewing Company

This Michigan brewery was luring festival-goers to its funky booth with—you guessed it—shorts. This booth featured a large centerpiece designed to look like a brewing vessel with the bottom half of a mannequin (donning some green shorts) mounted to the top.

SKA Brewing Company

SKA Brewing Company’s “Hall of Justice” booth was bold and bright and styled after the superhero and comic book influences that drive the Durango-based brewery’s creative department.

Ballast Point

Highlighting its popular Sculpin IPA, Ballast Point’s massive booth was beautifully done and even included space inside for GABF-goers to take a breather and savor their brew.

Left Hand Brewing Company

Though not particularly flashy, the team at Left Hand opted instead to focus on its independent status and employee-ownership with “meet the owners” and “righteously independent” signage mixed in with various sizes of the brewery’s signature red left hand logo.

Charlie Papazian Reminisces on 35 Years of GABF

The founder of Great American Beer Festival talks to 5280 about how the event has grown from humble beginnings. 

BY

• TYRA SUTAK

OCTOBER 4 2016, 1:00 PM

Thirty-five years ago, a relatively unknown Charlie Papazian—home-brewing enthusiast and founder of the Association of Brewers (now the Brewers Association)—changed the country’s beer culture forever when he hosted the first Great American Beer Festival in Colorado. Only 20 breweries poured at the first GABF in 1982, and Papazian and his team were still trying to sell tickets the day of the festival. Today, a ticket to the fest is highly sought after, with the event generally selling out within hours and bringing roughly 60,000 attendees to the Denver area for three beer-soaked days each fall. Today, Papazian is a craft beer celebrity. As the author of The Complete Joy of Home Brewing, he's widely credited as the father of home brewing. And at GABF, you can often find him generously accepting requests for photos and doling out his signature fist bump to event attendees.

We caught up with Papazian to take a walk down memory lane and get a sneak peek into the 35th year of the Great American Beer Festival, which takes place October 6–8. 

5280: What inspired you to start the Great American Beer Festival.

Charlie Papazian: I had traveled to England in 1981 to go to the Great British Beer Festival, which I had been invited to judge. When I walked into the hall, I was kind of awestruck with the concept of a national festival to celebrate beer. So I brought up the idea of doing a Great American Beer Festival. There were only 40 breweries in the whole country at that time. I pursued the idea with some friends and we figured out how to find the unique beers from the few breweries that existed. We started in 1981, and the whole thing came to fruition in 1982.

What was year one of the festival like?

There were only 20 breweries the first year and only four microbreweries. We had about 800 attendees, and we were still selling tickets the day of. We never really sold out in those early days. It was a one-day event on June 4, 1982 in Boulder. To get the beer here, there was a beer importer and distributor based in the Boulder/Denver area who had a trucking company. He volunteered to drive his truck to pick up beer in different parts of the country. There was only one truck run. It started somewhere in the New Jersey area, and somehow we got the beer here. It was supposed to be here two weeks before the festival, but it got here the day before. We were kind of on pins and needles that first year.

How has the GABF changed in the past 35 years?

The logistical aspects of the event have changed. The security, the number of beers, the thousands of volunteers—that all has changed. What hasn’t changed is the spirit of adventure that the festival presents to the people who come. Yes it’s a festival about beer, and the culture of craft beer in particular, but what does change is that we present the festival in our current year. We move the culture of the beer festival along with the culture of beer in America. We have GABF apps and entertaining things that are of interest today. We always try to make the event fresh while still focusing on the beers.

What is your favorite part of the festival?

It’s always exciting on Thursday when the doors first open. The electricity in the room is always a favorite of mine. It’s fun to wander the hall and discover things and people that I’ve never heard about, or I’ve heard about and never met. Things happen in a good way, and you meet the people, the beers, and the breweries that you’re supposed to meet. It’s always a great experience. I also love finding beers and beer styles that I’ve never had before, and innovative approaches to brewing. 

What beer trends and 35-year celebration nods should attendees be on the look out for at this year’s fest?

I’m pretty certain that there will soon be a successful trend of really flavorful, yet refreshing lagers, whether they’re European style or have American accents, from light or pale to golden or amber lagers that are not so high in alcohol content—somewhere less than six percent. And hoppy lagers, as well. I think that trend will be huge. And there will be some displays and exhibits in the BeerX:Craftbeer.com Experience Booth in the Meet the Brewers area, where we’ll have memorabilia from past beer festivals. 

Sips: Ska Brewing Releases the First All-Colorado Certified Beer

In May of 2016, Durango-based Ska Brewing Company released the Hop Ivy All Colorado Ale—a craft beer made entirely with ingredients grown and sourced in the Centennial State. The easy-drinking ale is comprised of malts from the Colorado Malting Company in Alamosa; Chinook and Nugget hops from Simply Grown Hops based in Palisade; yeast from the Brewing Institute in Woodland Park; and fresh snow melt from the nearby San Juan Mountains. Even the 12-ounce cans the beer is packaged and sold in come from the Ball Beverage Package plant in Golden. Weighing in a just over six percent ABV, Hop Ivy’s beautiful amber color and hop-forward characteristics are the result of much research and hard work.

“We try to pay more attention to local because we want to do something that benefits our neighbors,” says Ska’s longtime head brewer, Thomas Larsen. “We get a lot of support from our community and we wanted to give that back.”

Initially created as a seasonally brewed, fresh-hop beer, Larsen and his team struggled to find a way to make Hop Ivy a year-round offering. Colorado’s hop farms (which are few in number to begin with) don’t tend to offer hops in a form other than freshly-picked cones, and those are only available during the short harvest window every fall. But all of that changed when Simply Grown Hops began to pelletize its hops—a process of converting the freshly picked whole hops into dried pellet form. Pelletized hops can be stored for longer periods of time, allowing Ska to add bitterness and flavor to the brew year round.

With Colorado-grown hop pellets in play, Ska added Hop Ivy to its year-round line-up of beers. Upon its release, Hop Ivy earned the platinum certification status from the Real Colorado Beer Project, an organization dedicated to helping highlight Colorado breweries that go above and beyond to support local businesses and ingredients.

Craft beer aficionados can grab a pint of Hop Ivy on tap or in six-pack form at the Durango tasting room and at Ska accounts throughout Colorado.

225 Girard St., Durango, 970-247-5792

Spirit Hound Distillers Makes Good On A Promise

Four years ago, the Lyons distillery promised barrels of straight-malt whiskey to prospective investors. Now, the long wait is over.

BY

• TYRA SUTAK

JULY 26 2016, 9:30 AM

Four years ago, the Lyons distillery promised barrels of straight-malt whiskey to prospective investors. Now, the long wait is over.

Funding a dream as big as opening a distillery in a spirited state like Colorado isn’t easy—or cheap. For that reason, the team behind Lyons-based Spirit Hound Distillers got crafty when securing the final funding needed to make that dream a reality. Taking a page from the wine industry, Spirit Hound launched a successful “Whiskey Futures Program” just before opening to the public in 2012. In exchange for up-front funding, the five co-owners offered claims to 50 different barrels of the distillery’s inaugural batches of straight-malt whiskey. The catch? The investors would have to wait to receive their booze until the spirit reached its peak in the aging process. Just this month, that whiskey finally hit the two-year mark and is now ready to be distributed.

For Spirit Hound co-owner, Wayne Anderson, “friends and family” includes the owners and CEOs of the some of the largest liquor stores across the Front Range. Anderson, a longtime member of the craft beer industry and former national sales manager of Oskar Blues Brewery, dug through his phone list, dialing up old friends at a handful of Colorado liquor stores that might be willing to bet on his exciting new distillery venture. “They were gambling four years ago,” Anderson says. “They really supported us in the beginning, and we’re happy to be able to make good on our end of the bargain.”

In the end, five liquor stores participated in Spirit Hound’s “Whiskey Futures Program.” Spirit Hound’s crafted whiskey has since been maturing in barrels for two years—the standard amount of aging time for straight whiskey. On July 11, Anderson and his team delivered several cases to three of those supportive liquor stores: Argonaut Wine & Liquor, Superior Liquor, and Boulder Liquor Mart. Each store’s shipment was unique to the specific barrel it laid claim to with financial support four years ago.

“For us, it was mostly about Colorado businesses, and some good people, and supporting Colorado brands,” says Ron Vaughn, co-owner and CEO of Argonaut. “Last week, we went up to Lyons to taste our barrel of whiskey, and it had such great flavor.” The finished product is cask strength, meaning that it is undiluted with water and bottled at an ABV of around 62 percent. The resulting whiskey may be strong, but it's also smooth, buttery, and filled with subtle caramel notes.

If you're ready to sample some of that cask-strength goodness yourself, don’t head to the Spirit Hound distillery in Lyons—you won’t find it. Instead, grab a bottle at Argonaut, Superior Liquor, or Boulder Liquor Mart. Boulder-based Hazel’s Beverage World will receive its limited supply of store-unique bottles in early 2017. As for Wilbur’s Total Beverage of Fort Collins? Well, that outpost plans to let its portion of the spirit continue to barrel age until further notice.