And here’s a new reason to envy all the other PA folks who live close enough to the brewery: On Oct. 15, Victory will debut a new beer called Otto, a Belgian-style, bottle conditioned dubbel ale available in 750 ml corked bottles.

This won’t be just any dubbel—which are pretty fantastic in their own right. Otto is brewed with smoked Munich and Belgian caramel malt, German hops and Trappist yeast. The ABV will ring in at 8.1%. Yum.

According to the press release I received, co-founders Bill and Ron developed the recipe for the smoked malt dubbel based on their experience with the style during a 1987 trip to Bamberg, Germany (Note: I was 5 in 1987). The combination of the traditional smokey flavor of a rauch beer married to the Belgian caramel malt will give the beer “a perfectly harmonized final flavor,” according to Victory’s founders.

“The complimentary flavors of smoked malt and Belgian yeast seemed like an obvious combination,” said Bill. “As far as we know, no one has bothered to put them together until now.”

Luckily for us, the storm didn’t kick in until we reached the Harrisburg area, but it was awful. Visibility was nil, winds buffeted the car, and the finishing touch was the hail. We made it to the motel, only to find out they were without power, so we trekked into Harrisburg. The brewery would have power, right?

Technically ABC did have power, but the storm had knocked out the POS system, so servers had to go back to each table, retake orders and get them into the kitchen. The manager explained that they weren’t serving anymore and our faces fell. It was 8:00 pm, we didn’t know the area, and we had salivated over the menu on the way there.

I mentioned that we had driven all the way from Philly, just to visit the brewery and restaurant on our way out west. The manager paused for a moment and said, “Let me see what I can do.” After waiting a bit, he came back, got us seated and ran back into the fray of the busy dining room. Twenty minutes later he swung by our table, dismayed that no one had waited on us. “Let me get your drink order … first round is on me!” he told us. Our new friend’s name was Jeremy and he would spend the next hour giving us some of the best customer service I’ve ever received.

We both ordered the IPA on cask and were rewarded for our wait. Crisp, yet creamy, it was exactly what we needed. Jeremy came back around, took our food orders and in seemingly no time at all I had a cup of cheddar ale soup in front of me. It was rich and flavorful and I should have ordered a bowl or two. Definitely a dish I want to replicate at home.

Ray ordered a beast of a meatloaf, seated on Texas toast, topped with mashed potatoes and gravy and sprinkled with fried onions. My grilled cheese with tomatoes looked positively puny next to it, but it’s exactly what I wanted to eat.

We finished out the night with a second round, Susquehanna Stout for me — so rich and chocolatey — while Ray enjoyed the Anniversary Maibock, which had a lovely honey finish.

We chatted with Jeremy some more, thanked him for getting us a table and taking care of us, and selected a 4-pack of ginger beer and a 6-pack of white birch beer for the road (both of which are delicious). We’ll definitely have to go back to visit and sample more of Appalachian Brewing’s beers, but even though the brewery opened a new location, I feel like we’d need to go back out to the Harrisburg location to show our loyalty to excellent service.

Amy told us to look like serious Beer Geeks. This is what we managed.

7:00 AM on Saturday found me curled up in my guest room bed, watching a streaming movie on Netflix. Then my phone began to buzz. Less than 6 hours later, I found myself at Iron Hill West Chester with Ryan, LeeAnne and her dad for lunch and Belgium Comes to West Chester.

There were 22 Belgian beers available to sample or order full glasses; for samples, you could pay $2 per 4 oz pour, or you could order a flight. We made the decision to order flights 1 & 2 (listed below).

1. Iron Hill Maple Shade, NJ: Flemish Red Ale
2. Iron Hill North Wales, PA: Sour Dubbel
3. Iron Hill Media, PA: Wee Funky
4. Iron Hill West Chester, PA: Saison
5. Iron Hill Wilmington, DE: Quadrupel
6. Sly Fox Brewing, Royersford, PA: Ichor
7. New Holland Brewing, New Holland, MI: Black Tulip Tripel
8. Stewart’s Brewing Co., Bear, DE: Stumblin’ Monk
9. Troeg’s Brewing Co., Harrisburg, PA: Scratch 34
10. Devil’s Backbone Brewing Co., Roseland, VA: Dark Abby
11. Yards Brewing Co., Philadelphia, PA: Trubbel de Yards
12. Stoudt’s Brewing Co., Adamstown, PA: Tripel
13. Nodding Head, Philadelphia, PA: Rudy’s Kung Fu Grip
14. Flying Fish Brewing Co., Cherry Hill, NJ: Exit 4 Hoppy Tripel

I’ve had the beers from Flying Fish, Nodding Head and Stoudts and was pleased to see them again. I was absolutely blown away by Iron Hill Wilmington’s Quad. Typically, I find quads to be too strong for me, but this beer somehow hid its 11.8% ABV. I enjoyed the chocolate meets caramel maltiness as well as the dark stone fruit notes. I could have ordered a full glass, it was so delicious.

The table favorite was New Holland’s Black Tulip Tripel. BTT was smooth with hints of clove and esters. The program listed Michigan beet sugar as an ingredient, which I found interesting.

Prior to BC•WC, I hadn’t heard of Devil’s Backbone Brewing; I found their Dark Abby to be a party of plums and bananas, and quite good. They list Appalachian sorghum syrup as an ingredient for “extra sexiness.” The beer is also fermented with 2 Belgian yeast strains and finished with red wine yeast for dryness. Very interesting.

As for the beers we missed, they were:

Victory Brewing Co., Downington, PA: Golden Monkey
Cambridge Brewing Co., Cambridge MA: Tripel Threat
Dogfish Head, Rehoboth, DE: Red & White
Ithaca Beer Co., Ithaca, NY: Brute
Harpoon Brewing Co., Boston, MA: Frites & Geeks
Brooklyn Brewing Co., Brooklyn, NY: Sorachi Ace Saison
Brooklyn Brewing Co., Brooklyn, NY: Local One
Manayunk Brewing Co., Philadelphia, PA: Yunker’s Nocturnum

I’ve had the offerings from Victory, DFH and Ithaca (Gold Medal Baby!), but would have liked to have sampled Tripel Threat from Cambridge (they blew me away at GABF) and Frites & Geeks from Harpoon.

Iron Hill West Chester's Gerardus Maximus

To draw the afternoon to a close, I ordered one of West Chester’s specials, Gerardus Maximus, a bold hoppy red ale that danced along the lines of imperial in regard to ABV. I found it refreshing and a nice way to cut through the sweetness of the Belgian samplers.

The lovely Amy Strauss also ran around and snagged so many excellent photos for West Chester Dish. Check them out!

P.S. Do you know how many times I typed “Wester Chester” while writing this post? A lot.

This is a beer I grew fond of, so, when Ray decided I was going to be his forever-lady, he picked up a 2007 bottle of the Cooperstown brew and proposed to me on Aug. 22, 2008.

To celebrate the engagement months later, my Uncle Larry and Aunt Susan gave us two bottles of Three Philosophers, bottled in 2008. Ray and I quickly decided to cellar the brews. One would be opened shortly after the wedding in November 2009, and the second would be opened right around our first wedding anniversary in November 2010.

Ideally, we would have had the beer on our anniversary, but our plans were to go to Blackfish in Conshohocken—an amazing seafood BYOB—and we figured a quadrupel would overpower almost anything we ordered. Instead, we had it a few nights later with pan-seared filet mignon and roasted brussel sprouts. So good.

The bottle aged well. Dark stone fruit was evident, and the alcohol was very mellow. The cherries were present, but tended to play second fiddle to stronger plum notes. The aging definitely smoothed out the beer, and we both found it quite enjoyable.

I highly recommend this sort of practice—buying a couple of bottles to celebrate an occasion, leaving one to cellar and open over an anniversary. It would have been an excellent experiment if my uncle and aunt had given us three bottles: the last could have been saved for our fifth or even tenth anniversary!

Oskar Blue Sampler. Top (l-r): ODB Barleywine; Velvet Elvis; Some High Grade Smoke; Columbian Supreme; Ten Fidy. Bottom (l-r) Priscilla Wheat; Hoppy Seconds; Redbeard's Love; Gubna Imperial IPA; S-bus Imperial Brown

After visiting New Belgium on Day 8, we headed over to Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids and Solids. We enjoyed 2 sampler trays filled with beers that don’t tend to make it into cans—these were draft specialties. The ODB Barleywine was intense, and I remember being fairly impressed with Some High Grade Smoke, especially since I’m not much of a smoked beer kind of gal (maybe someday). The imperial Redbeard’s Love was very caramely and S-bus Imperial Brown was my first exposure to the offbeat style, and I liked it.

Day 9
Once again we hit up WaterCourse Foods for breakfast, because, simply put, the food there is mind-blowingly phenomenal. Get on a plane NOW and eat there. Your stomach will thank you.

After a 6+ mile hike at Elk Meadow in Evergreen, Co., we met up with my fellow Lady of Craft Beer Micki at Great Divide. And, unfortunately, it was between these two activities that I found out that my beloved Clark’s Ale House was closing—making me a sad panda that could only be cheered up with excellent GD brews.

Day 10
Friday saw us head to Snooze for a light breakfast (1/2 orders of Bennys and coffee only for us). Our plan for the day was to go neighborhood hunting, nap in the park, have lunch at SAME Cafe, and basically just play it by ear.

We found that the neighborhood just south of the state capitol seemed to be our best bet, even with a street full of apartment complexes called Poets’ Row (I’m such a geek). I discovered a cool hair salon sporting posters for Roller Derby and discovered WaterCourse Bakery’s location, so I knew this would be a perfect spot to settle down in a few years (hair salons and bakeries … my only requirements).

Lunch at SAME (So All May Eat) Cafe was delicious and meaningful (read more about it on MelBee Says …) and reading and napping in Cheeseman Park was delightful.

Great Divide Yeti and Wild Raspberry soon became one as I mixed the two samples to become the Wild Raspberry Yeti.

Ray called for Happy Hour at Great Divide, so we hoofed it over there, and we enjoyed a few samples and pints and our books. There was an excellent vegetarian food truck doing their thing right outside the patio, but we resisted the temptation and held out for WaterCourse (yes again!) and their delicious pastas for dinner.

Day 11 saw us checking out, dropping off the rental car and heading to the airport. But before we shimmied through security, there had to be breakfast, and once last beer at Boulder Beer in the airport. I enjoyed a Mojo IPA with the same southwestern chicken salad that I had a year ago, while Ray enjoyed a Planet Porter with a burger.

And then it was off to our gate to head back to Philly. Every time we leave Denver it gets a little bit harder, but one day the tables will turn and we’ll be leaving the Mile High City to go on vacation and not the other way around.

The Abbey, the Beer-Stream trailer that was once commissioned to travel, sharing the wonders of New Belgium beers.

It may have been a month since I wrote about Odell Brewing and more like 2 months since we were actually at the mecca that is New Belgium Brewing, but our time spent there still seems pretty fresh in my mind. I mean, how does one forget about a 90-minute brewery tour?

We were greeted first by the classic Airstream trailer in the parking lot, and then headed straight into the Liquid Center. We checked in, got a nifty stamp on our hands and snagged our first samples, pre-tour. I had the Ranger IPA—so crisp and hoppy and full of resiny goodness. Our tour guide Seth (who is epically awesome and the tour guide to have while at New Belgium) had us gather around and enjoy the first of many samples to come (the Abbey ale … so caramely!) and told the story of how New Belgium was born out of Kim and Jeff’s basement and then grew into the current space.

Seth, our tour guide at New Belgium, was super cool and highly knowledgable.

Then it was time to head upstairs, where you can see the tops of the kettles and the beautiful mosaics that surround them. It was at the upstairs bar that Seth decided to make an “employee-owner” decision to have each of us pour our own samples from the tap (to save on labor, as he put it).

He taught us the perfect way to pour (just enough head so you get to experience the aroma appropriately) and let us have at it. I poured a perfect sample of Hoptober, the fall seasonal. Ray followed and managed to kick the keg of 1554 (a Belgian black ale). He gave it another shot, this time kicking the keg of La Folie, the sour brown. The third time was the charm and he finally managed a decent pour of Ranger IPA.

We peered in on the cellaring area, saw the lab where we waved at a bunch of the folks behind keeping the NB yeast healthy and then made our way over to the bottling/packaging facility, lovingly called the Thunder Dome, where we had yet another sample, this time Mothership Wit.

Throughout the brewery, New Belgium has dioramas like this one for Fat Tire Amber Ale.

From there, we headed back to the main building, headed up the stairs by accounting so that we could have the honor of coming back down—via a large metal curly slide. Seth suggested curling up to avoid any abrasions from the metal and riding on the left butt cheek. I tried my best while sliding down in a dress, but still managed to nail my knee pretty well. Two months later, and I still have a dark spot on my knee the size of a quarter.

We finished up in a room Seth has set aside for us with two final samples: Ranger and 1554. Seth regaled us with the story behind 1554 (watch the video!) and then sent us on our way to hang out in the Liquid Center.

Overall, it was an amazing tour, with much more than just walking around and trying samples. Seth explained all about the brewery’s environmental philosophies and more, which are just mind-blowingly awesome (and I’m not even going to try to cover it all—just read about it here).

Definitely reserve spots on the tour if you find you’re in Fort Collins. Great beer. Great time. Great social and environmental responsibility. Who could ask for more?

PHILLY BEER WEEK TO SEND ONE REGIONAL BREWER AND ONE LOCAL BEER DRINKER TO BELGIUM FOR COLLABORATION BREW
PHILADELPHIA, PA — One regional brewer and one local beer drinker and will get a chance to win an all expenses paid trip to Belgium to help brew a Philly Beer Week (PBW) collaborative beer with world-renown brewer Dirk Naudts of De Proef Brouwerij.  The two lucky winners will be selected during a fun party on Wednesday, November 17 starting at 7 p.m. at McGillin’s Olde Ale House (1310 Drury St., 215-735-5562) in Center City.

Beers lovers can enter a raffle ($5 per ticket or 5 tickets for $20 to benefit PBW) to select the brewer that they would like to send to Belgium.  At 8:30 pm, one raffle ticket will be picked and the person who entered, along with the brewer named on their entry, will win the free trip.

Well hot damn! Talk about the experience of a lifetime! The email contained a partial list of participating breweries:
Dock Street Brewing Co.
Dogfish Head
Flying Fish Brewing Co.
Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant,
Lancaster Brewing Co.
Manayunk Brewpub
Nodding Head
Sly Fox Brewery
Stoudt’s Brewing Co.
Twin Lakes Brewing Co.
Troegs Brewing Co.
Victory Brewing Co.
Weyerbacher Brewing Co.
Yards Brewing Co.

The opportunity to brew with ANY of these brewers would be phenomenal. So, the lucky person who gets his or her “golden ticket” pulled will get to work the brewer of their choice and Naudts to develop a special porter recipe, which will then be poured during Philly Beer Week.

According to Don Russell—or as all us Philly folks know him, Joe Sixpack—the porter is a classic beer style in the Philadelphia area. “It has been brewed here since before the Revolution,” Russell explains. “It’s an extremely flexible style that allows all kinds of interpretation by inventive brewers.”

This specially-brewed porter will be the fifth in De Proef Brouwerij’s ongoing Brewmaster’s Collection series, which started back in 2007.

Ray recorded the entire tour on his iPhone. He’s awesome like that.

I thought you might enjoy just a taste of our tour.

We headed out to Fort Collins, arriving at Odell Brewing Co. just before noon. We were familiar with the Odell brews from GABF and some of the local pubs and restaurants, but wanted to experience it fresh.

We were instantly impressed by the facility, driving up to a spacious parking lot, walking past the Odell leaf-style bike racks and along the wooden path up to the brewery and tasting room.

The tasting room was stunning, with a stone bar (marble perhaps), with a generous area for sitting and sipping. The ladies tending the bar were friendly and quick to answer any questions, and I spied a bookcase with an assortment of brewing publications, books and some boardgames (my kind of people).

We passed on taking a tour, and instead opted to try both the Classic Tasting Tray and the Pilot Tasting Tray, each a whopping $4 (which is a steal). On top of that, we were given 2 $4 tokens, good towards a merch purchase of $10 or more.

While Odell’s t-shirts were rather tempting (I LOVE their woodcut-style bottle labels), we opted to turn the tokens back over toward some of the charities the brewery was supporting that month.

But let us talk beer.

Classic Tasting Tray

• Easy Street Wheat: super wheaty and refreshing, unfiltered.
• Levity Amber Ale: a lighter take on the traditional amber. Hints of caramel, hops shine through.
• 5 Barrel Pale Ale: hopped in 8 stages with 6 different hops. Deep golden color, perfect session pale ale.
• 90 Shilling Ale: a cross between a Scottish ale and English pale ale. Deep amber, light fruit and nutty aroma.
• IPA: American style, resiny flavor, slightly fruity/floral aroma. Thirst quenching with a big, bold taste. Sunshine gold in color.
• Cutthroat Porter: nearly opaque brown with hints of red, slight head. Roasty nose. Chocolate and coffee.

Pilot Tasting Tray

• Snowriders Ale: filtered American wheat, slightly hopped with Centennial and Amarillo. Hops shine through, making this an interesting wheat/pale hybrid. Crisp!
• Curry wheat: base beer is a German hefe. Curry spices include kaffir lime zest and leaves, coconut, coriander, ginger, cayenne, cinnamon and fenugreek. Traditional hefe aroma in the nose, with hint of spice. Spice flavor is subtle.
• Hast la muerte: “Austria’s answer to the oktoberfest” stated the tasting note. A lager brewed with Vienna, pilsner and crystal malts with a hint of chocolate. Deep amber in color. Malty, yet crisp.
• Isolation Ale: winter ale made with premium malts imported from England. Malty and robust, nice caramel notes. Fairly light for a winter warmer.
• Nitro Cutthroat Porter: nitro brings out even more roastiness
• The Wanderer: double marzen with Brett. 11.2 percent. Fruity sour in the nose, amber in color, thin head. Balanced with the sour, nice fruity characteristic, with hints of caramel—hides the alcohol well. Ray also noted that he picked up a nice caramel flavor right at the beginning before the Brett kicked in.

This sign hung above the door leading into the brewery—I'd never seen something posted like this. Very cool.

After finishing our tasting trays, we decided to share a 10 oz pint of the Bourbon Barrel Stout, which we first had at GABF. Dark, rich and thick—this was a bourbon barrel-aged beer done well, much like Golden City Brewing’s Cuvee #1 (maybe it’s just a Colorado thing).

Odell Brewing did us right. We were blown away by the beers and probably could have spent the entire day in the day room. However, we had a very important 2:00 reservation to keep …

Day 5
On Sunday following GABF, Ray and I decided to take it easy. We had both sworn off alcohol until dinner, that is, until Ray ordered his first Bloody Mary from Olivéa, which has the No.1 Bloody Mary in town (good enough excuse), with breakfast. We took the day to tour the Denver Zoo, bummed that the sea otters weren’t cute-ing it up, but pleased to see the mama tiger and 4 cubs playing.

Following the zoo, we headed over to the Highlands area for dinner at Root Down, a restaurant that sources at least 80% of its produce, meat and dairy locally, serves reverse osmosis water, and is just generally hip. We made a meal of small plates, thrilled with the organic carrot and red Thai soup and the carrot gnocchi with wild mushrooms and baby zucchini. I enjoyed one of the beer specials, which was Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A (Rye IPA) from He’Brew (a brand from Shmaltz). It was my only non-local beer the entire trip (aside from GABF) and was rather good. Ray enjoyed Odell’s IPA.

Day 6
Off to Boulder! Our first stop was the Pearl Street Mall as we waited for Mountain Sun Pub to open for lunch. We poked in and out of shops, but we were mainly there for Mountain Sun. 11:30 hit and we headed in for an early lunch: I enjoyed a Resinous Rye, while Ray had the Illusion Dweller IPA. To get to the restrooms, you walk by the brewery. I highly recommend breathing in deeply on the way to the loo … it’s heavenly.

Then, it was over to Redstone Meadery, also on Pearl Street, but on the opposite end, away from the “main street” hustle and bustle. Nestled between an auto body repair shop and an oil change joint, Redstone Meadery is a gem. We just missed the noon tour, but had the chance to sample 4 Nectars, Black Raspberry, Bosenberry, Sunshine (Apricots) and Nectar of the Hops (dry hopped with Amarillo and Centennial); 6 Mountain Honey Wines, Traditional, Juniper, White Pyment, Pinot Pyment, Blueberry and Plum;  and for a nominal fee, we purchased 1 oz tastes of Redstone’s reserves, 2005 Black Raspberry, 2004 Cyser and 2003 Boysenberry, all of which were phenomenal.

As we mulled over our samples of the Reserve selections, Ray and I played a rather un-cutthroat game of Scrabble, where French, Spanish, slang and abbreviations ran wild (we also didn’t bother to keep score). 3:00 came and it was time for another meadery tour; this one we didn’t miss. It was interesting to hear about the process, and see how the owner was able to use a variety of brewing and winemaking equipment for his meads. After listening to his entire talk, we decided to skip buying the Sunshine Nectar (which we had fallen in love with at GABF and again at the tasting room) and instead purchase a bottle of the Traditional mead.

Day 7
We originally decided to stick around town on Tuesday, opting for yet another mind-blowing breakfast at WaterCourse Foods. But then, instead of exploring more of Denver proper, we decided to head out to Golden to hike Triceratops Trail (basically a trial run before our Thursday hike to see if my knee and healing ACL was up for it) and check out the town.

The trail was a bit hidden, but definitely an interesting 1.5 mile hike. I enjoyed geeking out over dinosaur tracks, raindrop and frond imprints, and the various flora and fauna we came across. After working up an appetite, we headed into town, and upon a suggestion from one of my fellow Ladies of Craft Beer Micki, we made a beeline for Woody’s Woodfired Pizza in Golden. We shared an excellent Whiskey King pizza, and I enjoyed Dale’s Pale Ale straight from the can (my dad always said ladies drink from a glass, but he wasn’t there, so straight from the can it was!), while Ray had yet another Odell’s winner, 5 Barrel Pale Ale.

Possibly the best thing about Woody’s was the local honey they brought to the table for the crust. We were BLOWN AWAY! I wanted to make a mead with this honey, stat! I kidded with Ray about stashing the bottle in my purse; little did we know how lucky we were going to get.

While Ray was in the restroom, the general manager came over to ask me how the pizza was (it was a new addition to the menu) and compliment me on my beer selection. I told him how much I enjoyed Oskar Blues beers and how it was hard to find them on the East Coast. I also complimented him on the honey, and that’s when I found out that not only was it local, but Woody’s had invested in the beekeeper’s business in order to generate the amount of honey the restaurant would need. Awesome! Small business helping out a small business, Love it.

I told him how much we loved the honey and found out that its a blend of 2 hives in the area. Then I found out we could buy it and I was overjoyed. We didn’t buy enough to make a mead, BUT we got a bottle for ourselves and a bottle for our foodies friends who would appreciate the local gift.

What could be better than local, delicious honey? Local, delicious BEER. A short drive took us to what looked like a house—it wasn’t. It was Golden City Brewing, proudly hailed as the “Second Largest Brewery in Golden” (the first is Coors. Yuck). We sampled tastes of everything on tap, missing out on the Evolution IPA and Mad Molly’s Brown Ale that had been cleared out by GABF, and selected a pint of Legendary Red for Ray—their most popular—and a snifter of Cuvee #1, a bourbon barrel stout.

We grabbed the travel edition of Sorry!, pulled up a table in the shade of the patio and settled into our beers. We were wowed by what we had in front of us, and after a lot of back and forth, I finally kicked Ray’s butt in Sorry! GCB was a real gem, and it was nice to see that even on a Tuesday afternoon between 2:30 and 5, the place could draw a crowd with pints and pitchers, and even a few well-behaved dogs.

Finishing our beers, it was back to Denver to rest and hit Euclid Hall for a late night supper. I was excited to visit, reviewing their menu online and considering the options. Unfortunately, it didn’t do it for us. Euclid Hall is not only a pub, but a rather well-known building. According to the website, Euclid Hall was built in 1883 as a house for Dr. Byron Albertus Wheeler, Euclid Hall has been home to the Masons, the Colorado Women’s Relief Corps, The Cootie Club, Maudie’s Flea Market and is even rumored to have once been the very fancy headquarters of a brothel catering to government officials, law enforcement and members of the media. The decor is cool, but the big screen TVs boasting a variety of sporting events and the schizo music selection were major turn offs.

The prices on their list of “special” beer bottles was outlandish, and their regular bottle list had a pretty hefty markup. We stuck with drafts to keep our wallets a little less squeezed; I opted for Ska Brewing’s Buster Nut Brown and Ray has Boulevard Brewing’s Tank #7, a farmhouse ale. We tried poutine for the first time, which was pretty good, and noshed on sandwiches. While the service was good and the food was perfectly fine, we found ourselves disappointed. It was as if Euclid Hall wanted to be both Tria and The Dive Bar at the same time, but it just didn’t work for us. That said, we definitely want to give Euclid Hall a second chance the next time we’re in Denver.