(This is Part 4 of my Denver! Who knew? series. Check out the rest here.)
It’s only fitting that while we laze around San Francisco, sipping our local word-class wines, Denver heads to pubs to down molasses thick ales and Rocky Mountain whiskey.
As our tour guide said, “George Stranahan likes to think everyone in Denver’s cowboys or cowgirls here. We like huntin’, we like fishin’, and we like drinkin’ whiskey.” In Coastal State fashion, I totally ate this up. Just like I want everyone in Texas to wear cowboy boots and folks in Tennesee to know their way around a guitar, I want my Coloradans sitting around mountain campfires, passing around tin cups of whiskey.
Thankfully, Colorado didn’t disappoint.
Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey is a small-batch distillery located on the industrial periphery of Denver’s Baker neighborhood, about a 10-15 minute streetcar ride from downtown Denver. It may have only began in 2004, but it is the first micro whiskey distillery in Colorado and it’s already racked up awards from the American Distiller’s Institute, Malt Advocate Magazine, and the Whiskey Bible (as Best Small Batched Distilled Whiskey in the World.)
Stranahan’s uses a unique batch process that combines elements of scotch and bourbon into the process, making it a uniquely flavored whiskey and not something you should pair with Coke, “unless you want to make the sweet baby Jesus cry.” (All quotes courtesy of our fantastic Stranahan tour guide.)
Out front, a rusty 1938 Dodge barrel pickup truck serves as a beacon of sorts, and feeds into the whiskey distillery lore. (Ignore that thing I said above about how the company was only founded in 2004; it’s much more fun to pretend otherwise.)
Dave and I hiked up the small, asphalt-laden hill and into The Rackhouse Pub. You’d think Friday, around 1pm, a bar in the middle of empty lots and industrial warehouses wouldn’t be packed. You would be wrong. The Coloradans, dressed in the corporate park uniform of pleated khaki’s and short sleeve polo’s, sat elbow to elbow at the pub’s lustrous wood and brass bar.
A few guys heard that you got free booze on the tour, teetered off their bar stools early enough to sign their names on the list. The tour guide, with a barreling voice and perfect comedic timing, managed to keep them entertained with whiskey lore — “Stranahan’s is the oldest, legal whiskey distillery in Colorado. No, not the oldest whiskey distillery in Colorado, but the oldest legal one” — and assurances that the whiskey would be flowing.
The tour begins with the barley drop off — only 100% Rocky Mountain Barley, obviously — and a massive steel vat masher. It then goes through a series of fermenting, washing, and finally distilling. Really, things only get exciting once you’re standing in front of the copper distillers, with steampunk looking pressure gauges, gaskets, and pipes snaking every which way.
Distilling is what makes an alcohol go from 7% alcohol by volume after fermenting (think beer and wine) to 70% ABV after two rounds of distillation. “I don’t know if any of you have ever been on a budget and still wanted to get your drink on,” she laughed, because whiskey is the way to go.
From the distillery, we moved to a refrigerated warehouse full of oak barrels. Whiskey comes out of the distillers as a clear liquid, like vodka. It’s amber smokiness comes from the charred interiors of white oak barrels, where it ages for two to five years.
After five years, the whiskey is filtered a final time because “it turns out people don’t like floaties in their whiskey.” And through an all-volunteer effort (the waiting list is hundreds long), each bottle of whiskey is hand bottled and uniquely labeled. The bottlers have a bit of fun naming each bottle: “Listenin’ to Rush”, “Listenin’ to STP”, “Listenin’ to the Spin Doctors” (a merry guy behind us joked that the bottlers are still living in the ’90s) and my favorite “My job’s better than your vacation.” Which is probably true.
But how does it taste? It’s what everyone wants to know, including the hooting and impatient group from the bar.
The guide gave us a description involving chocolate and caramel. Some tasters describe it in terms of fruit but “if it’s not dipped in booze or chocolate, I don’t eat it.”
I have a lot of experience with chocolate and caramel and dove into my shotglass excitedly. She insisted that our first sip should be raw — no ice, no water, a straight sip.
Now might be a good time to tell you that I’ve never had whiskey before.
As the sip seared my cheeks and tongue, I made gutteral sounds to Dave along the lines of, “I can’t swallow this.” But with more hand motions and wild eyes. His solution was to double over in giggles. Figuring there was only one respectable way to get the liquid fire out of my mouth, I swallowed. And hooooooo. Hoooooooo. Hoo. Cough. Boy.
With my throat adequately singed and my survival instincts beginning to kick in, I was almost first in line to get my glass watered down a little bit. A few octogenarian wives beat me to it.
With a few droplets of water, the whiskey went from pure heat to a smoked caramal, minus the heaps of sugar. This is why all y’all take ice cubes in your whiskey. I see right through you ALL OF YOU now.
Dave and friend Zach both described it as “a stiff kick in the pants” and “wickedly strong.” But, once they eased into it, Zach could also taste the smokiness and sweet finish, more scotch than bourbon. Dave kept it simple: “it tastes like booze.”
We decided to pick up a bottle of their small-batch whiskey as a host gift for Zach in Vail. Naturally, we picked out a bottle of Vail or Bust.
It came with a steel shot glass, for those cold nights around those Rocky Mountain campfires. Obviously.
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Hours: Tours are available Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11am, 1pm, 3pm, and 5pm. Saturdays tours are on the hour from 10am to 5pm. Tours max out at 30 people, so reserve your spot online here.
Admission: Free! Except that you’ll likely go home with a $60 bottle of whiskey, particularly once you find out how hard it is to get your hands on Stranahan’s outside of Denver.
How to Get There: Take any of the Denver Light Rail lines to Alameda, two stops south of downtown. From there, walk about a half mile to Stranahan’s. See how to ride the Denver Light Rail here.
