Casey Brewing and Blending

Casey Brewing and Blending is a charming brewery offering a range of unfiltered barrel-aged beer in the idyllic town of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The brewing enterprise believes in providing beer brewed using old-world techniques to the present-day customer. All beers on offer at Casey Brewing and Blending undergo barrel-aging to extend flavors to it that aren’t possible otherwise.

The Glenwood Springs brewery is Troy Casey’s brainchild. He decided to open his own brewery in 2013 after having experimented with oak barrel aging, bacteria, and wild yeast. He nursed a passion for beer produced using oak barrel fermentation and wished to serve customers with the same, sourcing all of his ingredients from the state of Colorado itself. The chemistry graduate belonged to a family with a history of brewing – his father was a brewer, but he took his time to realize how he wanted to apply the scientific knowledge he had acquired as part of his academic degree.

The beers on Casey Brewing and Blending’s menu are subject to oak barrel aging between four months to two years. Only whole fruits are used to provide their beers with a fruity flavor. The beers are hand-bottled and then left to condition for a time period ranging from one month to one year before being released. One wouldn’t be quite off the mark in claiming that Troy runs his brewery like a winery.

Casey Brewing and Blending has won a host of brewing awards since its inception. It won Rate Beer’s Top 100 Brewers in the World Awards consecutively in 2016 and 2017. The Belgian Session Ale brewed at Casey’s particularly has more than a handful of awards to its name.

Brewery Tour

Casey Brewing and Blending is an intimate brewing production effort with a limited capacity tasting room. For this reason, the brewery taproom was formerly unable to function like other brewery taprooms where visitors are accommodated daily. Earlier, if you wished to taste beer brewed by Casey Brewing and Blending, you were required to get your hands on the limited tasting sessions ticket that allowed tastings at the brewery premises on the first and third weekend of every month. Here, you could enjoy beers brewed by the Casey Brewing and Blending team, poured out of 750 milliliter bottles. No beer pints or taps were made available. A maximum of 30 people were permitted on these tasting sessions held right in the middle of their barrel cellar. You could come to visit the brewery during these sessions to enjoy their vintage and fresh beer blends or carry some to go. A tour of the brewery would be provided, ending with a bottle-share.

However, very recently, Casey Brewing and Blending has opened up its taproom, and you no longer need tickets to taste their delicious craft beer offerings. The facility is kid-friendly and has an outdoor patio that accommodates visitor’s pets. The tasting room is open throughout the week, and you can drop in anytime to have your fill of Casey’s splendid hazy IPAs, heady stouts, or refreshing sours from the tap. The Casey Brewing and Blending taproom also serves visitors with rotating guest taps curated from the best breweries across Colorado.

Some of the more remarkable beers made available by Casey Brewing and Blending are:

• The Cut: A fruit blended sweet and sour brew, which contains merlot grapes or locally sourced cherries
• The Low End or the Saison: Stripped back versions of Sours without any of the acidity usually associated with this kind of beer.
• Apricot Sour: Much recommended sour beer with a crisp mouthfeel, tart sour flavor, and notable apricot flavor and aroma.

A Boutique Brewery Experience

Casey Brewing and Blending is nestled in small-town Glenwood Springs and overlooks a river and a walking path. Chairs and tables are arranged out on the patio if you arrive early and are required to wait. In the last couple years, Casey Brewing and Blending has become somewhat of a pilgrimage for beer aficionados near Denver who love their share of fruity sours. Many drive up all the way from different localities of Colorado to pick up their share of bottled beer from Casey. Casey Brewing and Blending does not distribute yet, so visiting their brewery is the only way to gain access to their beer. If you enjoy a scenic drive leading you to a beautiful location where you can soak in your surroundings with some of the best lambic-inspired wild ales in all of America – you should plan your visit to Casey Brewing and Blending.

The tour offered by Casey Brewing and Blending to visitors lasts approximately two hours, where you are provided with a short history of the brewery and three tasted pours. You can purchase more pours, beer from their taps, or cellared bottle offerings after the tour has ended. John, the head brewer, is a friendly and informative tour guide who will answer any and all questions you have about the Casey brewery or its brews.

When you visit the Casey Brewing and Blending brewery, do try out the bottle-share. Sure, you can now taste their beers on tap, but the bottle share provides you with the opportunity to interact with other visitors and share your love for farmhouse ales. You can swap your stories as you taste a variety of the beer brewed at Casey’s.

A Roundup of Beers Offered

• Base Camp Collaborations: 5% ABV, Belgian-style Sour Ale, made in collaboration with Base Camp Wine & Spirits, Frisco, Colorado.
• Advanced Oak Theory: 5% ABV, Belgian-style Sour Ale, fermented and aged in oak barrels to provide a unique flavor.
• Biere De Garde: 8% ABV, Dark Sour, aged and fermented in neutral oak barrels for three to five months, blend of Munich and chocolate malt, fruity farmhouse ale with a whiff of cocoa.

Casey Brewing and Blending is located at 711 Grand Avenue, Glenwood Springs, CO 81601. For bookings and queries, you can reach out to them at (970) 230-9691 or visit their official website.