Sneak a Peek at the Green Man This Weekend

Courtesy of Green Man Taproom

What Falling Rock is for Denver, or Mayor of Old Town is for Fort Collins, Green Man Taproom and Beer Garden is hoping to be for Colorado Springs. This city has been missing a spacious taproom with beer garden and an extensive beer list. Owners Scott and Petra Simmons are hoping to fill this void with Green Man. They have been visiting breweries and taprooms for years, taking pictures and notes of the good and the bad.

This weekend you can get a bit of a preview of Green Man Taproom, a tap house and potential beer garden (city approval for the latter is still pending) featuring 50+ taps, slated to open in February 2014.  They are holding a sneak peek beer festival this Saturday, November 9th from 2-6pm at 320 S. Weber Street.  The festival will feature beers from distributors and local brewers that the taproom will showcase.

Tickets are available for $35 each.  Your ticket buys you half-pint samples of numerous beers and food from Za Pizza. There are between 50 and 100 tickets available at the time of this post, so make sure to get yours now!

Bar Hopping for Good Beer - Back East Bar and Grill

As craft beer finds it's way into increasing amounts of liquor stores and bars, it gets hard to keep track of all the great places you can go for a quality craft beer. I've become a bit routine in my bar selection. I choose my spots mostly due to convenience and luckily I've got some great beer-centric watering holes within walking distance.

But I know I'm missing out on other great bars so I'm going to visit a few places that haven't really been mentioned before on Focus on the Beer before and I'll report back.

The first bar is Back East Bar and Grill, which is in the northern reaches of Colorado Springs, close to where Briargate and Chapel Hills connect. I've been hearing some great things about this bar from a few different distributors and brewery reps so Daniel and I hopped in the car and drove north.