Backacre Beermakers just moved to Denver with 1 beer you should taste
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Backacre's Sour Golden Ale. Photo courtesy of Backacre Beermakers
One of Vermont's best and most-elusive beers is now available in Denver.
What's new: Backacre Beermakers, a small family-owned operation, relocated from Weston, Vermont, to Denver earlier this year.
- Backacre is a beer blendery that makes only one beer: A sour golden ale fermented and aged in French oak puncheons for more than a year.
- The small-batch blends were featured at top-shelf restaurants and beer bars in New England, and the limited bottles that made it to shelves went fast.
The backstory: Inspired by the family breweries in Belgium, Backacre started in 2010 as a side project for Erin Donovan, the blender, her engineer husband Matt Baumgart, and her father, John Donovan.
- Erin Donovan and Matt Baumgart lived in Denver but traveled to Vermont to make the beer a few times a year. They stored the barrels in her father's barn.
- Now the wort is made at Bierstadt Lagerhaus and Backacre does the fermenting and blending at its Denver warehouse.
- "Our business model is a little different," Erin Donovan tells Axios Denver. "We don't have a taproom, we are not open to the public. We rely on retailers to like the beer, buy the beer and sell the beer to customers."
🍻 John's thought bubble: Five years ago, on an epic five-state, 25-brewery tour, I tasted a bottle of Backacre at the famed restaurant Hen of the Wood in Burlington, Vermont.
- I didn't know the brewery, but I've never forgotten it.
- The earthy, softly sour ale is effervescent like champagne with fruity tones from the mixed-culture yeast.
What to watch: Backacre's No. 15 blend is the first one made in Denver and just hit local distribution last week, said Donovan, a former immunologist who now works full-time for the blendery.
- So far, you can find it at Proof in the River North neighborhood, Pearl Wine in Platt Park and on the menu at Hops & Pie on Tennyson Street.
This story first appeared in the Axios Denver newsletter, designed to help readers get smarter, faster on the most consequential news unfolding in their own backyard. Subscribe here.