Seeing as it’s my birthday, I decided to treat myself to a birthday beer, so I took a very short trip down the street to one of my favorite local breweries, Liquid Mechanics.
Liquid Mechanics opened their doors in late 2014. Considering how close they are to my home, I sniffed out what was going on a few months before when they were starting their build-out, and was super-happy to have another brewery opening up nearby, especially one I could walk to!
They’ve done pretty well for themselves in the past six years; there’s quite the row of medals up on one wall. And they haven’t let the COVID-19 pandemic cramp their style very much, either. The staff here have been very careful when it comes to enforcing precautions, even, unfortunately, to the point of customers getting verbally abusive at times. It’s sad that times like these bring out the worst in some people.
In response to the pandemic and related county/state restrictions on indoor seating, these folks simply roped off a good chunk of their parking lot and set up shop out there. They’re very fortunate with their location, both in general and being on one end of a strip, that they had pretty much exclusive use of this lot and could repurpose it this way without impacting any of the other businesses on this property.
Tomorrow, though, the state of Colorado is relaxing the restrictions by one level (the wisdom of which is a whole topic for debate), from “red” to “orange”. This means going from zero indoor seating to twenty-five percent capacity. For Liquid Mechanics, this will be a boon, as not only do they have their “barrel room” expansion space that they opened up a couple of years ago, but they just finished the build-out on another adjacent section of the building which they can use for seating. I have yet to see this space; it sounds like it will be a significant increase in capacity for them.
For today, though, what cemented my decision to trip down here for a beer was a Facebook post by one of their brewers, singing the praises of their latest helles, “To Beer, With Love”. Clear and light, a lovely example of the classic German style. And as brewery visits go, especially with regular haunts close to home, sometimes you run into friends or acquaintences, and today was no exception. In walks Jan, who I first met here a couple of years ago, with her little pooch Brodie in tow, as usual. I hadn’t seen the pair of them in many months so we caught up a bit and I got to get my dog fix in. Brodie’s a wee pup so he works great as a lap dog!