Finally getting around to starting to post on brewery visits. Thanks, pandemic :/
Despite having visited over four hundred breweries around the country, I’m going to “start over” as far as this blog goes.
I’m starting off super local. I’m fortunate that there are several fine breweries in my little suburban town, two of which are a relatively short walk away. One of those is Cellar West Artisan Ales, owned and operated by Zachary Nichols, a transplant from Wisconsin, who learned brewing in his home state before relocating to Colorado, helping found another brewery (Sanitas Brewing) a few years ago until he moved on to start his own place. (There’s only one brewery closer to me, and that will likely be the next visit.)
I wandered down to Cellar West a couple of days ago – New Years Eve – because Zach had posted up on Facebook that it was the brewery’s fourth anniversary. Of course, what with the pandemic, nobody’s doing any sort of events, so it was a quiet affair.
My first beer was their Desired Effect double IPA. And to be honest, it was getting chilly out and I was going to call it one-and-done, but then a couple sat down at the table next to me, we start chatting a bit, and I end up grabbing one more – the S’more Stout that Zach brewed a couple of months ago, under a secondary brand he’s started using in recent months, “Make Believe Beer”. Cellar West’s main offerings have always been saisons and farmhouse ales, but some time back Zach started branching out a bit, and decided to collect some of his offerings into a different grouping. Other Make Believe beers have mainly been hazy IPAs.
One of the things I love about going to breweries is the opportunity to chat up random people, and sometimes these encounters lead to something more. As I was getting ready to leave that afternoon, this one fellow David gets my attention, as in another conversation the topic of Atlanta (where I grew up) came up, and this fellow had lived there as well. This coincidence leads to the two of us yammering away on Atlanta breweries, and then breweries in other cities, for about half an hour.
And the reason Atlanta came up is from chatting with the couple at the next table earlier on; and it turns out the fellow in the pair is Nick Busey, co-owner and brewer at Busey Brews, a newer spot up the canyon west of Boulder in Nederland. Turns out Nick was born in Atlanta and moved away as an infant. I don’t even remember how Atlanta even came up in conversation in the first place. But that was a great convo, Nick’s wife Elena is lovely (and also in the craft beer industry), Nick gave me a card for a free beer, and I’m going to plan on rolling up to Ned to get back to Busey Brews. I’ve only been the one time, not super-long before the pandemic hit, and would like to return largely for the food; the location was a BBQ restaurant as well as a brewery in the past, and the Buseys are carrying on that theme with the food. Sadly on my last visit, I had brought a friend along who is vegetarian, so we just got tasters.
I’ve been a patron of Cellar West for a couple of years or so. The first location was on the north end of Boulder, CO in a small bay surrounded by repair shops and metalworkers; so small that there was no room for a brewhouse! Zach would brew over at his previous spot, Sanitas, and haul the wort over in a container to get pumped into barrels for aging.
Early in 2018, though, Zach decided it was time for a change, and began the hunt for a larger space. He ended up settling on one half of an unassuming brick building in Lafayette, about fifteen minutes east of Boulder. This space gave him much more space for a taproom and a reasonable amount of room to build out a brewhouse.
I’ve gotten to be friendly with Zach over the last few years, helping out here and there – capping bottles on a bottling day, helping in minor ways with the new space buildout, pitching in on caravanning gear from the old space to the new, and many times lately, helping out on canning days. I helped can the two beers I mentioned above, and despite having had plenty of low-fills of both in previous weeks, I still didn’t hesitate to indulge in them once again!