We cheated: Bootstrap Brewing

I'm blaming this entirely on my dad.  In the best possible way, of course.  Ammon and I had to talk cake with our baker yesterday, which is really close to my parents' house.  My mom put us in charge of desserts, so we decided to kill 2 birds with one stone:  try out cake flavors for the wedding, and have Easter dessert, so we bought 5 individual slices of cake and took them to the parent's house to chill out.  When we got there, my dad shared about his hunting trip that morning, and we shared about High Hops.  Well, the combination of hunting and beer talk really got to my dad, and the next thing we knew, the 3 of us were piling in the car to head to HIS local brewery, Bootstrap Brewing.  This place is owned by one of my dad's old work colleagues, and is literally less than a mile from the house I grew up in. 

It's literally tucked away in a hard to find corner of the main shopping plaza.  However, in a teeny-tiny town like Niwot, nobody cares about hard to find, because everyone's lived there long enough to be able to find all of the hidden gems.  There are a lot of those, by the way.  I could do an entire blog post series about the hidden gems of Niwot.  But that's for a different day.  Let's talk beer.

They had 9 on tap yesterday, and I decided I was feeling ambitious, so we put the pedal to the metal and decided to give all of them a try.  My dad ordered a pint for himself, but ended up trying several of the tasters as well.  I'm not going to name all 9 today, because it's Easter and I'm lazy.  Visit their website, I promise they will hook you up with names and killer descriptions of their offerings.

My dad thought it was absolutely hilarious that I take pictures of Ammon while he's drinking beer.

We LOVED Bootstrap, and I would say it was right up there with High Hops Brewery for me.  This came as a surprise, because the first time I looked over their beer options, I wasn't sure there was anything for me here.  They have a wide variety of brews, but not my favored Wheat beer.  Before this whole tour started, that would have been an absolute deal breaker for me.  We had 3 clear favorites of the 9, and the three of us agreed on all 3 of them.  I never thought that would happen, my dad and I agreeing on beer, but the man has darned good taste.  He ordered a full pint of the Flagstaff Amber, which was my number 3 favorite.

It was a really smooth, medium beer.  Not a lot of bitterness.   Ammon and I determined that our absolute favorite was the Boomer Brown, a nut brown ale.  This is so far from anything either of us ever order, we couldn't believe we were loving it so much.  I wish we hadn't done tasters, I would have been so happy with that Brown.  However, we all also developed a soft spot for the Rumbustious, a Rum Barrel aged beer.  They let that bad boy hang out and do its thing for 9 months!  The hard work paid off though, and that beer was absolutely joyous.

So special thanks to my dad, for sharing with us one of his local hidden gems.  It was pretty darned good.  Don't worry, Ammon and I would go back again to share a pint or two with you, especially since we can all stumble back to the house if need be.  Tell mom to have the guest room ready next time ;)

Happy Easter, all!