Well the wheels of government keep turning...and thankfully they're continuing to move in our favor. Colorado Senate Bill 79 has passed through the Senate and has moved onto the House. Hopefully we'll hear some good news before the end of March.
We've had a few people ask what they can do to help us out. If you want to reach out to your local reps and let them know they should support this bill. If you want to keep an eye on its progress you can follow along here.
303 Day (March 3 for you out-of-state folks) is becoming a pretty big deal these days. Lots of events and sales and local pride happens across the Denver metro area.
I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours chatting with William Stewart from Colorado Sake Co. today. It got me pretty excited for this year’s 303 Day in that we will have more than one local sake to celebrate with! We will both be participating in the Pacific Rim Premium Sake Tasting II event this coming Saturday (303 Day). I’m very excited to put our sakes next to some great sakes from all over Japan and in get them in front of sake lovers across the metro area...and beyond.
It is very exciting that the sake community is growing, not only locally, but nationally as well. The diversity of styles, techniques, and experimentation is fantastic.
the great folks at Colorado Sake Co.
The Great American Beer Festival, or GABF, is always a crazy weekend here in Denver. Brewers and beer enthusiasts from all over the world pack downtown Denver and it’s breweies with thousands of people.
We were fortunate to meet Luis Enrique De La Reguera from Cerveza Cru Cru when he was in town about a month ago. He came by the brewery to learn about our sake and taste the beers at Grandma's. Luckily there was a new person working the bar that day and Matt was out thrift store shopping, so Marc got to show him around and chat with him. He was in town working with Epic Brewing on a new collaboration beer, a gose using crickets to add an earthy flavor and color to the beer. We're pretty excited to try it.
Well we also got to talking about sake and he mentioned that he knew the folks at Nami Sake, the only sake brewery in Mexico City...and I think the only one in Mexico. Of course we were very excited to learn more about it. Oh man were we excited to walk into the brewery this week and see this bottle just sitting on our desk.
Man it is good! If you can find it anywhere in the states or get lucky enough to have someone bring you back some, DO IT!!! You will not be disappointed. It is light, clean, and dry. It is a very refreshing drink. I am going to have to spend some time doing research on it to pull some of the more subtle flavor notes, but it is good.
So after a long process of internet searching, we finally got a hold of Luis (thank you Instagram) and got to meet up with him and his crew of brewery palls from Mexico and thank him properly for his great gift. We bounced around from Spangalang to OMF to Ratio and ended the night at Bierstadt Lagerhaus chatting about beer, sake, how to get Mexican beer better representation at GABF...all through his pretty good English and my really bad Spanish.
I can say that I've never been more excited to visit Mexico than I am now and I look forward to finding ways of getting their brews up north.
The only pic I got all night of the Mexican brewers. That's what you get for having too much fun.
We were lucky enough to be featured on Channel 2 Daybreak this morning. It was a lot of fun and probably the fastest 3 minutes I've talked ever. We're really excited to see where this takes us.
Uploaded by Nancy Melear on 2017-09-27.
Our brewer Marc ended up taking a mystery trip to Seattle for the last few days. Luckily for him a few pieces fell right into place and he was lucky enough to spend some time with Jeff and Sachiko from Cedar River Brewing in Ballard. Jeff was nice enough to share his wares...the new batch with Yamada Nishiki is fantastic...and catch us up on some of the fun things he's been working on.
We were also fortunate enough that Andy from Tahoma Fuji Sake also stopped by for a visit. We chatted with him about some of the trials and tribulations of opening up his space and the benifits of having a competitor in town to boost both businesses. Jeff said it best, "One sake brewery is a novelty. Two breweries is a trend."
Andy was nice enough to show us around his space and share his sake with us.
Andy drove us over to his space and showed us around. While being a refurbished garage, it was damn impressive. His setup of tanks and production areas were no joke. It helps that his product is solid as well. Can't wait to see what happens when he gets fully up and running.
Meanwhile back in Denver...Keith and our new salesman Dale (more to come on that later) were fortunate to have John Gauntner and his wife stop by the brewery for a chat and tasting. (Pics to come later) He was in town teaching his Sake Professionals class at DU. Even though most of our wares weren't his favorite, he had some great things to say about our biz and gave us some words of wisdom for the future. We're looking forward to getting some more feedback from his class later this week, as he was nice enough to take a few bottles with him to share with his students.
We're also getting ready to add the first round of peaches to our latest ferment. If all goes to plan we'll have it bottled and ready to go by October 1...Sake Day 2017!!! We'll keep the updates coming on that for sure.
Fall is just around the corner...where did the summer go?
It has been a bit of a rough summer around here. A lot of our restaurant friends have been hit hard lately and have seen a lot of restructuring and hard decision making, which has also affected us. We're working through some bumps and hiccups of our own as well.
But...there are also really great things on the horizon. We're experimenting with some new packaging.
This pack will allow you to take our sake many more places in Colorado. Since glassware isn't allowed in city or national parks, you'll be able to bring this with you and enjoy sake from all the scenic spots and adventurous locations.
We're also working through all the paperwork to bring the Old Mose (our black rice sake) and our Colorado Rose (new red rice sake) out to the market. We're hoping to have it available by spring. And we're bringing the Palisade Peach back! We're harvesting the peaches over labor day and the brew should be ready around Sake Day this year (October 1).
We're also excited to be bringing a new member of the team aboard this month to help us with sales. We're hoping that this will get us further into certain markets and make it easier to get our sake to you.
Congratulations are also in order to our brewer Marc on getting married in July. His crazy weekend of events wore us out to the point where we forgot to hand out sake to several guests.
Sake day is also just around the corner and we're trying to figure out an event. We'll let you know as soon as there is a plan.
This Summer Brings Back Two Sake Projects and Introduces Another! We'v e got some sake R&D going on this summer that we're pretty excited about. Hints, a bear, a jackalope, and a slab of marble.
Hope your week is starting off great! Ours is going pretty well. We got some great news yesterday that has us super jazzed...our friends over at Sweet Action Ice Cream are making a Colorado Honey Sake Ice Cream with some of our recent pressings. They haven't given us a release date yet, but keep your eye out for sure.
We would also like to encourage you to head up to Westminster and check out Akihabara - Bar and Arcade. It is a super fun place with Japanese style arcade cabinets (with a rotating stock of games), as well as, fun cosplay parties and game tournaments.
You can also join us at Cook Street on Thursday, March 23rd for a sushi making class and sake tasting. It is a super fun date night or a fun friend night out. Peep the details here.
Hope all is awesome with you and have a great week!
There are names for situations where you drink sake. Drink it under a sakura tree during the hanami season and it’s called Hanami Zake (花見酒). Drink it with a Sakazuki during the New Year and it is called Toso (屠蘇). Drink it while admiring the full moon during the autumn and it is called Tsukimi Zake (月見酒). Drink it indoors while watching the snow fall and it is called Yukimi Zake (雪見酒).
Hey folks, sorry for the silence lately. We have been working on a lot of things over the last few months. Still hustling to get our sake on the market and easier for you all to purchase. We've also been working on remodeling our space and building out a new koji room. We've also had a few setbacks that have taken us away from the brewery.
2016 was good to us and we hope 2017 will be even better. Marc is working on bringing back Old Mose (he thinks he found the secret ingredient), and we are revisiting the Jackalope Milk with our friend Izaiah. We've also been working with some artist friends on some new shirt ideas.
Thanks for all your help and support during the last year. It has really meant a lot to us. Have a great holiday season!
Our brewer Marc is heading off to Japan this week...unfortunately a few days to late to participate in the International Wine Challenge in Hyogo. His travels are part research and part vacation. We're very excited about his visit to Takayama, Denver's sister city. Hopefully he'll bring us back some good news for our Takayama style sake in R&D right now. He'll be taking photos and telling stories, so keep up with him on our Instagram!