Planes, Trains, and Chardonnay.
A description of our upcoming vacation to the wine region of France?
Mais, non! You know we’re not wine people. Plus, farmers don’t get summer vacations.
An Imperial Blond Ale made with Chardonnay grape juice and orange blossom honey now on tap at one of our growing Aurora breweries?
Now, that’s more our speed - even if we can’t (yet) get there by plane or train. We have to do the old-fashioned driving thing from NoCo to Aurora. Once we arrive, however, we belly up to the bar, order an Imperial Blonde, (or one of the other 30+ beers on tap) and…blast into outer space.
Launch Pad Brewery located on South Buckley Road in the largest of the Denver suburbs, is a space-themed brewery founded by a group of friends, flying nerds, and Air Force veterans.
Launched (ha! get it?) in 2015 by best buds David Levesque and Henry Rusch, and later joined by Paul Mahoney, Launch Pad Brewery serves up a huge taplist in an open taproom with a view of the brewhouse behind it. Everything is space-themed: there are glowing star on the ceiling, a Cape Canaveral mural behind the bar, and framed rocket specs on the walls. The brewery’s theme ties with the area’s connections to the space and air industry and the clientele regularly shows up in NASA to imbibe their craft beer rocket fuel.
That is, actually, the brewery’s motto: Craft Beer is Our Rocket Fuel and it’s a renewable resource we can fully get behind. Out of fuel? Grab another beer! Out of beer? We’ll send another batch of malt! Out of malt? We’ll plant another field of barley, and then come have a beer while we wait for it to grow!
Even if we did drink Launch Pad beer during an entire growing season, however, we still don’t know if we could work through everything they have to offer. They always keep a spectacular number of beers on their taplist (current count 33!) ranging from Wild Ales, to Barleywines, to Double IPAs. There’s even a hard seltzer throw in the mix.
Launch Pad caters to a dedicated crowd of locals and it seems the commitment to their customers and their craft rocket fuel is paying off. They are in the process of expanding into the space next door to their current location and upgrading to a 20 bbl system. One might say they are really blasting off…
So, if you’re planning a trip to the cosmic reaches of the craft beer universe (or, really, if you’re just headed to Aurora) here are a few tips for the journey:
Wear your NASA t-shirt. In the absence of NASA gear, any Air Force schwag certainly will do.
Read the entire beer menu and the clever names just for fun, then order a drink based purely on the name. Sort of like ordering a wine based purely on the label but much better because a) it’s beer, not wine and b) it’s craft. Our personal favorite buy-by-the-name-beer? Enter Spaceballs Joke Here - a low ABV Schwarzbier.
Follow it up with a Root Shoot-specific beer. Co-owner Paul Mahoney recommends Chaotic Orbit, a traditional American Pale Ale made with Genie Pale. Support craft breweries and craft malt!
Plan carefully for re-entry to the (real) world: with so much good beer on tap, it’s easy to get carried away. Make sure you have a Designated Rocketship Driver for the ride home, or call for a re-entry ride. We’ve heard that Elon Musk and Uber might be partnering to offer SpaceX-Uber services, soon. Spuber!
Stock up on rocket fuel before you go. With individual cans, crowlers, and 4-packs, there’s no reason you should ever run out of gas.
We’ll see you off on your journey and wave from the top of our malthouse grain bins as you go! Bon voyage, beer lovers!
You won’t regret the trip.
