Get pumped at the Pumphouse

October 25, 9:06 AMNorthern Colorado Beer Examiner'Chipper' Dave Butler

Previous Next

5 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Northern Colorado Beer Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Want to know where you can get some great tasting Colorado craft beer that you can't get in the store? Head to Longmont to an award winning brewpub that's getting a lot of attention these days.  Longmont is quickly becoming a big beer town. Much like it's neighbors in Denver and Fort Collins, Longmont Colorado is home to several breweries and brewpubs, some of which may not be well known to the public.  Today, the Northern Colorado Beer Examiner spotlights the Pumphouse Brewery & Restaurant.

Getting to the Pumphouse Brewery is fairly easy.  Just head about 8 miles due west on Highway 119 off I-25 at exit 240 and then turn right heading north for about a mile on Main Street (Hwy 285).  There on the east side of Main Street you'll find the Pumphouse Brewery.

The Pumphouse Brewery was opened back in 1996 by four local technical engineers / entrepreneurs after a year long remodeling effort.  Previously, the brewery site had been home to a wood and coal storage yard, a gas station and a car dealership.  The Pumphouse Brewery is adjoined by the Red Zone Sports Bar.  The brewery itself sits smack dab in the middle of the restauant.  It's four huge shiny fermentation tanks are easily viewable from all area of the restaurant.

The Pumphouse Brwery offers up 5 regular year-round beers and also produces between 3 to 5 seasonal beers at any given time.  If you order their taster set, you'll be given five small sampler glasses of their regular brews.  The beers currently in the set include: Wild Fire Wheat, 4-Alarm Copper Ale (altbier), Red Alert (amber), Igniter Pale Ale and their Pyro Porter.  All of these beers have a firehouse theme as evident in the decor of the restaurant itself.

Once you try those, order a sample set of their seasonal brews which currently incldue: Hindenburg Light (kolsch), Blackberry Wheat and their Pyro Espresso Porter (coffee infused).

The pumphouse Brewery was honored this year at the 2008 Great American Beer Festival when they were awarded a Silver Medal in the American-Belgo style ale for their Brush Fire Ale.

If you are fortunate enough, you may run into one of the brewers there like Craig Taylor.  Craig is a former aerospace engineer and gave up the corporate lifestyle gradually over the last several years and now works full time at the brewery.  If you ask and he has time, he can show you around the brew house.  The Pumphouse has 4 large 10 BBL (~300 gallon each) fermentation tanks up front and nearly a dozen large cold serving tanks in the back of the facility.

Craig was busy working on several batches of beer that day.  Three of the four fermenters were bubbling away creating some new brews and also a new 300 gallon batch was busy boiling in his large boil kettle.  Craig opened up the kettle and threw in a large amount of hops into the boil during the visit.  The aroma of boiling wort and hops is just delightful.  Right next to the brew kettle was his equally large mash tun that has the capability of extracting sugars from over 600 pounds of malt at a time.

Craig stated that they are brewing all the time to keep up with the demand for their beers in the restaurant.  Later this year they plan on adding a huge 20 BBL (600 gallon) fermenter in the back so that they can expand the humber of brews they can make simultaneously.  They currently have no plans to bottle or widen their distrubution as they have all the work they can handle now to satisfy their local patrons.

 If you're looking to expand your own beer horizons and want to sample some award winng beers that you can't get anywhere else, head to Longmont for a lunch or dinner and visit the Pumphouse Brewery and Restaurant.  It's family friendly too.

Pumphouse Brewery & Restaurant, 540 Main Street, Longmont, CO.  Phone 303.702.0881.