DENVER—After years of consumer requests, the beers of Utah’s original craft brewers, Wasatch and Squatters, are now available in Colorado. Colorado beer lovers can now purchase award-winning beers from Squatters (including IPA, Full Suspension, Chasing Tail and Hop Rising) and Wasatch (including Polygamy Porter, Devastator, Ghostrider and Apricot Hefeweizen).

“I’m a Colorado native,” says Dan Burick, Squatters and Wasatch head brewer and a 24-year veteran of the craft beer trade. “I’ve been taking our beers backpacking and fishing in the Colorado high country for years, and carrying them over the Rockies to the Great American Beer Festival since 1992 when we won our first GABF medal. Many beers and medals later, we’re finally responding to beer-lover demand and bringing our beers to my home state.”

Wasatch founder Greg Schirf says the move to Colorado also hinged on the state’s highly educated beer populace. “We were looking to expand our reach,” Schirf says. “So why not jump into one of the country’s savviest beer states? Especially when it’s right next door and people there have been drinking and asking for our beer for over 20 years. Now Coloradoans can enjoy their Polygamy legally.”

Since 1992, Squatters and Wasatch have won 17 World Beer Cup awards and 26 GABF medals. In 2010, Wasatch and Squatters Craft Beers (aka Utah Brewers Cooperative) was named Mid-Size Brewery of the Year by the Brewers Association. The two breweries were founded by fun-loving beer pioneers who literally helped write the rules for Utah craft beer.

Their award winning beers will be served at the Great American Beer Festival, October 10-12 at the Colorado Convention Center at booths M17 (Squatters) and M18 (Wasatch).

From Wasatch Beers –

• Polygamy Porter Nitro (4% ABV Brown Porter on Nitro) — A Gold and Silver Medal World Beer Cup winner, this dark, medium-bodied but super-drinkable ale has inviting chocolate and malt flavors that fade into a slightly dry, silky-smooth finish. DRAFT magazine rating: 94

• Devastator (8% ABV Double Bock) — This dark amber lager has a rich malty body and a creamy white head. Its strong bready aroma, tied in with a hint of caramel aroma and flavor, makes this beer deceptively smooth and delicious.

• Ghostrider (6% ABV White India Pale Ale) — A twist on a traditional American IPA, this brew uses extra-pale malted barley and wheat to keep the color very light (almost white – like a ghost). Quaffable and refreshing with a huge citrus note and a touch of coriander.

• Apricot Hefeweizen (4% ABV Apricot Hefeweizen) — A three-time North American Brewers Association winner, this traditional German-style unfiltered wheat beer is brewed with a hybridized Bavarian yeast that lends flavor notes of licorice, clove, and banana.

From Squatters Beers –

• Hop Rising (9% ABV Double India Pale Ale) — Strong and complex, this luscious beer uses hefty amounts of three different malts and three varieties of hops, including a hearty dose of dry hops. It’s brewed with two pounds of hops per barrel. The hop farmer on the beer’s label is award-winning Squatters brewmaster Jason Stock. Ratebeer.com rating: 96

• IPA (6.5% ABV American India Pale Ale) — This classic American IPA has a copper color, an intense hop aroma and a distinctly crisp bitterness on its finish. In its 16-year history it has been recognized with a World Beer Cup Gold Medal and four Great American Beer Festival medals.  DRAFT magazine rating: 95

• Full Suspension Pale Ale (4% ABV English Pale Ale) — This double-gold-winning Northwest style pale ale has great balance between the malty English barley and aromatic hops from Washington’s Yakima Valley. Unfiltered and dry-hopped.

• Chasing Tail Golden Ale (4% ABV English-style Summer Ale) — A two-time GABF medalist, this inviting golden ale is brewed with premium English barley and English Golding and Fuggles hops. The result is a superb session beer with subtle malts and delicate bitterness and aroma.

About Utah Brewers Cooperative

In 1986, Greg Schirf opened Utah’s first microbrewery, Wasatch Beers and Brewpub, in the resort town of Park City. A few years later, Jeff Polychronis and Peter Cole opened Squatters, Salt Lake’s original brewpub in 1989; they currently operate five restaurants. In 2000, Wasatch and Squatters merged their microbrewery operations for draft and bottle production, creating the Utah Brewers Cooperative. To date, Squatters and Wasatch beers have won 17 World Beer Cup Awards; a number surpassed by only three other U.S. craft brewers on the Brewers Association’s Top 50 list. Squatters and Wasatch bottled and draft beers are available in liquor stores, restaurants, clubs, hotels, resorts, grocery and convenience stores throughout Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oregon, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Colorado. For more information, please visit www.squatters.com and www.wasatchbeers.com.

SALT LAKE CITY—Epic Brewing is pleased to announce the opening of its new gastropub “The Annex by Epic Brewing” on Tuesday, September 17^th.  Located in the heart of Sugarhouse, 1048 S. 2100 E., The Annex offers a bohemian atmosphere and casual dining, serving lunch, dinner, late night fare and eventually brewing small batch house beer later this winter.

The Annex will be open Sunday through Thursday from 11:00 am to 10:00 pm and Friday and Saturday from 11:00 am to 12:00 am. The menu will offer a variety of dish sizes allowing patrons to share several plates or dine individually.  Duck fat fried almonds, ($4) roasted beet and goat cheese salad on greens, ($8) and beer battered oysters with chili sauce and pickled vegetables ($9) are great plates to share or light first courses.

The menu is organized into three familiar categories for Epic regular’s, Classic – Elevated – Exponential.  In the classic series, guests will find contemporary takes on old favorites like: mac and cheese with pancetta, ($8) fish and chips with gemolata, ($9) and fried chicken with potato fritters. ($9)

Raising the stakes a little the Elevated section features both variety and creativity. Try crispy brisket poutine, cheese curds, and mushroom gravy, ($9) Korean double fried chicken wings with spicy garlic sauce and kimchi, ($10) or locally made artisan sausages served with house made mustard and dipping sauces. ($12)

The Exponential  section presents a fusion of culture and refined flavors like the yogurt marinated chicken thighs with harissa, honey drizzle and lemon jam, ($8) or the lamb chop served with salsa verde risotto. ($13)

“The Annex was designed from the ground up to be a place where people can explore and enjoy the unique food concepts we have discovered in our beer travels. The atmosphere is designed to be welcoming to all, not just craft beer enthusiasts, so bring the entire family if you’re inclined. ” explains Dave Cole, Epic Brewing Co-Founder.

Long time Utah resident Chef Robert Angelilli, formerly Executive Pastry Chef at The Grand America, and Executive Chef at Vinto and Easy Street Brasserie, has drawn upon his Italian upbringing and old world influence as well as more recent travels to beer destinations and contemporary eateries, to develop a menu that is diverse, interesting, and pairs well with Epic’s impressive selection of beer.

“Today, craft beer is wonderfully complex and prolific yet remains unpretentious. I wanted the menu to reflect the same mentality, simple, straightforward food that highlights choice ingredients and contemporary style,” says Chef Robert Angelilli.

SALT LAKE CITY—In anticipation of fall and alongside their yearly, fall release of Punk’n Harvest Pumpkin Ale, Uinta Brewing Company introduces a fourth Organic Line Mix’r that will accompany the existing  three Mix’r packages in a seasonal rotation.

Uinta released the Organic Line Mix’r as part of their redesign in September, 2011.  Each Mix’r contains an assortment of 3 brands, year-round brandsWyld Extra Pale Ale and Baba Black Lager together with one of their Organic seasonal brands.  With the addition of the new Fall Mix’r, all four Uinta Organic Line seasonal beers will now be available in both a 6-pack and a 12-pack Mix’r; Hyve Organic Honey Ale in the Spring, Sum’r Organic Summer Ale during Summer, Punk’n Pumpkin Ale in the Fall, and HazelOrganic Amber Wheat in the Winter.

The Fall Mix’r will be released in late August and will be sold in markets currently carrying Uinta’s Mix’r Pack.

“We are really excited about some of the recent legislation in Utah that gives us the peace of mind we need to ensure the quality of our beers will be held to our high standards,” said New Belgium Brewing Sales Co-Pilot, Brian Krueger. “Since we’re based in Colorado and share a border with our friends in Utah it only makes sense that we can now share a beer with them as well.”

In addition to Utah, New Belgium will be opening in Florida later this month (July 29) and recently announced plans to expand into Delaware (August 19) and British Columbia (September 9). Currently, New Belgium is in 31 states and the District of Columbia. For more information on New Belgium, visit www.newbelgium.com.

Beer traveling is a new type of pilgrimage we make as adults, but the kid in us would love to go dinosaur hunting. Sure, time travel would be perfect, but failing that, visits to exciting paleontological sites and museums can be as exhilarating to the entire family as exploring a new brewery is to Mom and Dad. When it comes time to plan road trips this summer with the family, there are fortunately some locales that host both great beer culture and kid-friendly destinations where dinosaurs come to life.

This idea was inspired by friends known as the Travel Junkies who visited the George S. Eccles Dinosaur Park in Ogden, UT, and posted pictures of their daughter being mauled by a Triceratops (replica) and then actually poring over freshly unearthed dinosaur fossils of a Typothorax (think monster armadillo). The look on her face mirrored that of my own as I pour back the remains of a newly discovered dynamite sour.

Here are three spots where ancient dinosaurs and contemporary beers spring to life, starting with Ogden and nearby SLC.

Salt Lake City, UT

The Mountain West is a hotbed of beer culture, and Mike Riedel, who blogs at UtahBeer.blogspot.com, offers up some of the fiercest specimens to devour during your visit to this northwest quadrant of the Four Corner states. Starting with downtown SLC’s six breweries and brewpubs, Riedel begins his tour at Desert Edge Brewery (273 Trolley Square). In the midst of this Mormon domain, who says LDS has to stand for Latter-day Saints? At this spacious brewpub in Trolley Square, it stands for Latter Day Stout, a rich yet dry Irish stout, meaning it fits into Utah’s 3.2 law (since 3.2 percent alcohol by weight equals 4 percent alcohol by volume). Anything stronger has to be bottled for off-premise consumption.

Riffing off the bedrock church of the region, Wasatch’s Polygamy Porter is the flagship of the state’s first craft brewery, founded in 1989 and named for the mountain range that comprises central Utah’s span of the Rocky Mountains. The beers are brewed and bottled under its joint venture with Squatters, whose brewpub is four blocks east of Desert Edge (147 W. Broadway).

While you can sample across its range of draft offerings, from Provo Girl Pils to Captain Bastard’s Oatmeal Stout, Riedel is a big fan of its 529 Oud Bruin, a Flanders-style brown ale that can only be procured in corked bottles at the pub. Why is it called 529? That’s how many days it ages with wild yeasts in barrels. Speaking of its barrel-aging program, Mike also recommends trying to track down a bottle of Switch Barrel Aged Ale, a Belgian-style witbier aged in port casks.

Walk out Squatters’ door and practically right into Red Rock Brewery’s (254 S. 200 West). Established in 1994, this casual spot rocks the pub grub (people rave about the beer-battered onion rings). To wash down one of its wood-fired pizzas, Riedel suggests one of its higher-gravity beers it therefore has to package (using half-liter bottles), Bobcat Brown Ale.

Uinta Brewing Co. (1722 Fremont Drive) runs a small brewhouse pub where its 32 beers are available on tap and big beers are sold by the bottle (for off-premise enjoyment). While the brewers  do hops, they’re doing extraordinary things with dark beers such as Baba Black Lager, Labyrinth Black Ale, Dubhe Imperial Black IPA and a new one Riedel mentions: Sea Legs Baltic Porter.

Beer geeks beyond the Beehive State are already stuck on Epic Brewing Co. (825 S. State St.), so it’s no wonder Riedel foams at the mouth thinking of its suds, like the newly released Brainless, a Belgo-IPA. Since the focus is on high-gravity beers and Utah state laws are written the way they are, visit the Tap-less Taproom, where, as mandated by law, if you order a panini or some food, you can sample beers like my personal favorite, Big Bad Baptist, an imperial stout made with cocoa nibs and coffee beans and aged in whiskey barrels.

Each batch of Big Bad Baptist is a little bit different, and the brewers have been known to source their tasty, caffeinated adjuncts from Millcreek Coffee Roasters (657 S. Main St.) run by the Brewster family and located just two blocks away. Riedel says that not only do the Brewsters make some mean java, but they also roast their own cacao and make a chocolate bar “that is 70 percent Ecuadorian Arriba Cacao that’s sprinkled with espresso roasted on premises. Pure heaven! No LDS involved with this stuff!”

Fitting for the state’s nickname, The Beerhive (128 S. Main St.) is a must, according to Riedel. Beer nerds come here to geek out, though the ambience is still laid-back. The beer menu is around 200-strong, mostly American craft brands, and you can also buy bottles to go. And when it comes time to sop it all up, head to Bruges Waffles and Frites (336 W. Broadway). Both the Liege waffles and the frites are available with an array of condiments, such as Belgian chocolate sauce for the waffles and assorted savory dipping mayos for the better-than-fries. Go the gut-bomb route and order the Waffle Monster topped with vanilla bean ice cream and fresh strawberries or the protein fix of a Machine Gun sandwich made with merguez sausages and, yes, frites.

Of course, while you’re in the city named for the Great Salt Lake, burn off your beers and other treats on Antelope Island, the largest within the lake. There are 45 miles of hiking and biking trails, and you’re sure to catch a glimpse of the island’s 500 buffaloes.