Colorado Craft Beer Week Gives Brew Lovers Something To Celebrate

DENVER (CBS4)- Wynkoop Brewery is introducing two new beers, specifically created for Elitch Gardens Saturday.

One is Orchard Wheat Beer, an American-style beer enhanced with lime leaf and peach flavor.

"Our goal was to create an elegant, ambitious craft beer that a mainstream beer lover could enjoy at the theme park," said Marty Jones with Wynkoop.

The other beer is Fire Roasted Amber. "A little more assertive beer, a little more adventurous, sort of a thrill ride of a beer at Elitch Gardens."

Watch CBS4's Justin McHeffey's report from Wynkoop Brewery below.

But Wynkoop prides itself on brewing small amounts of tasty beer.

"By definition a craft brewery is independently owned and operated, their flagship beer is an all malt beer," Jones explained.

"Nowadays the definition of a craft beer is that you make beer at less than 6 million barrels of beer. We are a microbrewery because we make less than 15,000 barrels of beer so very much a small batch, artisan beer maker."

"Most craft breweries and microbreweries make small batches of beer for our local community and we serve as close to the brewery as possible so it's as fresh as possible, tastes as good as it does when it leaves the brewery."

Wynkoop is also one of the nation's growing number of micro-canners.

"We can our beers on a little table top machine. Cans are really good for beer," Jones said. "They keep beer immensely fresh because they offer full protection from light and oxygen. They're also portable so you can take beer into the great outdoors."

"The beer never gets light struck and there's never an ingress of light and oxygen, the two biggest enemies of fresh beer."