Last Wednesday I had the privilege of getting a tour of Prost Brewing by brewer Ashleigh Carter. My sister was my guest and John Carlson of the Denver Beer Guild also joined us. Prost is one of my favorite breweries in Denver (still a lot to try) and it was super fun to learn about their brew house and what makes them different. First we went up the stairs and got a good look at the copper mash kettle and the lauter tun imported from Germany. They are beautiful. They are manually run vessels and all the buttons on the mechanical part are in old German. “We paid a good amount of money to have a company label the parts so it would be easy to put it together once it was here but when we laid it all out it was like does that green dot go with this green dot? It was very hard to figure out,” says brewer Ashleigh Carter. Once it was all put together and they started working with the machines she really started to figure it out. Now Ashleigh can probably step into any brewhaus in Germany and be able to work their machines.
Ashleigh gave us a in depth tour of how the beer is made and John Carlson chimed in with any extra information that he had. For anyone who has not met John he is a beer wiz. Anything and everything there is to know about beer he knows. Seriously.
My first beer I had was the Keller Pils that took gold in the Keller or Zwickelbier category at the Great American Beer Festival. Then my second beer was the Oktoberfest or Märzen and the group I was with also got the Oktoberfest and we finished the last bit of the seasonal beer.
My sister Kara and I split two hot dogs; wild boar and a pheasant dog from Dogtown Concessions cart. Delicious! Nice game flavor but not overpowering so it still has the hot dog essence I love. I will definitely be going back for more.
We finished our night sitting at the picnic style table with Bill Eye and Ashleigh Carter from Prost, John Carlson from the Colorado Brewers Guild, Kara and I, and then an unexpected guest Stephen Kirby from Hogshead brewery. Listening to Ashleigh describe the passion behind the German beers she makes made me ready to hop over to another country…England! Hogshead is next on our Denver brewery tour. Stand by…
From left to right: Bill Eye, Stephen Kirby, Ashleigh Carter, Kara Colt (sister) and John Carlson
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