Showing posts with label Fort Collins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fort Collins. Show all posts

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Odell Brewery Company of Fort Collins, Colorado

Last week's blog post showed some of the sights of Fort Collins, Colorado--click here to read that post. Fort Collins is actually the craft beer capital of Colorado with over 20 craft breweries in town. There are plenty of places to sample local beer and also take a brewery tour. 

On a prior visit to Fort Collins ten years ago, we visited the New Belgium Brewery--click here-- to read that blog post. On this visit, we were excited to visit the Odell Brewery Company and take their tour.



Odell Brewing was founded by Doug Odell, his wife Wynne, and his sister Corkie. Over thirty years later, the culture of family and collaboration still thrives. Our very informative tour guide, Sam, showed us the process of Odell brewing from start to finish...


...and we were treated to many delicious tastes of their different beer brews during the tour.


One seasonal beer I learned about was their Peach Stand Rambler, which sounded like the perfect brew to enjoy on a warm summer day!


Odell is an independent, employee-owned brewery, committed to building community through beer.
The brewery’s tap room is open seven days a week and offers limited release pilot brews, food trucks, special events, and live music on Wednesdays.

As a new venture, the Odells added the OBC Wine Project--a wine brewery next door to the beer brewery-- in 2020. They source grapes from Washington, Oregon & Colorado, and they crush, ferment, and package the wines in Fort Collins.  

It is the best of both worlds!

In my next post, I'll take you along as we drive from Fort Collins to visit Rocky Mountain National Park along the Big Thompson River--a beautiful drive!



Posted by at 19 comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Fort Collins, Colorado


Fort Collins, Colorado, is the fourth most populous city in Colorado and the 156th most populous city in the United States. Fort Collins was founded by the US Army as a military outpost in 1864. Situated north of Denver and tucked between the prairie and the mountains, Fort Collins is the last city on Interstate 25 north before you hit the Wyoming border. It's also a gateway city to northern Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park and Roosevelt National Forest.

It is a prominent college town, home to Colorado State University, a public research university, and the second-largest university by enrollment in Colorado.  As a college town, it has plenty to offer visitors, including a fun art, music, and theater scene, a range of locally sourced eateries, miles of trails, acres of open spaces, and a well-deserved reputation as the Craft Beer Capital of Colorado!


We visited Fort Collins ten years ago for the day to take a tour of the New Belgium Brewery--see that post on this link. On this visit, we had plans to stay in the town for a few days to use it as a base for some local scenic road trips. We passed many modern suburban homes in the area and charming older homes in the city center.


We stopped at a Fort Collins Visitor Center near Old Town to pick up some tourist brochures and information. It was decorated with the green Colorado University Rams insignia portrayed on the college's men's and women's sports teams. A helpful guide told us a few places not to miss on our visit--the Old Town Square and the Annual Flower Trial Garden.


He pointed out a poster on the wall of an overhead drone photo of the Trial Garden and told me that it was early for some plantings, but the tulips should be in bloom.


They were!

Please click on the photo to enlarge it to read the placard information


The Colorado State University Trial Gardens states:

"The purpose of the trial program conducted at the Annual Flower Trial Garden is to evaluate the performance of different annual plant cultivars under our unique Rocky Mountain environmental conditions. Our growing conditions are characterized by high altitude, intense solar radiation, drying winds, severe hailstorms, large fluctuations between day and night temperatures and a season-long need for irrigation. Each year, our annual trial consists of over 1,000 different cultivars of annual bedding plants. Varieties are grouped by genus, arranged by color and grown in rows, side-by-side, so as to facilitate the comparison of similar varieties. In addition to the Annual Trial, we also have a Pansy/Cool-season Crop Overwintering Trial that tests a plant’s ability to overwinter in the Northern Colorado climate, as well as a new two-year Perennial Trial program designed to test newer perennial cultivars that have been introduced in the past three years or less."



As our visit took place in April, tulips, daffodils, and other spring bulbs and plants were the only flowers growing so beautifully! There were also hundreds of flower pots waiting to be planted. The grounds look exceptionally beautiful in summer when everything is blooming.


I enjoyed taking some close-up photos of the flowers.



Almost directly across the street from the Trial Garden I saw a giant Campbell's Soup can! I later found it was one of three soup cans that were placed on display when Pop-art icon Andy Warhol visited Fort Collins in 1981. Collectors John and Kimiko Powers sponsored an exhibition of his work at Colorado State University. It was a memorable visit for many!



Our Next stop was the Old Town Square

The well-preserved downtown includes over 20 restored historical buildings, which are part of national and local designated historic districts. Inspiration for Disneyland’s Main Street USA was based on Old Town Fort Collins' turn-of-the-20th-century charm, character, and architecture.


Downtown Fort Collins is filled with unique, locally-owned stores, boutiques, and specialty shops with elaborate window displays beckoning you inside. There are also a variety of restaurants, bars, bistros, lounges, and pubs.



One alleyway led to a historic firehouse that is now an independent bookstore!


I enjoyed window shopping at the stores and admiring the public artworks




We also enjoyed listening to a visitor playing a street piano on the square.

 Dinner time approached, and we wanted to return to a nearby town of Severance--click here--to read that post, to dine, as we heard they had the best Rocky Mountain Oysters. 
If you don't know what Rocky Mountain Oysters are, click on this hyperlink to find out--they taste better than you would imagine!


I can also be found on


Posted by at 26 comments:
Labels: , , ,

Sunday, April 19, 2015

New Belgium Brewing, Fort Collins, CO



The ride north from the Denver area to the city of Fort Collins, Colorado, where the New Belgium Brewery is located, is only a little over an hour away and passes some beautiful scenery.  My husband and I wanted to take the free brewery tour of New Belgium Brewery, Colorado's biggest craft brewery since we moved here. Colorado is known for its variety of beer producers and is home to five of the top 50 craft breweries in the United States.

(All photos, and photo collages, in this post, will enlarge for easier viewing if clicked on)


New Belgium Brewery opened in 1991 after its founder, Jeff Lebesch, decided to take his homebrewing passion commercially.  If you enlarge the photo collage above by clicking on it, you can see the brewery's logo is a bicycle, and a bicycle is permanently parked outside.  The brewery's legend is that one of the co-founders was influenced by a bicycle trip he made through Belgium and Europe, tasting craft beers along the way.  When he returned home he developed and brewed his own amber ale, and named it "Fat Tire" in honor of that trip. Fat Tire Beer is now their flagship brand and the most popular beer


Bicycles are used as decorations throughout the brewery!


Most of the brewery employees bike to work in the brewery, which is located close to the bike path along the Cache La Poudre River. All employees have a stake in the ownership of the brewery, which they earn after one year's employment, along with a limited-edition Fat Tire Cruiser bicycle. After five years of employment, the company sends the employee on a trip for one week to Belgium!


The New Belgium Brewery utilizes sustainability and recycling in its operations. You can watch a new program video about many of these methods at this Youtube link.  They use solar and wind power to provide electricity in their plant, plus methane gas created as a byproduct of their on-site water treatment plant.


The brewery also uses an energy-efficient kettle for the brewing process, that heats twice as quickly, and provides significant savings in natural gas consumption,


I enjoyed photographing the colorful mosaics floor around the demonstration kettle on the tour.



The brewery has been named one of the "Best Places to Work" by many publications and organizations, as it promotes employee satisfaction and wellness. How could they lose with profit sharing, free bicycles, trips to Belgium, paid sabbaticals, and fun slides provided for the employees to use to travel from one floor to the next?  My husband had to try one out!


At the end of the free tour of the brewery, we were treated to samples of the different New Belgium Brewery beers in their tasting room. In addition to Fat Tire, they make Ranger IPA, Sunshine Wheat, Blue Paddle, Shift, and a litany of other beers--seasonal and artisanal blends. My husband and I really enjoyed the tour and would not hesitate to go again on another visit to Fort Collins.


New Belgium Brewery is located at 500 Linden St, in Fort Collins, Colorado, Tuesday - Sunday, 11AM to 6PM. Their free tours are very popular, so it is best if you book ahead of time


New Belgium Brewery is expanding and is opening a new brewery on the east coast, in Ashville, North Carolina sometime in 2015, so that they may have a market beyond their present 38 out of 50 states.

Have you tried any of the New Belgium Brewery beers? Do you have a favorite?

You can also find me on 






Bookmark and Share
Posted by at 48 comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)