Wolf Tongue Brewery

Note: Since this story was written in November 1998 Wolf Tongue closed.

What do the Great American Beer Festival gold medals won by High Country Brewery in 1993, Twisted Pine Brewing Co. in 1996 and Wolf Tongue Brewery in 1998 have in common?

The same brewer, Gordon Knight, who has been followed virtually every step of a winding path along the Rocky Mountain's Front Range by the same basic brewing system.

Despite the fact that Knight has formulated recipes for three winning beers, all quite different, at three different breweries, the Wolf Tongue brewhouse is arguably more "famous" than he is. The 5-hectoliter (about 4½-barrel) system is the one Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan used when they started New Belgium Brewing Co. in their Fort Collins, Colo., basement in 1991.

New Belgium turned into one of the biggest success stories in the microbrewery business, expanding several times. Knight bought the used system from Lebesch in 1993 to start High Country in Boulder, Colo. In 1994, High Country moved to Estes Park and became a brewpub called Estes Park Brewery, when Knight went into business with a local restaurateur. When Estes Park expanded, the brewhouse was sold to Peak to Peak Brewing.

Knight -- who is also a professional helicopter pilot -- left Estes Park in 1995 to start Twisted Pine, back in Boulder. "Estes Park got too big; he didn't want that," Wolf Tongue partner Jim Parker said. "Gordon likes to make beer; the rest of the stuff he doesn't really care about. The startup is what really turns him on."

In 1997, Twisted Pine merged with Peak to Peak, reuniting Knight with his first brewhouse. He left Twisted Pine to move up Boulder Canyon to Nederland and open Wolf Tongue in June 1997.

Wolf Tongue captured gold in the GABF's Brown Porter category for Coffee Porter in 1998, Twisted Pine first in American Amber for Twisted Amber in 1996, and High Country grabbed gold for Renegade Red, an India pale ale, in 1993.

Parker, who joined Wolf Tongue last April, is about as well traveled as Knight and the Wolf Tongue brewhouse. He wrote about beer for a California newspaper before moving to Colorado to start Rocky Mountain Brews, a brewspaper, and then Mountain Tap Tavern in Fort Collins, a much-heralded beer bar. Next, he was head brewer at Dimmer's, a Fort Collins brewpub, administrator at the Institute for Brewing Studies and director of the American Homebrewers Association.

"I was meant to be behind bars," Parker joked, a few days before the GABF. He was in the pub's tiny kitchen, patting out hamburgers for the lunch crowd. Officially, he's manager, which means doing everything from marketing to cleaning up on Monday mornings, but he's also likely to step into the brewhouse to see what Knight and assistant Amahl Turczyn are up to.

Wolf Tongue takes its name from the mine Nederland grew up around. One of Parker's first moves was to repaint the place to look more like a pub, change the logo, and put more of a focus on beer. Draft sales rocketed. In fact, the brewhouse was straining to keep up before the GABF medal boosted business. Unless room is made for more conditioning tanks, Knight and Turczyn will continue to be able to brew just twice a week.

It's a strain to keep five regular beers available, but Parker hopes that by adding guest taps the pub will be able to offer more seasonal beers. The regulars are:

-- Mountain Berry, a light, raspberry ale.

-- Miners Gold, a light pale ale made with Baird malt and Saaz hops. Its color leads you to believe that Miners Gold will be a lightweight beer, but it's quite malty and hoppy throughout. On Thursdays the pub sets up a beer engine and serves Miners Gold on cask.

-- Ned Red, a malty, dark amber ale brewed with Cascade hops. "It's well-balanced and very drinkable -- and they do," Parker said. Ned Red is a big seller for the brewpub, which will go through eight kegs in seven to nine days.

-- Coffee Porter, a classic brown porter with a lighter body that distinguishes it from a stout, and little hoppiness.

-- Mr. Hoppy, an American pale ale brewed with Great Western and Baird malts and "a ton of Chinook." While hops predominate in the aroma and flavor, the beer is considerably malty. "It's not hop water," Parker says.

All the beers are fermented with Wyeast 1056 ale yeast.

Wolf Tongue is just the place for people who are looking for a brewpub that's more pub than restaurant. The pub was once an assay office, then a veterans' Bud bar. It's still very much a "local," selling 17 cases of Budweiser a week and providing a comfortable place to hang out, play darts, shoot pool, play foosball and video games or grab a controller for NTN (the interactive television service that features trivia and sports games). It's rustic, with a pot-bellied stove, a fine moosehead, lots of wood and furniture that looks like it's made out of logs. The menu features pizza, calzones and sandwiches.