I live outside Chicago, but I’ve spent several weeks in Colorado lately – mostly in southeast Aurora and in Longmont, and points in between them. My parents recently moved into an assisted living community, and I’ve been helping them get settled, taking over some of their affairs, and helping prepare their house for sale. Suffice to say, it’s been a lot — sometimes A LOT a lot.

So, I visited a few breweries during my trips — both to distract myself and to get some food & drink. So far, I’ve visited six or seven different breweries, all of which offer food (either with a house kitchen or a food truck). Unfortunately, most of the distilleries in the area do not offer food.

A few observations from these experiences:

• Brewery Customers were not Drinking Beer. In most cases, a decent number of guests were not drinking beer at all – they were drinking wine or cocktails. In at least TWO cases, I was the only person within my eyesight who was drinking the house beer – in one case, everyone else was drinking Coors/Coors Light or wine (and their beers there were decent, with a variety of styles available).
  
  
• None/Few Craft Spirits Offered. Most of the breweries that serve cocktails are carrying mass market spirits, not any/many of the ones made by their fellow craftspeople at local distilleries in their area (there are 90+ craft distilleries in Colorado, more than double the number in Illinois, even though Illinois has twice as many people in it).

• One Exceptional Brewery — one of my stops was unique, in that nearly everyone seemed to be drinking the house beers. This spot had live music and a food truck when I visited, so it was busy. They had other drink options, but no one was taking them. To be fair, it was a well established, widely distributed beer brand, and that might have been the key difference… at least one of the others I visited has been in business for 25+ years, but was a brewpub rather than a brewery with beer distributed around the country.

I own a small distillery, and I would be heartbroken if I walked into my place and saw most of the customers drinking something that I didn’t even make. We try to make spirits and cocktails that people will want to enjoy. And, while we offer two (local) beer options and two wines, we do not emphasize those in our offerings — they exist mostly for group events, where a small number of guests do not drink cocktails. We carry LOCAL beers only, made within 10-15 miles of us, even though many of our customers ask for macro beers. It is unfortunate that none of the breweries in our area feel that way about their spirit offerings, but I suppose I can take heart in the fact that it was consistent in Colorado, too.