An important disclaimer: You probably don’t want to go drinking with your children, especially if they are under the legal age limit. Besides, it can’t be that much fun for them. It’s loud, there is a sea of unknown faces and Mommy and Daddy are acting a little funny. Best to leave them at home with the sitter where they can play, watch TV and act their age.
But leaving the kids at home doesn’t mean that you need to leave your inner child at home. Hell, a brewery is just the place to indulge it, and at Broomfield’s 4 Noses Brewing your inner child will be delighted to find childhood breakfasts in the form of an adult happy hour. Might I suggest starting with the Honey Nut Beerios (6% ABV), a delicious brown ale served on nitro, which gives the brew a smooth mouthfeel and frothy head. As you might suspect from the name, Honey Nut Beerios is designed to resemble that popular General Mills’ cereal with a bee as the spokesman and thanks to some locally sourced honey in the batch, they strike their target. But it wasn’t Cheerios that sprang to mind as I sipped the Beerios, but the vastly superior Honey Graham Oh’s from Quaker, another circular cereal with far more crunch and kick.
I lived off Honey Graham Oh’s as a child, but not all of my friends found a similar majesty in their bowl of floating Oh’s — my friends were Philistines. Their poison was the ever popular Cinnamon Toast Crunch and the delicious horchata-like milk it left behind. For those friends, 4 Noses offers El Jefe (7.9%) — Spanish for The Boss — a cinnamon stout that is both well-balanced and outstanding. There are plenty of novelty beers in the world, but few of them hold up as beers in their own right. El Jefe is such a beer.
Even if cereal isn’t your thing, 4 Noses has you covered with a plethora of offerings. From the standard American IPA, ’Bout Damn Time (7.1%), to a crisp saison, Nelson Dry Hopped Saison (6.3%); both are bright, assertive and citrusy. Both are also quite good, but my associate and I prefer to combat the cold with dark brews, and 4 Noses features the Tranconian (7.8%), a black IPA with a good strong back and a subtle roast; the Insignia (8.5%), a Dark Belgian Strong Ale that is absolutely dynamite; and Laika Boss (9%), a big, full-bodied Russian Imperial Stout that offers plenty of dark chocolate and caramel to chew on.
4 Noses Brewing is a family affair — the name came to brewmaster Tommy Bibliowicz while on vacation in Ireland with Mom, Dad and brother Dave and the four family members buried their noses in pints of Guinness to extract as many aromas as possible — which makes me wonder what other colorful cardboard boxes decorated their breakfast table. Could there be Apple Jacks Ale or Frosted Flakes Farmhouse in 4 Noses’s future? One thing is for certain if they try to do anything with Cap’n Crunch Oops! All Berries, we’ll know they’ve gone too far.
On tap: 4 Noses Brewing Company. 8855 W. 116th Circle, Suite 4, Broomfield, 720-460-2797. 4nosesbrewing.com
