Colorado Plus

Shedding some light on the beginning of C+. In the beginning, we actually weren’t considering a brewery, the original concept was multiple Colorado only beers on tap and then along came our good friend Adam Draeger who was at that time the Head Brewer at the Yak & Yeti (now known as Spice Trade Brewing). He convinced me to start a one barrel brewing operation where we could offer experimental beers and he had the freedom to think outside the box and create some off-the-wall recipes. I gave him a budget of less than $20,000 to build out the brewery and it started out as a one Barrel Brewing system and at the time we couldn’t even afford glycol jacketed tanks, so Adam who is the master of jury rigged engineering had us purchase four freezers from Lowe’s and converted them to refrigerators and we would pour directly off the bright tanks in the cooler and that was the beginning of the Brewing scene and from there we expanded into a three barrel brewery operation with glycol jacketed tanks and then came along Erin, James who won a gold medal at the Colorado Beer Festival for his Milk & Cookies Stout and then Brian. C+ has provided a blank canvas for those brewers, Adam , Erin and James would go on to open up their own Brewpub and breweries, C+ has connected us in so many ways!

Growing up, I never wanted to own a business in this industry. But it’s funny how things come full circle and you reflect on all the people in your past and how their influence rubbed off on you. As we approach our final days in business, this special person happened to stop by the other day. This is my uncle Jay who just turned 94 years old and happened to drive up in his new Mini Cooper just the other day. I used to work for him and my auntie when I was 15 years old at their restaurant the Mongolian barbecue in downtown Denver right off of 16th and Champa right across the street from a Woolworth. I remember the smell of the grease in the freight elevator where we would have to take the trash. Because it was an underground food court I remember having to walk across the hallway to cut vegetables in the old Hobart slicer. I remember having to make emergency runs to Sakura square to buy produce if we were running low. At that time, the minimum wage was $3.65 an hour and the bus ride to downtown $.35. They would eventually expand and open up a location in Boulder at that time I was 17 and I would drive up to Boulder a few times a week. They instilled in me the spirit of adventure. They taught me a lot about the value of hard work, courtesy, responsibility and that hospitality is in the blood, I owe so much of my influence to them