I have the best of friends. I know I say that often, but it’s proven to me time and again.

My birthday was a few weeks ago, and a few of us dreamed up the idea to go tooling around Denver on our bikes and go bar hopping. Lydia and (her) Matt even said they’d take an afternoon off of work for such shenanigans.

We had discussed a few areas of town (based on how close the breweries were to each other) and settled on RiNo. Lydia came up with one hell of an ambitious route, mapping out some ridiculous number of places… Like 8 or 9 bars/breweries/wineries or something like that… They came to our house early one afternoon, and we were off.

First stop, Denver Beer Co. Always one of my favorites, easy to get to and easy to drink. We told them it was my birthday, and they comped both (my) Matt’s and my beers… So cool of them! And they brought us some beer shots of some mix (Juicy Princess, I think they called it) that was awesome. Running into extra friends was kinda awesome too.

Next up, Jagged Mountain. We got smart and just got a sampler to share. If we were going to survive all these places upright, we needed to take it easy.

After that, we moseyed over to 10 Barrel Brewing. That was one of the coolest rooftop decks I’ve been on in awhile. The view was pretty awesome. Another sampler, and some food… All this riding around was making us hungry! Oh, and water. Had to stay hydrated…

Stem Ciders was next. Cider was a really nice change from beer. Again, we went with smaller pours – we still had a ways to go!

Wine at Infinite Monkey Theorem never disappoints. I love that they have wine on tap – that always tastes super fresh and delicious to me. Again, a nice change from beer for a minute.

At this point, we’d hit five of the places we had on our list… And we’d been out for HOURS. We decided one more, and then we’d head back home and call it a night.

Our last stop was Ratio Beerworks. I’d never been there before. They had a huge patio spilling out onto the still-closed street, which was cool, and a really tasty Scotch ale that I really enjoyed.

…and back home. What a fantastic day! I hadn’t done that in such a long time, and never to quite as many places… We were quite proud of ourselves for making it as long as we did, and decided we didn’t need a birthday excuse to go do it again soon!