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Meet Dave Sorenson – Checking In To Every CO Brewery

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Colorado Brewery Master Dave Sorenson

Congratulations to David Sorenson on completing the quest to visit every currently open Colorado brewery!  He has now earned the title of “Colorado Brewery Master,” joining a very small group of beer enthusiasts who have also accomplished this feat.

As he will say later, I first met Dave years ago and we have enjoyed many beers together in that time.  I am very happy to welcome him to the Colorado Brewery Master family and, as I have done previously with the other Masters, I was happy to ask him some questions about his journey…

Who is Dave Sorenson?  (Tell us a bit about yourself.)

I’m originally from SoCal – I grew up near LA and then lived for 12 years in San Diego. I had a roommate who had spent time in Germany in the Army who introduced me to the idea that there was other beer besides Miller and Bud, and we started buying whatever we could find to do beer reviews on. We originally planned to make a website about it, but we ended up spending more time drinking than coding so nothing came out of it, other than a love of various styles of beer. In 2002 I moved to Michigan where I lived for 17 years. During that time, I visited over 270 of the nearly 300 breweries in the state. I was trying to get to all of them, but then in 2017 my wife and I had a baby and we moved to Colorado to be closer to family. I was frustrated to lose my progress in Michigan, but excited to start tackling Colorado. After looking at my records, I realized I had already been to 47 which gave me a nice little jumpstart. When I’m not drinking beer and visiting breweries, I’m having fun with my wife and my 6-year-old daughter or leading a team of developers in my day job. I’m also a diehard Rapids fan, so you can catch me at most of the home games!

Another fun thing I do is development for the Colorado Brewery List. I met Ryan and Ashley (founders of CBL) in line for the very first WeldWerks Invitational Beer Festival. We were in line directly behind them and, after noticing their CBL t-shirts, I struck up a conversation to talk about how awesome the site was and that I was using it to track all the places I wanted to visit. After using the site so much and getting to know the team, I decided I’d like to give something back and volunteered to help out. One of the features I’m most proud of was the addition of brewery check-ins. It was really nice as I worked through the end of the quest to be able to visualize on the map what places I had left to go.

L-R: Ashley & Ryan Steadman (Founders of CBL), CBM Randy Friederich, CBM Paul Myhill (CO Beer Guy), Dave Sorrenson, Jordan Fink (Owner of Woods Boss), CBM Stephen Adams (CO Beer Geek), Jen Sorenson, CBM Ruth Malone
When and what was the first Colorado brewery that you remember visiting?
The very first place I visited was the Breckenridge ballpark location that’s now a Cherry Cricket. We were in town visiting my wife’s family and met up there for some drinks. I’m reasonably certain we did other breweries that weekend, but I wasn’t keeping track at that point, so I’m not sure where. In terms of when I started keeping track of breweries I’d visited, my first official brewery would have been Rockslide in Grand Junction. We were visiting my older daughter in college and stopped there for lunch. That afternoon I went to the Grand Valley Beer Festival at the college and tried all sorts of Colorado beers. I went to all of the breweries in Grand Junction and Palisade open at that time. Before heading back to Michigan, we also stopped in Fort Collins and did a few breweries there, including the New Belgium brewery tour, which is among my favorite tours of any brewery I’ve visited.
Jen & Dave Sorenson at Casey
When and where did you accomplish the status of having visited every Colorado brewery?
Technically, my finish line was at Cerebral’s new Aurora Arts popup taproom on March 19th, 2023, and we celebrated the finish line with fellow Colorado Brewery Masters at Alpine Dog‘s new location on March 23rd. (Although that one didn’t really count since they didn’t actually have their first in-house brew on tap yet at that point.)
Dave celebrating his official finish line at the Cerebral Aurora taproom with fellow Master Paul Myhill
What are some of your favorite memories of your quest?
My favorite part of the quest has been all the great people I met along the way. When I first moved to Colorado, I joined the Denver Beer Queers since they appeared to be the only truly active beer group I could find and were visiting a different brewery each time. That’s where I met the Colorado Beer Geek, the first of many amazing people I now count as friends that I met through the quest.  [Editors note:  The Denver Beer Queers always welcome allies to join us to enjoy the great variety of breweries in the Denver Metro.]
Another thing I really loved was all the surprises. When you visit almost 550 breweries and brewery taprooms in one state, you drink a lot of average beer. But it’s so much fun to stumble across something awesome along the way. For example, when we were doing the far Southwest breweries, we’d hit the low end of the spectrum at a couple places, (I’m not naming names, here folks!) but then we wandered into WildEdge in Cortez. Talk about a surprise – they had amazing beer!
Colorado Brewery Masters celebrating our newest member at Alpine Dog with (l-r): Dev Adams, Ruth Malone, Josh Norton, Stephen Adams, Patrick Malone, Jen & Dave Sorenson, Glen Van Aken, Randy Friederich, & Dave Cooper
What are your favorite styles of beer and your top breweries in the state of Colorado in terms of your beer taste?
Without question, my favorite style is the West Coast IPA. I’m also very partial to fruited sours and barrel aged stouts. My top five Colorado breweries, in no particular order, are:

This is honestly a hard list to choose, since there’s a ton of great breweries in our state, and I like so many, but I selected these based on the places I go most often that have great beer.

Dave won a 3L Magnum of Jammy at Casey
What are some of your favorite destination breweries?  (In CO but also out of state if you’d like.)
Casey and WeldWerks are probably the two I’m most likely to be heading to, but that’s usually because I have bottles to pick up. Other front range destinations for me would be Knotted Root, Horse & Dragon, and Jessup Farms. Outside of the front range I’m likely to go to WildEdge, Chrysalis and Riff Raff on the Rio. Pomona Brewing might also be on that list, but I need to visit again to see if it’s consistent – they had a great opening day but weren’t completely done yet.
Dave & Jen at Golden Block Brewery in Silverton
What is your favorite hang-out brewery?  (Where are folks most likely to run into you?)
To be honest, I don’t really hang out at any specific brewery. I definitely don’t have a “home” brewery location that I visit regularly. If I had to pick one, it’d be Burns, since that’s the one I’m most likely to go to in Denver. Otherwise, we, rotate so much between CBL meetings, checking new places off the list, and generally making plans with friends that I don’t go to the same place twice in a row very often.
Dave enjoying a beer at Odyssey
What advice would you offer others trying to become a Colorado Brewery Master?
Three things…
First, if you’re driving any distance to a place you should call ahead. There have been several occasions where places have been closed during their posted hours that I’ve wasted many hours driving back a second time to visit someplace. My wife will still probably strangle me in my sleep for dragging her an extra two hours to T-Road only to find out they decided to delay their first beer by a week.
Second, make detailed plans but be prepared to be flexible. There were a few times where a multi-stop day became a stop shorter because we met some great new friends at a brewery and blew past the time I’d allocated for that stop. Since it’s really about the journey for this, you should always prioritize fun over hitting the exact set of locations.
Third, be prepared to be frustrated a lot. Not only are hours not always followed, but some places are only open on certain days and certain times which can make planning a visit a challenge if there are multiple locations to visit. In addition, as new places open you’ll find yourself having to drive hours to hit a single brewery or watching your percent completed go in the wrong direction. I swear I was at 90% for the longest time ever. I’d knock a couple places off at far flung cities only to find two new ones opening up that same week. It’s frustrating, but I really felt like I got to know the state pretty well driving all over the place.
Dave & Jen enjoying beers with soon to be Colorado Brewery Masters Darren & Robin Morrissey at Station 26

 

Congratulations again to Dave for finishing “The Quest.”  It has been a pleasure working with you on the Colorado Brewery List team.  Your help with CBL has been outstanding!

Are there any other Colorado Brewery Masters out there that I have missed?  If you have been to every Colorado brewery or are close to doing so, I would love to hear from you!

Do you want to learn more about the other Colorado Brewery Masters?  Check out this CBM blog page which has all of the articles about us, (except me but you can read a bit about my initial quest here).

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