Aurora is about 350 miles from the Gold King Mine disaster in southwest Colorado, but several local brewers are chipping in tonight to help out.
Aurora’s Coda Brewing Co., is joining six other brewers — including east Denver’s Comrade Brewing Co., Caution: Brewing Co. and Station Twenty Six Brewing Co. — for an Animas River relief event tonight at the Pint Room in Littleton, 2620 W. Belleview Ave.
The event, which includes beers from the various breweries as well as a silent auction, starts at 6 p.m. and goes till the bar closes.
Proceeds will benefit the Mountain Studies Institute, Navajo United Way, Inc. and San Juan Citizens Alliance.
Luke Smith, head brewer at Coda, said when a friend from Comrade reached out and asked him to support he didn’t hesitate.
“I said, ‘Of course,’” he said.
While the spill — which dumped three million gallons of mine waste into the Animas River near Durango — is a long way from Aurora, Smith said the environmental disaster effected him personally. Before he jumped into the beer game, Smith studied wildlife ecology and conservation and studied wildlife in the types of wilderness being damaged by the spill.
For Coda’s contribution, Smith donated a keg of their Cheerleader, a grisette.
Beer and birds? Sure, why not
Tonight at Two 22 Brew in Centennial you can sip some beverages and check out some pretty cool raptors from 6:30 to 11 p.m.
Staff from the Aurora nonprofit Nature’s Educators are bringing a prairie falcon, Kestrel, Barbary falcon, Harris’s hawk, burrowing owl, Swainson’s hawk, great horned owl and Red-Tailed Hawk to the brewery.
That unseasonably-cool stretch last week has people itching for fall, it appears. At Dry Dock Brewing Co., the Imperial Pumpkin is flowing at South Dock and bombers of the boozy fall brew are available at several liquor stores around town.