Bootstrap Brewing wins award at World Beer Cup

Breweries, home brewers and craft brews have become immensely popular very quickly, especially in Colorado. Bootstrap Brewing joined the movement about four years ago when it opened in Niwot, in Cottonwood Square.

Owners Steve and Leslie Kaczeus have strived to be Niwot’s neighborhood brewery and make the best beer they can. They recently won a bronze award at the World Beer Cup, which takes place every two years, and was held in Philadelphia this year.

“It’s kind of the Olympics of beer,” Steve said of the competition that took place in May. “It always ties in the with Craft Brewers Conference, which is a yearly event. “

Bootstrap entered its beer, Wreak Havoc, which also won them an award at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in Denver last October. The GABF takes place in Denver once a year and is a festival all breweries can participate in, attracting nearly 100,000 people.

“It’s become the biggest event across the United States,” Steve explained. “That’s a medal that every brewery in the United States wants to get.”

He said they were encouraged by some of their brewery friends to enter Wreak Havoc in the World Beer Cup, under the Imperial Red category. The duo made a last minute decision to go to Philadelphia, where they participated in seminars and networked with breweries from around the world, including breweries from Germany, Belgium and Japan.

Steve said they were competing against 6,600 other beer entries from 55 different countries. Each brewery was allotted a certain number of entries, and Bootstrap entered five beers.

Bootstrap wasn’t the only brewery from Colorado at the World Beer Cup and the Kaczeus’s spent time with other local brewers throughout the event.

“We cheer each other on and we’re just great friends with everybody,” Steve said of the other breweries in Colorado. “As one brewery would win, we would all high-five [each other].”

They knew they had a special beer on their hands with Wreak Havoc, which has a higher alcohol level, but they weren’t sure it would win an award.

“For us, being a small neighborhood brewery in Niwot, Colorado, which nobody knows where it is,” Steve said, “we feel like we did something for our little town.”

“We’re competing against these breweries that, some of the ones in Europe, are hundreds and hundreds of years old,” Leslie added. “We’re just making small amounts of beer compared to everyone else. It validates our commitment to quality.”

When asked if Wreak Havoc was one of their popular beers, Leslie Kaczeus said, “No. Because it’s a very well-made beer, but it’s 8.3 percent, so it’s not what we would call the lawnmower beer—it’s a sipping beer.”

Steve Kaczeus has always wanted to make a beer like Wreak Havoc, a bigger style beer that people could just sip on and enjoy. “It has a lot of aroma and a lot of complexity, and wholesome flavor,” he said. “It ‘wreaks havoc’ on your palate.”

With all the breweries opening in Boulder County and across Colorado, competition might seem fierce, but the owners said each brewery is unique in the beer it produces.

“Everybody has different recipes and different focuses,” Leslie commented on how competition is with other breweries.

“We’re all different,” Steve added. “We all make beer but we all focus on different styles. We all have our own interpretation of the style of beer, and we all enjoy each other’s beer.”

Steve and Leslie Kaczeus weren’t always brewery owners. Before they opened Bootstrap they were in the tech industry, and it took a lot of trust to follow their dreams of owning their own business.

“Like Leslie was saying, it validates our commitment that we’re making to this lifestyle because it was a huge change for us,” Steve said describing what the award meant. “We were in the high-tech industry for the longest time, and it was a leap of faith to jump and do something that I always enjoyed doing as a home brewer. To actually start a business, there was a lot of stress there and anxiety… These awards just validate that other people like our beer too.”

They care about what their customers think and often ask them for feedback on new beer recipes, tweaking the recipe depending on what their customers think.

“I take all that feedback and massage the beer and recipe, and it slowly becomes this amazing beer with everybody’s feedback,” Steve explained. “For me, Wreak Havoc winning the World Beer Cup was just a huge culmination of everyone’s feedback. It’s not just my beer, it’s Niwot’s beer too.”

He said the result of having his customers give them feedback on their beers is that everyone is excited about the awards they get, and feel like they’re a part of it. Leslie and Steve are honored to have won an award at the World Beer Cup, but know their work doesn’t stop there.

“It’s like a dream come true for a brewery or brewery owner,” Steve said of winning the award. “But you have to keep going, you can’t rest on your laurels. You have to keep improving your products and making new recipes.”