Bootstrap Brewing brings home medals for beer and seltzer

This past month, Niwot's Bootstrap Brewing received some positive news to finish out its year. The brewery medaled three times in a pair of some of the most well regarded beverage competitions in the country: the U.S. Open Beer Championships and its counterpart, the U.S. Open Cider and Beverage Championships.

In the beer competition, one of Bootstrap's most well-known beers, Wreak Havoc Red, took home gold in the Imperial Red Ale category. As more of a welcomed surprise, the brewery's newer offering, a non-alcoholic IPA called Strapless, took home bronze in its category.

The recognition for Bootstrap's products extended to its seltzers, as Bootstrap's Sparkalicious Greyhound Seltzer took home gold in the fruited seltzer category at the beverage competition. The win gave a boost to the company's seltzers, which is one of Bootstrap's more recently developed product lines.

"We're always thrilled to medal in the U.S. Open Beer Competition because it's so unique in terms of being the only competition that includes beers from professional brewers worldwide, plus beers from gold medal winners from the National AHA Homebrew Competition.," said co-owner Leslie Kaczeus.

"It's great to keep getting affirmation that Wreak Havoc is a strong beer, but this was the first competition we entered our new Strapless Non-Alcoholic IPA and it was fantastic to medal for that as well, " Kaczeus added.

The U.S. Open Beer Championships are one of the largest and most eagerly anticipated beer contests in the country. There is stiff competition for medals. According to a press release, judges evaluate more than 6,000 entries in 140 categories.

By comparison, this was the first year of hard seltzer competitions at the newly re-formatted U.S. Open Cider and Beverage Championships. The six previous years of the competition were limited to cider categories only, including dry, sweet, hopped, and aged ciders. Moving into seltzers was new territory for the event's managers and judges.

While Strapless is a particularly new offering from Bootstrap, consumers are more familiar with Wreak Havoc Red and Sparkalicious Greyhound Seltzer. Both have been on the market for long enough that drinkers know what they appreciate about each.

Wreak Havoc Red is a classic in its category, with a crisp color and enough hops to provide interest without going into the taste profile of a much more hop-forward IPA. The fan favorite has won fifteen previous medals, including Bronze at the 2018 World Beer Cup, and silver and bronze medals at the 2015 and 2016 Great American Beer Festival Awards.

While crafts seltzers have emerged on the market in the past few years, Sparkalicious Greyhound fruited seltzers have held their own as consumer options grew. Greyhound has a fresh but light fruit taste, that is drinkable on its own or works well to lighten up cocktails as a mixer. It also took home a silver medal in this year's Fizz Fight seltzer competition.

All three drinks are easy to find locally. They're available at Niwot Liquors and are on tap at the beer maker's taproom in the former Times Call production space in Old Town Longmont.