Colorado’s First Sake Tasting Room Starts Pouring | Eater Denver

"Opening this weekend in RiNo at 3559 Larimer Street, I can visit Colorado’s first licensed on-site sake brewery and tasting room, run by owner and brewer Billy Stuart. He’s pouring six styles at launch — including an unfiltered Palisade peach nigori and a clean, classic “American” junmai (not quite as dry as its Japanese inspiration) — and has also created an horchata nigori and a dry-hopped sake, with seasonal rotations informed by customer feedback. After years working in local sushi restaurants, studying sake, procuring yeast from Japan and experimenting with koji (which he combines with yeast, water, and rice and ferments at 50 degrees), the longtime home brewer who started in a shared-house refrigerator worked with a local legislator to have sake regulated like wine; the law passed in April and took effect August 8, clearing the way for this opening. The tasting room opens at 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and will sell full and half glasses, flights, cocktails, bottles, six-packs, and growlers, with different food trucks and restaurant pop-ups providing sustenance; Stuart says the sake is “very clean, so you can drink and not feel terrible the next day.”" - Josie Sexton