My last stop on Tuesday night during Madison Craft Beer Week was the Argus, a place I had been introduced to as a great spot for after work happy hour, to carry on a good conversation, and/or to eat really amazing cheese fries. Tuesday night they were having a tap takeover & meet and greet with folks from Left Hand Brewery in Colorado.

We walked in to a small crowd considering how well these guys make beer. Last year, I had been introduced to their Left Hand Milk Stout on nitro. It’s smooth and chocolaty, and a good example of how to make a good stout. If you like dark beer, this is a must have and probably Left Hand’s most well-known beer.

Next I was in heaven when I had the opportunity to try Left Hand’s Twin Sisters Double IPA for the first time. Like any good IPA it starts off with a bitter bite that you don’t think will fade out – until you get a taste of the sweet malty aftertaste that this beer has. If you like an IPA with some interesting, well put together flavors, you should give this one a try.

Midway through our Left Hand tasting, we got to meet Matt, a nice guy who works for Left Hand who was there to talk to us about the beer, make sure we were having a good time, and to give us some fun stickers. He started out asking if we were drinking Left Hand and asking how we liked it. We discovered that it’s his job to travel and talk about the beer, and that he basically has the best job in the world (even if he isn’t using his engineering degree a whole lot). His co-worker, a self-proclaimed Ryan Braun look alike (you can guess which one he is), had started out bartending and worked at a few different spots before he started at Left Hand.  They were both excited to be in Wisconsin and seemed ready to make sure that we loved beer from Colorado right alongside beer from Wisconsin. We also learned that Left Hand makes about 50,000 barrels a year and distributes widely for you to find them nearby if you have a decent liquor store, but does make a special beer for “beer weeks.”

That was our next beer, and we tasted really quickly why it was made for weeks with lots of drinking: it tastes just like coffee. If you’re at a Left Hand beer week event and are getting a little slumpy, make sure you order the Week Sauce Porter. This one goes down just like a creamy iced coffee and sits at just 6% ABV. It’s a great beer for halfway through a night of serious beer drinking.

Overall this was a great experience. Lots of times you’ll go to meet and greets where the folks from the brewery just sit at the bar – these guys did the opposite and made sure to engage everyone, have fun, and answer questions about their process. It’s always great to hear about great Wisconsin breweries at beer week – but these Colorado folks can make an amazing beer, and absolutely take the cake for making sure everyone had the beer they wanted the whole time.

More Information on Left Hand:

On the web: http://www.lefthandbrewing.com

Follow them on Twitter: @LeftHandBrewers

Things to Google before you go (if you get out to Colorado):

Beer on nitrogen

Great American Beer Festival