DENVER — A beer is brewing at Denver's FlyteCo Brewing, after a group of pilots flew to southwest Colorado to pick the hops and bring them back to Denver on the same day.
At 6:30 a.m. Thursday, a group boarded eight small private planes at Erie Municipal Airport and flew to Montrose Airport, then drove to Billy Goat Hop Farm.
"We got to go on a quick tour of the farm and pick 60 pounds of fresh hops that were coming straight from the harvest that they were harvesting that day. So we got Chinook and Cascade hops," said Eric Serani, a pilot and cofounder of FlyteCo Brewing and FlyteCo Tower.
While Serani and his team were flying and gathering the hops, his business partner, Jason Slingsby, was back at FlyteCo brewing the beer.
"He's getting everything ready. And by the time we got back, the brew kettle was right at the point where it was ready to boil and we threw them right into the brew kettle," Serani said. "I think the hops were off the vines for about three hours."
Serani said they were brewing the beer until around 3:30 that afternoon.
"It was a long day, but it's totally worth it," Serani said. "Everyone had a blast and you get to come back after a long day of flying like that and have a delicious beer or two."
The team at FlyteCo only gets to do this once a year, around harvest time. They use the fresh hops to brew a beer called "Hop is My Co-Pilot," which is then sold at the brewery's two locations.
"This beer goes quick," Serani said. "We make a 15-barrel batch, about 30 kegs of it. We go through it in a couple weeks. It doesn't last long."
Serani expects the beer to be on tap in September.