There’s more to libraries than books. To prove it, the Denver Public Library has brewed up a month of events focused on craft beer, coffee, kombucha and even comedy.
BrewHa!Ha! kicks off next week with two beer releases plus lessons on brewing kombucha and herbal potions. There are also coffee tastings throughout the month, lessons on cooking with beer and coffee, a book club and a concert by Cop Circles and Thug Entrancer. And for those already imbibing at breweries and coffee houses, there will be deals throughout the city in September from 32 partners.
Getting a deal is simple: Just show your library card.
The brewing series is part of a national effort by libraries called Outside the Lines, said Denver Public Library’s Chris Henning.
“It’s to get people to understand libraries’ relevance in the world,” he said of the initiative, which started in Denver. Outside the Lines events show how libraries tie to their communities in unexpected ways, he said.
For example, the boom in craft brewing and specialty coffee roasting makes its way into libraries when people need information on small-business resources. Denver Public Library hosts a popular program called BizBoost, which helps entrepreneurs with business plans, real estate research and more.
The library system has had a 47 percent increase in attendance at programs such as those offered in BizBoost and more in the past year, Henning said.
“What people don’t always think about is all of these special events, the DIY classes that we offer,” he said.
During BrewHa!Ha!, though, many of the events happen outside of the library, and some of them have been brewing for weeks. Denver Beer Co. brewed a special sour blended with black currants for the library. It’s named Sour 641.23 for the library call number for “Brewed, Malted Beverages.” Coincidentally, Denver Beer used the library’s small business resources to create its business plan, said Tara Barron Williamson, a senior librarian at the Park Hill branch.
For the library’s other beer, Williamson brought together Longmont author Kevin Hearne and Fiction Beer Company, which is in her branch’s neighborhood. Fiction had been a supporter of the library since it opened a year ago (“It was something that was in our sights to do from day one, it’s even in the business plan,” said co-founder Ryan Kilpatrick), and followers of Hearne on social media know he’s a fan of craft beer. They collaborated to make Third Eye Library & Herbs, a caraway and pear cream ale inspired by Hearne’s Iron Druid series.
“His main character’s Irish, and Kevin pointed out that he’ll occasionally have a beer — sometimes a stout, sometimes a porter, sometimes a Kilkenny Irish cream ale,” Kilpatrick said. “We already had a porter and a stout. We didn’t have a cream ale.”
Fiction Beer has always married books and brewing. Kilpatrick’s wife, Christa, is an avid reader who pairs books to her husband’s brews and collaborates with him to name them.
For Williamson, all of the collaborations between the library and the brewers during BrewHa!Ha! feel right.
“I just feel like we’re long lost cousins, breweries and libraries,” Williamson said. “They’re a level playing field, places where people can just come and talk and it’s easy.”
Jenn Fields: 303-954-1599, jfields@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jennfields
BrewHa!Ha! events worth bookmarking
Sept. 3
Sept. 4
Sept. 18
Sept. 20
Sept. 23
Go to denverlibrary.org/brewhaha for a full list of events and vendors offering discounts in September.
Writing and beer: A Q&A with Iron Druid series author Kevin Hearne
Kevin Hearne, author of the Iron Druid Chronicles Series and fan of craft beer, answered some questions about writing, beer and his main character, Atticus:
DP: Drinking beer while writing — good idea or bad idea?
Hearne: It can be a good idea for a little while, if you’re blocked, because it frees your inhibitions. However, I would not recommend drinking beer while you’re editing.
Would any of the characters in your books brew their own kombucha?
I don’t think so. (Laughs.) Because I don’t know enough about kombucha. My main character, Atticus, he’s an herbalist, so he might know how to do it. He owns a medicinal tea shop. He has all sorts of punny kinds of tea, like Mobili-Tea to help with arthritis, and Creativi-Tea to help with creativity. That was his thing.
Does Atticus like high tea?
Not so much. He was much more looking at it for medicinal purposes. He was a Druid, so he was into the healing properties of anything growing in the earth.
Has he developed serious beer-snob tastes over the 2,000 years he’s been alive?
He winds up saying that the brewing has really improved over that time. In the seventh book, he meets someone else who has been around for a very long time, and they don’t know very much about it, and he says, “hey look what they can do with whiskey now.”
—Jenn Fields
