2014 Best Of Beer: Best New Brewery

So when we set out to do our own "Best Of" contest, we didn't know the immense response we'd get from the local beer community. With little fanfare or announcements, we unleashed this beast on our site November 1st. With over 30,000 votes tallied, we closed it on December 1st. We know that a lot of you worked the system, voting once a day on every device you could figure out how to load the site. We saw votes from iPhones, Androids, iPads, Palm Pilots, and even old Gateway PC's all had a hand in who won each category.In the end, it was close...super close. Some categories were decided by a mere .1%...which is awesome, and shows that fans of our local breweries are adamant in getting their favorites to the top!So, without further ado, we're going to start revealing who won what each day this week. First up is the New Brewery category. With a huge influx of new upstarts this past year, it was definitely close...1st and 2nd were within 65 votes of each other.

Best New Brewery (from November '13 to November '14): 6,251 Votes total

This was easily the most hotly contested category of the entire Best Of. Fieldhouse Brewing went out to an early lead, and mainly because we didn't promote it a ton, it took awhile for Keith at Nano 108 to put it up on his cycling menu board. Once he did, it became a two horse race. Fighting neck and neck down to the final wire, Nano pulled this one out by less than a percent. Congratulations!1st Place: Nano 108 Brewing Company. With new beers almost every week, Keith has created the go to east side destination. He rarely brews the same beer twice, and uses some cool creativity to get the most out of his ingredients (i.e.: Freezing his cherries so they crack and expose more surface area before adding them to the beer).

2nd Place: Fieldhouse Brewing Company. These guys (and gals!) came on to the scene with a great showing at Colorado Springs Craft Week's Crafters' Festival. Boasting some great options for the woefully unlucky celiacs, as well as full-gluten versions of their beers, they truly have become a place for anyone to enjoy! We just collaborated with Travis on a Russian Imperial Stout for New Year's, to be amongst the 9 new beers he'll have on tap that night!

3rd Place: Manitou Brewing Company. Dominic and everyone at Manitou Brewing have created such a wonderful atmosphere for craft beer in Manitou Springs. Being a brewpub means that your food has to be as good as your beer, and we feel that they've stepped up to that challenge and knocked it out of the park. Our go-to pairing is any of MBC's Single Hop series and the Pork Trotters (think chicken wings made out of pork).