Once a year, Colorado companies crank out small-batch and one-off comestibles, from hot sauces and craft brews to whiskeys, jerkies and custom gift packs that collect their best-sellers. Because what’s more special than a limited edition?
Here are just a few of our favorites that are hard — and in some cases impossible — to find outside the holidays.
Colorado’s holiday craft brews with palate-tingling, winter-specific flavors number in the dozens, which makes it hard to narrow down a single choice. Seasonal drinkers can look forward to the ginger- and cinnamon-forward Snowbound Winter Ale from Left Hand Brewing Co., as well as the Longmont brewery’s variable-ingredient Fade to Black (lefthandbrewing.com). There’s also a lot to enjoy from New Belgium Brewery this year, such as the BA Frambozen and a Belgian Collection variety pack (newbelgium.com).
Fruity noses are well and good, but Breckenridge Brewery also brews its own Christmas Ale with chocolate and caramel flavors (breckbrew.com), and Avery Brewing Co. has an Old Jubilation Ale made with (checks notes) hazelnut? Yes indeed. averybrewing.com
Denver-based Sauce Leopard makes some of the tastiest hot sauces in the country, including its best-selling Seventh Reaper, which has been featured nationally on the “Hot Ones” talk show. For University of Colorado football fans this season, there’s the CU Buffs Mango Habanero, a $12-per-bottle Hail Mary of fruit and heat that’s only available in Boulder (for now, with retail outlets to come) as of earlier this year.
Also: the creepily named, weirdly delicious Bird Blood cranberry-habanero sauce ($11) is a great stand-in for canned Thanksgiving sauce, provided you’re OK with low-to-mild spiciness. sauceleopard.com
Gabriel Torres carries the apple pie candy cane base to a machine that will help him form a batch of candy canes at Hammond’s Candy Factory on Dec. 10, 2018, in Denver. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Hammond’s Candies in Denver trots out a dizzying lineup of holiday-specific candy each season, and you can customize your own box online. We recommend trying out the organic peppermint tree lollipops ($13 per package); Holiday Humbugs (cherry, cinnamon, spearmint and peppermint hard candies; $18); Hot Chocolate Snowballs ($15.50); Coal Candy (black, cinnamon-spiced candies; $8); and artisan candy canes, including organic butterscotch, cherry, caramel apple and root beer ($12.75). And that’s not even all they offer for the holidays. hammondscandies.com
Lottie’s Meats & Provisions knows you can try any one of its products at any time, but really, it’s easier to gather your friends and family and sample them all at once — even if it’s only once a year. Lottie’s Sausage Starter Pack ($52) includes a quartet of separate packages of its best products: The Lottie (smoked pork sausage with nutmeg, paprika and coriander); The Bratwurst (with ginger, nutmeg and mustard seeds); the versatile Everyday Ground Pork Sausage; and our favorite, the Calabrian Chile Ground Pork Sausage (with garlic, fennel and calabrian chiles). We forgive you for wanting to try them separately, too. lottiesmeats.com
Mountain America Jerky’s Colorado Fisherman Pack stands out from many jerky-based gift packs because that’s all the Denver company does. True, you can get most of its products year-round, with selections aimed at fishing and outdoors enthusiasts (see above) as well as samplers featuring wild game, fish, alligator, kangaroo, water foul and dozens more tongue-tinglers ($58-$78). But the focus on smoked/cured meats and cheeses says “specialty” all over it, especially with the wide-ranging Fisherman’s Pack ($93.83, mountainamericajerky.com).
Also saying “speciality”: Breckenridge’s Climax Jerky, a company that travels the state each season selling its wares at local markets. We like their affordable bundles ($10.50-$22) as well as “ultimate flavor” packs featuring good amounts of a single kind or category, which run up to $53. climaxjerky.com