Colorado man drinks his way through every brewery in the state

It took Paul Myhill only 18 months to drink his way through all 467 breweries, brewpubs, satellite brewery restaurants and beer taprooms in Colorado.

The Castle Rock resident’s ambitious quest started with a simple idea on July 24, 2020, when Myhill and friend went out for a round.

“My mom took her life a number of years ago, so on her birthday I usually go out and do my thing. I had a buddy with me this time and we ended up doing five breweries that night and we just kept going,” said Myhill, who is also known as the Colorado Beer Guy. “We initially started out as, ‘Hey, can we do 30 in 30 days?’ ”

The duo finished ahead of schedule, hitting 30 breweries in a mere 10 days. So they upped the ante to 100 breweries in 100 days, which they completed in about a month. Then to 365 breweries in 365 days. Soon Myhill found himself driving — and often being shuttled by his wife and son — from the San Juan Mountains to Fort Collins to enjoy flights of beer, with a handy spreadsheet helping track his journey.

After hitting the 365 breweries milestone last July, visiting them all didn’t feel like much of a stretch, Myhill said. He estimates he reached an additional 150 out-of-state breweries while on vacation over the last year and a half.

So it was not surprising that when we connected by phone, Myhill was at Great Divide Brewery and Roadhouse in his hometown enjoying a cold one. His unwavering passion for beer stems from his youth growing up in England where as soon as you could walk, you could grab a seat at the pub. In 1978, Myhill moved to Texas and later took up homebrewing at age 14.

“It wasn’t like the homebrew scene now where people want to do it out of a deep, profound love of craft beer,” Myhill recalled. “For us it was out of necessity. If we wanted decent beer in Texas between 1978 and 1982, we had to brew it ourselves.”

Now semi-retired, Myhill attributed his success in drinking through the state in part due to the fact he can work from anywhere.

“To me, the brewery is the coffee shop,” he said. “As long as I have a computer and WiFi, I can sit in Meeker, Colorado, and do my job.”

Given his expertise in Colorado beer, we caught up with Myhill to learn about his favorite new breweries, his go-to beer sponge, and the most unusual sip he had along the way.

Myhill’s favorite new breweries are destination-worthy.

About 30% of the breweries that Myhill visited he had previously patronized, but he made a point to go back and support them during the pandemic. Among his favorite new places that he had never been before are Chrysalis Barrel Aged Beers in Paonia, Jessup Farm Barrel House in Fort Collins, Purpose Brewing & Cellars in Fort Collins and Primitive Beer in Longmont.

“There’s so much good beer in Colorado, it was the ones that were different that stood out,” Myhill said. “Different for me is barrel-aged on that Belgian end of that spectrum, like farmhouse saisons.”

Go-to beer sponge? Bring on the beef!

Being from England, Myhill is a self-described meat-and-potatoes guy.

“The American version is hamburger and fries. Admittedly, I ate a lot of hamburgers along the way,” Myhill said. “And there’s a lot of breweries doing some great burgers.”

What was the wackiest thing he drank along the way?

“Nothing surprises me anymore, quite frankly,” Myhill said. But it did surprise him that he enjoyed a What’s the Dillio? dill pickle gose from Square Peg Brewerks in Alamosa.