UPDATE: The Skyline Park beer garden is open again this year, but I haven't been back to check it out yet. If you go, let me know how it is!
The Denver pop-up beer garden at Skyline Park opened Friday and I expected it to be completely packed Saturday. It wasn't, and I could have stayed there for hours.
The weather was perfect, and it was the first day of the newest Denver beer garden's full hours -- 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. It'll be at Skyline Park, at Arapahoe Street between 16th and 17th Streets, through Thursday, September 15.
Here's what it looked like!
When you first arrive, you have to show your ID and buy tokens.
There's the usual wristband.
These are the tokens. They cost $2.50 each. Most beers are 2 tokens, but a couple of specialty beers cost 3.
Time to choose a beer. Here's what was available the first Saturday that the beer garden was open.
I chose a blood orange IPA from Tommyknocker Brewery in Idaho Springs. It felt summery.
There are the long tables you'd expect in a beer garden...
And four-tops. We picked a four-top where someone had left a little American flag. Here's my blood orange IPA.
There are plenty of games, and it's definitely a family-friendly environment -- at least it was when we were there, around 6 p.m.
The mini-golf obstacles are adorably downtown Denver-themed. Here's the clocktower.
(The real one is directly above.)
There's the big blue bear, a.k.a. "I See What You Mean."
Whoops -- my beer's empty. Time for another! Here's an Odell Drumroll American Pale Ale.
Might be smart to get a bite to eat at this point. Here's the downtown Denver beer garden's food menu.
Unsurprisingly, there's Colorado-flag cornhole and giant not-Jenga-for-legal-reasons.
And if you've done it right, by the end, you'll be pretty sure that your beer legs have formed a distorted map of the world.
