I attended the Denver Caffeine Crawl this year, and it was so. much. fun.  I have wanted to do one of these crawls for a couple years now, and I was so excited that it worked out, because what can be better than a whole day of coffee?  So, what is a Caffeine Crawl, you ask?  You’ve probably heard of pub crawls, and it’s essentially the same thing, except that, instead of going around to a bunch of bars, you go to coffee shops and drink lots and lots of yummy coffee.  Brilliant concept, right?

In Colorado, we have so much amazing coffee, so there was definitely no shortage of choices for this crawl.  The crawl is hosted by The Lab, and they completely organize the whole event for you.  We were able to choose our “route” for the crawl, and decide which coffee shops that we wanted to visit.  It was a really hard decision, because honestly, I would have loved to visit all of them, but since they all happen simultaneously, that just wasn’t possible.  I ended up choosing Route #4, which had 6 different stops, was a 9.5 mile route, and lasted for 4 hours.  Our group was led by Jason, and he did such an amazing job leading us from coffee stop to coffee stop, and making sure we were all having a great time.

There were 18 people in our group, and since our route was 9.5 miles long, it was a driving route.  They do offer a few walking routes, depending on the total distance between stops, but everyone in our group was responsible to carpool or drive themselves to and from each place.  I attended the crawl with my sister Stormie, my cousin Seth, and his wife, Lizzy.  Seth was generous enough to chauffeur us around in his car, and do all of the parallel parking.  We didn’t know the other people in our group, but it was actually really fun to spend 4 hours with a bunch of new people and get to know them a little bit as we went along.

Our first stop on the Crawl was to Pablo’s Coffee on 6th Ave.  I had visited Pablo’s before, but not this specific location, so it was fun to try a new place.  We all gathered at the counter and listened as they told us about their roasting process, favorite brewing methods, and then we got to sample 2 of their Colombian coffees.  Pablo’s has a really chill, comfortable vibe to it and I was shocked to hear that they originally opened way back in 1995.

Our next stop was to Novo Coffee on Glenarm.  I love Novo and have been to this location many times, so I was excited to be back.  Since this location is located right off of the 16th St. Mall, we had some difficulty finding parking, and we almost missed the whole presentation!  Oops.  It was a little stressful, but we ended up making it with about 10 minutes to spare.  The baristas at Novo made everyone a coffee cocktail that contained cold brew, Amaro Averna, gin, and orange zest.  So beautiful and unique!

Stop #3 was The Sophisticate’s Tea.  Prior to the crawl, I had never heard of this company, so it was great to be introduced to them.  They had their “tea truck” parked out on the street, and it was quite warm and sunny that day, so I snuck to the back to take a few photos from a shady spot.  Yeah, I’m pretty whimpy when it comes to the heat.  They serve all kinds of black tea and chai, and they had everyone in our group sample the different types.  Lizzy is really into chai, and she said that she loved this stop the best.

Next up, we all walked over to visit Pigtrain Coffee inside Union Station.  It was such a relief to get out of the hot sun, and Pigtrain was serving us some delicious cold brew, and also offered to let everyone have a scoop of yummy ice cream in their drink.  I had mine plain, but everyone else seemed to really enjoy the ice cream.  At this point, I had had a LOT of caffeine, and I started to feel a bit jittery and I could also tell that I was talking a bit louder than usual.  Ha!

Stop #5 was to Boxcar Coffee at The Source.  I’m a huge fan of Boxcar and have been here countless times – it’s one of my favorites.  This stop was special because, Boxcar was presenting with Nova Chocolate, and they were doing a little coffee and chocolate pairing.  We all got to go into the back room of Boxcar and listen to them talk about the aromas and flavors of both coffee and chocolate, and how they are similar in the ways that we taste them.  We sampled their cold brew as well, and then they passed around chocolate samples so that we could taste how everything went together.

From there, we went to our sixth and final stop – the brand new, and at the time, not even yet opened, Commonwealth Coffee.  To be perfectly honest, Commonwealth was the reason that I chose this route specifically.  I’m a huge fan of their coffee (and just, them in general), and I was really excited to see their new North Park Hill space.  You guys, their cafe is GORGEOUS!  Commonwealth did a coffee cupping for our group and talked about the roasting process and how each minute of roasting can completely change the taste of the coffee.  It was really interesting – I love learning about coffee.  They also sent each of us home with a bag of their Kenya Nyeri Karogoto AA coffee.  It was amazing!

I had such a great experience doing the Caffeine Crawl, and I will definitely be doing it again!  Thanks so much to Sadie and Jason at The Lab for working so hard to put all of this together.  And thank you to all of the coffee companies that welcomed us into their spaces and made us feel so loved and caffeinated.  You guys are the best!