Highside brewing & Kitchen - Frisco, CO

It took two years, but I was able to embark on my first tour. My good friend Casey Joe Collins and I started planning a 10 day run out to Wyoming and Colorado in April of 2019. An unfortunate thing or two happened in 2020 which led to us having to postpone the tour until this year. We were very fortunate that most every venue was able to hold the dates for us and we were able to book fill-in dates for almost all of the ones that couldn’t. Despite our best efforts, we ended up with one free day in the middle of the tour. We found ourselves in Colorado at that time, and ended up grabbing a motel in Frisco to relax for a day. We stopped in Denver for supplies and then headed up into the mountains. Upon checking in at the Snowshoe Motel, I was greeted by a front desk clerk who was having an...allergic reaction. I know that he was, because he told me so. Unprompted. I asked if he needed help, but he confirmed that it “will pass”. Almost as if it wasn’t an allergic reaction, or his first one. To the best of my knowledge, it did pass. Fortunate for him. We got checked in and wandered all over this picturesque town. Bars, a brewery, and restaurants. Letting our supplies do the heavy lifting. There was one brewery, and due to various circumstances, we ended up there three times. The third time was for lunch the next day. 

That’s where the blog comes in. The next day

This order was a small serving, dished up in a little black bowl. This was a single bean concoction and those beans were cooked to pretty near perfection. The mind(s) behind this side included pork fat and onions to improve the consistency of it. Having varied textures in the beans made it much more enjoyable to eat. In terms of mouthfeel, the consistency of the beans lost a point because this dish was a little more soup-like than I had hoped to see. There was plenty of sauce to this dish, and it had a unique flavor to it. There was a fair amount of smoky flavor in the sauce. One of, if not the most, prevalent smoked flavors I’ve encountered thus far. Unfortunately, there was no sweetness to it. No brown sugar. No honey. No syrup. This sauce was straight up tang. Vinegar based baked bean sauce was a first for me. I love it in a BBQ sauce, but I wasn’t crazy about it in beans. There was a generous spice note to this sauce that helped work in concert with the tangy flavor to keep it from being a one note dish. How about that? Ended on a musical metaphor. 

Ratings (On a scale of 1-5)
Appearance: 3 
Flavor: 2
Mouthfeel: 3
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Total Score: 8

For what it's worth,
Dixie Citrus Blast Gummies: 5

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