Heaven, Colorado

I think I'm in Heaven, Colorado, because I just found Mile High Wines and Spirits in Lakewood on the western edge of Denver where my brother-in-law Ray lives with Svetlana. They have the best bunch of beers I've ever seen in one place – a huge cool room at the back, the biggest fridge I've ever been in, outside of an abattoir.
So I've ticked-off an embarrassing number of beers that are in the book (Grogan's Companion to Drink) but which I, er, hadn't necessarily actually, er, tried ... as such. But I couldn't have left out Weihenstephaner, could I – they're the world's oldest brewery, going since 1040? Funny old game - I didn't find the stuff in Munich, a hop-skip-and-a-jump from the brewery and nobody said why not go 5,000 miles to the edge of the Rockies to get some. Now it turns out that you can get the Hefe Weissbier up Sainsbury's so I could have stayed in Stokie.
But they don't have the Doppelbock Dunkles Starkbier, do they? (Mrs G went dool-ali for the doppelbocks doing the skiing thing in Garmisch in February and prefers Kloster Andechser and I'm with her on that, as on so much else. Especially as she's managed to cajole, coax and drag Ben and Joe here on her own after Ben got norovirus the night of the André Simon Book Awards so they had to cancel the Big Bagel leg of the trip. He's barely eaten for a week and he's not exactly a fat lad.)
Lovin' the Einbecker Mai-Ur-Bock, though, and the Ayinger Oktoberfest Märzen and the Schneider Aventinus Doppelbock Weissbier. And looking forward to the Jenlain Ambrée. It's a bière de garde from, well, wherever Jenlain is and the local supermarket in Quimiac, Brittany, had some last summer half-term which they must've mispriced because one of the top ten beers of the world – my world, anyway - is too much of a snip at two euros something (it's nine bucks here and I still bought one). It's like Newkie Brown died and went to Heaven. Ray's retaliated with some tins of Colorado micro-brews I haven't tasted before – they win hands down on price, at least.
Anyway, Svetlana's forebears were thrown off a train in Siberia in 1917 and had to burrow into the ground to survive the winter. She grew up there in the Brezhnev-era and escaped here with the lovely Anya and Tanya after perestroika. So she reckons she's in Heaven every day – even if there's only Millerweiser Lite to drink.