Colorado Springs' Bristol Brewing takes beer to the edge.

• Author: Jones, Marty
• Position: The beer guy

THERE IS AN ADAGE among the nuts who brew craft beers that goes something like this: "Man makes beer, Nature makes wine." The concept celebrates the man-made (and woman-made) art of mixing hops, barley, yeast and other ingredients into the glory that is small-batch beer.

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It's also a challenge to wine freaks who, despite the craft-beer trade's success in making America the world's greatest brewing nation, still look down their nose at beer.

Such in-the-dark enophiles have never met Jason Yester, the trailblazing brewer of Bristol Brewing, in Colorado Springs. In a town where some focus on the family, Yester is quietly focusing on raising a family of exceptional beers.

Bristol makes a range of nice craft beers (including Bristol's very tasty flagship, Laughing Lab Scottish Ale) that have pleased Front Range residents for years. But these days Yester and his cohorts are making new fans with exotic creations that fill the outer edges of the beer-styles roster.

Bristol's "Edge City" series includes a range of assertive, artisanal beers that stretch from Belgian-style trippels and hybridized bock and wheat brews, to a unique Harvest Ale beer that puts the terroir in Colorado beer: It's made of virtually all Colorado ingredients.

"All the hops were wild, local hops, harvested by hand," Yester says of the hops in his French Farmhouse style ale. The beer also welcomes Colorado-grown apples and raspberries, and a yeast strain that Yester lifted from wild berries growing above Colorado Springs. Bristol's microbiologist, Ken Andrews, bred these organisms, isolated particular strains of them, and then spent three years raising the crop of in-state yeast that was used to ferment the beer. (And you thought beer was a mindless beverage?)

In February, Bristol's Edge City lineup featured bottle-conditioned beers (fermented in the bottle with live yeast) that included a malty Scotch ale aged in cognac barrels, and a double India Pale Ale brewed with more than--gulp--30 different types of hops.

While these beers raise goose bumps among Bristol's beer fans, they also raise something else. "Exposure," says Yester. "A lot of people never heard of us until we started making these beers. We have a cult following for them." The bigger presence also leads to greater awareness of the company's year-round, more typical microbrews. "These beers revive interest in a brewery," Yester notes.

Bristol Brewing's staff gets rewards from them, too. "It...