Popination Consideration

a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Southern Sun.

You’ll remember from last week (Popination Revisitation*), that I have written about my previous Popinations to two of the four pubs in the Mountain Sun family of breweries. There are four total across the Boulder/Denver metro area, and last week I visited the third: Southern Sun. Will I get to the fourth and final Mountain Sun branch, Long’s Peak in Longmont? Ehhh. I should. I don’t wanna—it’s too far. But I should. I probably will.

But anyway! I took the trek to Boulder last week to go say hi to my parents, and I stopped by this familiar and fond branch of Mountain Sun on my way downtown. I call it a branch, but it’s at least twice the size of the original flagship pub. But it is newer than the Pearl Street original, though not as new as the other two (in Denver and Longmont). Maybe I should call it a sequel.

*Here’s what I began to say about Southern Sun in last week’s roundup:

So Southern Sun is the second of the Mountain Suns to exist. It came about….. I don’t remember when but it was after the OG Mountain Sun, and as it’s in South Boulder right on (the hilariously named) Table Mesa Parkway and Boulder’s Broadway, which is not very broad at all, but is an essential artery through the town and up the canyon, it’s called Southern Sun. For a few years, there was a tertiary restaurant downstairs from Southern Sun which they called Under the Sun, and this was more of a nicer restaurant than a brewery with pub grub. It closed right before the pandemic, and it never opened up again. But Southern Sun is still going strong, and as it’s way bigger (and with way way more parking) than Mountain Sun downtown, it’s doing just great again.

If you think I had no more backlit bar interior pics for you, how wrong you are.

The area of South Boulder where Southern Sun is perched is up on a slope overlooking the foothills and the King Soopers where that shooting happened recently on one side, down Table Mesa towards the second big bus station on the other. It’s considered a little bit of a cheaper, rougher, less posh area of Boulder (if indeed anything in Boulder can be considered so). This Mountain Sun offshoot opened up I assume because of the immense popularity of the OG Mountain Sun downtown—that pub is so teeny, with only one bathroom even, that they had to create a bigger spot. And this version has lots of free parking, as it’s part of a little strip mall with a big bike shop (typical for Boulder), a jazz club, a craft store, and various miscellany that close and open periodically as is the way with older strip malls. It’s up on a hill, as I mentioned, and so it sort of presides over the corner of Broadway and Table Mesa, giving a kingly nod to you as you climb up the hill to inquire of its wisdom.

The interior is much bigger than the flagship pub—about twice the size inside at least, as I said above. I believe when Southern Sun was first built, it became the primary site for all the actual brewing of those delicious beer varieties that I have such a fondness for. But I’m not actually sure, and there’s no research allowed for Popinations, remember? I do know that now the brewing all takes place on site in Denver, at Vine Street Pub.

Favorite Mountain Sun beers of mine include the FYIPA, the Annapurna Amber, and the Java Porter, with new favorites popp(inat?)ing up during Stout Month. But I’ve written about these before, also considering how surprised I am by the alcoholic strength of the FYIPA and my wonderment at how very many pints of it I used to be able to knock back.

A beautiful amber color for an IPA, innit?

South Boulder being one of the sort of less nice areas of town, I have to say I actually recommend visiting Southern Sun if you’re visiting Boulder and would like something less touristy or resort town-y to do than the historic Pearl Street Mall (though I do of course recommend seeing that as well). It’s roomy and comfy and gets less stuffy and crowded, though of course at busy bar times it does get busy. Just not uncomfortably so. And I think they’ve resumed their live music series there, too, but I’m not sure.

I did used to go to this Mountain Sun sequel rather often, and I’m trying to remember why that one replaced the original in my regular Popinations past for a while. It must’ve been in that time period between my residing close to downtown and then in Gunbarrel. During that in-between time, I lived in South Boulder with my first husband and some friends. We’d hold martial arts classes in the park across from our shared house, and then go to Dark Horse or Southern Sun after. Good times before they got bad. And the pints were always good. They always will be.