Richman Beer Garden — Restaurant in Black Hawk

Great spot especially when they have the live music going! I think it was something Black Hawk needed. They have self pour beer taps that are all digital, but this system also caused major headaches and chaos when I was there. You need to use your phone to upload your ID online, which I definitely don't like doing. It compares that to a picture you send in of yourself, which is another thing I didn't like doing. But worst of all, none of this even worked and I had to nearly beg to be verified manually. Once others complained of it, the manager came out to help and they were having to manually check all IDs. While the idea is nice to be able to help yourself, it was incredibly frustrating and slow with this issue. And felt like privacy was totally lost. They should make it easy to do a manual verification if you want to bypass this terrible system. I hope they can start doing this option because even a technical person like myself prefers the old fashion way when just trying to get a drink. I also noticed the system was filling my cup with foam, then once it fizzed out, I had only 3/4th cup of a drink. I didn't stress that as much since it was cheap, but hoping that was just a one off. Overall the experience, minus the issues was great. I like the drinks they had and loved the music. The outdoor area was also cozy with games and tables. Even better, they have a half price happy hour which made drinks only about $5 and they have fancy and big hot dogs which were also half price. I'd definitely come again, but don't want to deal with the ID issues. Once they smooth out the issues, it'll be a...

Unfortunately, the tap system needs improvement. I was there last Friday, the entire tap system was unusable for at least 30 minutes while 5 people tried to get it functional. When working, there is an annoyingly complicated setup required unless the very nice gentleman monitoring the system steps in to help you. There is no "tap to pay" available, so those of you with your Apple watches, you will need to break out a credit card and insert into a chip reader. Though half price happy hour is appealing, with all the foam in the beers you only get a half cup full anyway, so really not that great of a deal.

I really like this concept a lot, but the atmosphere is on a busy road so there is lots of traffic noise that they try to cover by turning up the music loud, impeding conversations. There are plenty of these pour your own tap houses down in Denver from which to mirror this business. Again, the concept is great, the execution needs some major work!

Oh, and if you are going to call this a beer garden, you should have Bavarian pretzels...

After driving by this place for months I decided to give it a try the other day.

The atmosphere is pretty solid, only downside is that there isn’t any separation between the venue and the road that leads up to the Ameristars garage. I could see this potentially being an issue in regard’s to safety when people leave the venue.

Service could have been better considering half the people there were employees and no one really knew what their role was. The tap system was also a headache, and after looking at other reviews seems like an ongoing issue. When I came to getting food the ordering process was confusing and wait time was long we then I’d expect with the amount of people there.

When it came to the food it was pretty good however shortly after leaving those of us that ate the food felt horrible with severe stomach issues.

Hope things improve for them next season, but with how things are currently I don’t see it making it big...