Non-Profit’s Beer Stuck in Middle of Tax Dispute

John Jaramillo’s beer is being held hostage. The president of the Hispanic Restaurant Association recently started Vertigo Beer USA to help fundraise for the non-profit. The goal is to partner with local organizations to make beer, get it into the market and direct profits back to the HRA, an organization that is over 95 percent self-funded, according to Jaramillo.

He modeled Vertigo Beer after his personality — adventurous, outgoing and outdoorsy; Jaramillo climbs fourteeners and worked with a local marketing agency to develop a brand around that lifestyle.

Jaramillo then partnered with Metro State University’s School of Hospitality, led by Bernardo Alatorre, to design the first beer – an American light lager. “The beer is light, crisp and clean – it really fits the Colorado lifestyle,” says Jaramillo.

The team brewed a test batch at MSU’s Charlie Papazian Brewing Education Lab. “It tasted great,” says Jaramillo. In August, the brew was tested at the Colorado Beef Festival, an event run by the Hispanic Restaurant Association. “It was a huge success. Over a thousand people showed up and we went through over eight kegs,” he notes.

After the successful testing, it was time to put the beer into the market. Jaramillo went to Jose Beteta, owner of Raices Brewing, for the commercial batch. “We went into agreement and I paid for it,” says Jaramillo.

But according to the City of Denver,Beteta hasn’t been paying his taxes. As a result, on October 8, the city forced Raices to cease operations.

In an open letter on its website, Raices blames the City of Denver’s business personal property tax, and accuses the city of retaliatory audits.

Many of those statements contradict the city’s version. According to Denver, Raices owes $98,703.48 in unpaid sales taxes, with approximately two-thirds of that being back taxes that the city has been working to collect. It says that Raices only owes about $10,800 in business personal property taxes.

Whatever the case may be between Raices and the City of Denver, Jaramillo just wants his beer, which is now ready to come out of the fermenter so that it can be packaged and sold. Jaramillo says he’s been working with Jacob Sabo of the Cheetah Collective, a new brewing incubator that spawned out of Goldspot Brewing in Denver. “Jacob has been advising me and he has been a godsend,” Jaramillo notes.

Unlike business property, the actual beer liquid is perishable — in a few months it won’t be of a quality that can be sold to the public.

Jaramillo says he was told by the city’s tax department that they don’t want to spend any more money sending people over to the brewery, but he’s hoping they might have a change of heart.

He points to his organization’s work with the city of Denver, in hopes that they might be willing to go the extra mile here. “At Mayor Johnston’s State of the City address, we fed a thousand people at no cost,” says Jaramillo. “We participated in Longer Tables Denver, helping feed 3,600 people,” he adds. There are countless other examples of Jaramillo and the HRA providing food and labor for events in and around Denver, and he hopes that a little of that goodwill can come back his way.

Jaramillo says that he’s even willing to pay for the city’s time to open up the building so he can retrieve his beer. He’ll handle all the logistics, he adds, which could be as simple as a transfer into a mobile tank, provided by another brewery, before being transported over to Goldspot, where the Cheetah Collective can condition and package the beer.

Jaramillo is hoping that the city has a change of heart over the next few weeks, while the beer is fresh and still abled to be saved. In the meantime, he isn’t sitting around and waiting. He has a second beer in development, ready to launch on October 28, in partnership with MSU for First Responders Day. Lights and Sirens Lager will be available from 5 to 8 p.m., with proceeds benefiting Restoration Ranch Colorado — a vacation property offering free stays to front-line personnel and their families. The beer will be pouring at Lakewood’s Old 121 Brewhouse, The Varsity Inn in Centennial, The Lucky Mutt in Littleton and Billy Birch in Thornton.

Denver’s tax department has not yet responded to a request for comment.