Craft breweries and related companies love April Fool’s Day and each year, they skewer their fans, their competitors, big breweries and themselves with jokes. But these breweries are also innovators, and a couple of years ago, one of these jokes actually became reality when Wynkoop Brewing produced Rocky Mountain Oyster…
Colorado’s small craft breweries are well-known for helping one another out with advice, equipment and other kinds of support. But the big guys like to do that, too. On Monday, Avery Brewing announced that it had signed an agreement with New Belgium Brewing that will allow Avery to make its…
Renegade Brewing, which helped invigorate the Santa Fe arts district three years ago, will sink its roots even deeper this summer when it opens a large production facility — and eventually a second tap room — just eight blocks south of its current location. The brewery has just signed a…
Steamworks Brewing in Durango was one of the first Colorado mountain breweries to can its beers and establish a presence in Denver, but financial problems in 2010 forced the brewery to close its canning plant. As a result, Steamworks went to its neighbor, Ska Brewing, which began brewing and canning…
Golden City Brewery, which was Golden’s only craft brewer for nearly two decades, is feeling a bit of pinch now that it has been joined by three other craft-beer makers in the town. But it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks, and beginning this May or June,…
When Colorado booze manages to infiltrate the secretive San Francisco market, it’s time to take notice. A recent trip to the Other Queen City found bottles of Leopold Bros. Highland Amaro Fernet being downed. This, in a place where Fernet Branca, the leading manufacturer of the bitter-tasting stuff, draws 40…
Prost Brewing will begin packaging its three core beers in twelve-ounce bottles next month as part of a renewed effort at distribution. The German-style brewery, which opened in August 2012, had previously only packaged its beers in 64-ounce growlers, which it sealed and sold to liquor stores. But the growlers…
When Trinity Brewing founder Jason Yester created the recipe for Red Swingline, a hoppy IPA that is also cheek-puckeringly sour, his goal was to make something “signature American.” But in doing so, he may have helped to pioneer a style that beer drinkers in the rest of the country will…
Colorado Craft Beer Week kicked off last Friday at the Governor’s Mansion, where our brewer-in-chief, John Hickenlooper, toasted the brewing industry in the state and unveiled three draft handles that will now serve the historic home. But the events at breweries, restaurants and bars around the state will continue through…
Things don’t always go according to plan — and in TRVE Brewing’s case, that’s going to make a lot of Denver beer drinkers happy later this spring. That’s when TRVE owner Nick Nunns will turn the keys to what will eventually be a 5,000-square-foot production brewery, called the Acid Temple,…
Dozens of breweries and hundreds of craft-beer fans came together Saturday for the first-ever Collaboration Fest, hosted by Imbibe Denver and the Colorado Brewers Guild. The event, at the Curtis Hotel, included nearly fifty collaborative beers from breweries all over the state, as well as a few in other states…
Amarillo. Cascade. Centennial. Simcoe. These American-grown hops varieties have become stars over the past decade and are most commonly associated with the big, brassy IPAs brewed in Colorado, California and the Pacific Northwest. But none of them is actually indigenous to the United States. In fact, almost none of the…
The Colorado Governor’s Mansion has seen its share of keggers over the decades, thanks to the learning experiences and youthful indiscretions of several gubernatorial offspring. But the 106-year-old-mansion hasn’t had its own draft-beer system — until now. Tonight, during a private party feting the state’s $826 million craft-brewing industry, Governor…
Old Chicago Pizza & Taproom on Market Street, which was one of the first places to serve microbrews in downtown Denver and has acted as the unofficial gateway to LoDo since 1992, will close its doors on March 29. The company, owned by Tennessee-based Craftworks Restaurants since 2010, is looking…
Left Hand Brewing in Longmont has been looking to get control of the word “Nitro” since 2011, first by wresting the trademark away from a small Canadian brewer that had never used it and then by filing a trademark claim of its own on the word as it relates to…
Bryan Jansing and Paul Vismara, who’ve been slinging suds at the Falling Rock Taphouse for years, will release their book, Italy: Beer Country The Story of Italian Craft Beer, in a couple weeks with a couple of launch parties. The fully-illustrated book covers the “story of the Italian craft beer…
Colorado’s 232 craft brewers employed 5,014 people and drove an economic engine worth $826 million last year, according to a study released Tuesday by the Colorado Brewers Guild. That’s up from 179 breweries, 4,493 jobs and $704 million the year before. In fact, the industry is growing so fast that…
Colorado’s largest craft brewer, New Belgium, and one of its smallest, Black Shirt, both broke new ground in January when they began canning a pair of unusual beers. New Belgium’s offering was the tart Snapshot, one of the first canned beers using lactobacillius as a souring agent. Black Shirt rolled…
The craft-brewing industry has been around long enough now that some of the older beer makers — the ones that can remember being called “microbreweries” — have started celebrating their histories by digging up old favorites that they no longer make. The latest to do this is Great Divide Brewing,…
The second annual DSTILL conference is bringing distillers, bartenders and garden-variety boozehounds to Denver to celebrate the burgeoning art of Colorado craft distilling. Before the big players of alcohol start pourin’ at tonight’s big Showcase event at the McNichols Building, DSTILL invited participants to tour a handful of Boulder distilleries,…
Jake’s Brew Bar in downtown Littleton is expanding into the building next door, doubling its indoor capacity and adding a 1,500-square-foot beer garden in back. See also: Loveland’s Grimm Brothers Brewhouse will start canning beer…
Opening day is less than a month away, and sports fans are licking their lips over the promise of a new season. And some margs from Rio on the Rocks, a ballpark branch of Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant, the homegrown chain that got its start in Fort Collins 27 years…
