The Good, the Bad and the Sudsy: Denver’s Year in Beer 2025

This year was a challenging one for breweries across Colorado. At the same time, it was an amazing year for drinkers, who reaped the benefits of the truly excellent beer in the state. Colorado breweries also had a phenomenal year at GABF, bringing home over thirty medals and three Brewery of the Year awards.

Stephen Adams of Colorado Brewery List keeps a meticulously curated spreadsheet of newly opened and recently closed breweries and brewery taprooms. There are a few judgment calls on what qualifies as a brewery taproom on each of these lists, and a few breweries will open or close before the end of the year, but it looks like roughly twenty new breweries and brewery taprooms will have opened in Colorado by the end of 2025. And about forty will have closed.

The overall craft beer market has been relatively stagnant for several years now, even contracting a slight amount. Yet until the last 24 months, new breweries greatly outpaced closures. The market is seeing a very high level of unused capacity, as more breweries are fighting for a pie that isn’t growing.

Still, this doesn’t necessarily spell doom, but it is a gray cloud that is hanging over the market right now. In short, the market is fairly saturated, and will remain that way until demand for craft beer grows or more breweries shutter. The business of beer has never been tougher for most craft brewers, of which the vast majority are no more than fifteen years old.

Here are our takes on the state of the Colorado craft beer industry as we reflect on 2025 and head into the new year:

New Breweries Made a Splash

Fewer breweries may be opening, but the ones that are have made a strong initial impact. Craft beer is no longer a niche trend, it’s a mature market and a large, accepted part of American drinking culture.

Breweries like Full Frame are making some noise. Industry veterans Alyssa Hoberer and Jacob Kemple started Full Frame about a year ago, transforming Jagged Mountain into a bright, exciting space. The duo have been recognized by national publications such as VinePair and Hop Culture as being a top new brewery.

Milieu Fermentations, Monolith Brewing, Renegade Brewing and Alley Brews are another slew of newer brands that took fading, stagnant breweries and injected a lot of heart and soul into the spaces and beers. In return, patrons are showing up.

And finally, new breweries in new spaces, such as Wanderment Brewing and Littleton Brewing, have made passionate plays, sharing their respective love of beer with the community.

Littleton Brewing Controversy

Speaking of Littleton Brewing, it was recently called out by the Littleton Independent for clogging parking and creating dangerous conditions in the neighborhood. The primary source for the article, titled, “Foresthill neighbors say Littleton traded their peace for pints,” is a woman who lives a block and a half away from the brewery.

Her host of complaints include parking – while having a handicap spot in front of her house and a 40+ foot driveway with a detached garage. They also include a complaint stating that during the brewery’s Oktoberfest wiener dog meetup, one of the dogs lunged at her dogs through her front fence, forcing her and her dogs to stay inside. The lady also accused the Littleton police of calling her a liar.

We all have dramatic neighbors – I have one who flips out and paces around his front yard if a vehicle parks on the public street in front of his house – but using primary quotes from what appears to be this type of person in an article that is essentially attacking a local small business seems like a poor decision on the part of the author. The headline is creative and honestly quite good, but the story itself reads more like clickbait writing. Littleton Brewing is a new and exciting small business that is very popular with local patrons. This should be a feel-good story, but it instead stirs up the type of hollow drama you expect to see on Nextdoor.

What’s Going on with Wilding?

Wilding Brands has made a lot of noise this year. Formed when Stem Cider acquired Howdy Beer and led by Stem Cider founder and current Wilding CEO Eric Foster, Wilding acquired Great Divide and Station 26 earlier this year, and more recently Upslope Brewing.

Foster is the first to admit that the company hasn’t done a great job telling the story behind these acquisitions. “We’ve been purposely vague,” says Foster. “Part of that is on me, we wanted to get a lot of this stuff done before we came out and talked about it.” In the void, rumors and speculation have run rampant, with descriptions like private equity and “similar to Tilray Brands” being tossed around.

Foster says those types of rumors aren’t true at all. In fact, he wishes that the company had more capital to work with. You don’t have to take him at his word, however – the company performed a leaseback on its Acreage property earlier this year, freeing up over ten million dollars. Foster says that leaseback was a big part of how Wilding has been able to acquire businesses like Station 26, Great Divide and Upslope.

Further, two (since shuttered) Great Divide locations weren’t a part of that acquisition, nor were the two Upslope properties. It’s clear that Wilding isn’t just buying up everything it can – it’s being selective and strategic about how it uses its money.

Foster says that he understands the challenges of buying up legacy brands, especially ones like Great Divide. “We’ve since shut down a Stem taproom and reinvested by putting in a Great Divide taproom,” he says. “Is that the same as it was for the last thirty years of Great Divide? No, it’s not, but we’re committed to Denver and to the people that visited Great Divide for all those years and to providing them a similar experience,” he notes.

Wilding did take over Station 26’s Denver taproom in its acquisition earlier this year, and it intends to keep it open. What some people don’t realize, is that many of Station 26’s beers weren’t even produced at that facility for years – they were produced on contract brewing agreements with various local breweries over the larger part of the last decade, a common industry practice that isn’t always obvious to consumers.

As for what 2026 holds for Wilding? Don’t expect a bunch of splashy acquisitions. While Foster is fielding calls weekly from local brewery owners who are interested in partnering or selling, he expects 2026 to be a year where the team really dials in everything that has been acquired. “The focus for ‘26 is to bring efficiencies to the forefront of the brewery, figure out how we can just maintain and continue to improve the quality of the beers that are being produced at the Canworks facility,” he says.

Still, another taproom or two would not be out of the question. Foster adds that he’s committed to having an Upslope taproom in Boulder – reading between the lines, I would anticipate a Wilding-led Upslope taproom in Boulder if the two current facilities close down.

Quality Is Shining Through

Quality can be subjective, but when you’re talking about breweries that are regularly winning competition medals, garnering “hype” for special releases or are otherwise frequently associated with having high quality beers, it seems like a pattern is beginning to emerge among many of the growing breweries.

This year, Cerebral Brewing opened its third location in the Highland neighborhood, partnering with Outside Pizza. Bierstadt Lagerhaus added an expansive patio while roughly doubling its volume of beer produced over the last three years. Westbound & Down also announced a flagship brewpub location nearby, continuing to grow at a mighty pace, all while crowdfunding well over a million dollars – primarily from locals. Greeley’s Weldwerks showed year over year growth in the most recent Brewers Association numbers, as did Prost Brewing. Frequent medal winner Old 121 just expanded into a second location in Lakewood too, while New Terrain announced a second brewery on the Western Slope.

Not every excellent brewery is growing, and growth doesn’t necessarily equal profits, but in this challenging market, quality appears to be one primary factor that is responsible for growth. It’s a positive sign in a maturing market.

South Broadway Turmoil

The south Broadway area of Denver may have seen the most impact from brewery and taproom closures this year. TRVE closed its bar, Banded Oak closed its brewery, Incantation closed its taproom and coffee shop, and Burns Family closed both its South Broadway location and its nearby OG warehouse brewery. 

There are still breweries in the area – from Novel Strand, to Public Offering, Ratio Beerworks’ Overland location and Monolith Brewing in the former Black Project space. Several of the breweries are even hosting the 3rd annual South Broadway Santa Brewery Crawl on Saturday, December 20.

On a recent Monday night at Monolith, there were 20+ patrons at peak, and consistently 15 to 20 throughout the night. They were drinking wine and pre-mixed cocktails, eating empanadas from Maria Empanada next door, and of course, drinking the house beer. What surprised us was owner Stephen Monahan brewing a batch of beer while running the bar.

We managed to chat about the state of the industry when he had a moment or two. Monahan’s sales are currently flat year over year, but he considers that a success when plenty of people he’s spoken with are down 20 to 30 percent. “I’d estimate that the average brewery is down 15 percent, based on what I’m hearing,” he says.

Monahan’s wide variety of offerings has helped give him stable sales. “In order to make all this work, I have to be here 24/7,” he notes, estimating that he puts in 70 to 80 hours a week at the brewery. “I just put my head down and push, and I have fun with it too – sometimes too much fun,” he says. Monahan says that he and his staff have sought to create emotional connections with patrons, leading the bar to having a consistent stable of neighborhood regulars.

Expanded Offerings

Monolith isn’t the only brewery offering more than just beer to its customers. While not a requirement for every brewery, it’s becoming more common to see breweries expand their business in order to survive. 

Bruz Beers got its brewpub license earlier this year and expanded its offerings to include ciders, wines and guest beers. Co-founder Charlie Gottenkieny says that the license has been working out great. “Wine sales have been significant and we’ve also done well with a curated selection of Belgian import beers,” he notes. His business partner, Ryan Evans, agrees. “It’s definitely been worth the effort, we’re seeing good synergy across all categories.”

Weldwerks Brewing added an on-site restaurant in 2022. Cerebral owner Sean Buchanan says that while food wasn’t a requirement for its newest Highland location, it’s something he’s been interested in for all of Cerebral’s spaces.

Westbound & Down told Westword in November that food is a major component of its upcoming Denver-area flagship brewpub as well. Denver’s Novel Strand, a part of that difficult South Broadway market, recently added wine and cocktails to its offerings. It’s gone well so far, according to co-owner Tamir Danon. 

Colorado Brewers Guild is Strong

The Colorado Brewers Guild recently hosted a kick the keg event at the soon-to-close Call to Arms Brewing. By all accounts, the event was a wild success.

The Guild also had a very successful inaugural Colorado Cup competition – over 650 beers were entered by Colorado breweries. The event will happen again this January, with about 100 more beers entered. The Guild also hosts some of the best beer festivals in Colorado each year – Collaboration Fest and Brewers Rendezvous, as well as Colorado Pint Day. 

In talking with brewers in other states, the quality of state guilds can vary drastically. We’ve heard sentiments like, “my guild is run by the larger brewers in my state and it’s not very helpful to small breweries like me,” while other guild directors have shared that Colorado’s guild is used as a model of success.

Every brewery owner I’ve talked to in Colorado has said nothing but positive things about Colorado’s guild. Especially in a tough time, hats off to the Guild for standing strong behind small breweries across the state. This translates into good things for beer consumers as well, like this year’s Pub Certification program.