Good River Beer Company Plans Brewery, Restaurant on South Bannock Street

Good River Beer Company, which began brewing and selling beer in Denver in September 2015, will finally be able to open a taproom of its own. The owners said Thursday that they have secured a location in a 7,300-square-foot former warehouse at 1790 South Bannock Street, where they will build a brewery and restaurant.

It will be the twelfth new brewery to make plans to open within the Denver city limits in 2017. Eleven others are already working on buildouts in a number of other neighborhoods.

"Our account base has grown month over month, and we have been fortunate to experience that. We attribute a lot of it to a great industry that is really welcoming," says Adam Odoski, who owns Good River with Preston Hartman and Eric Zarkovich. Good River currently brews its beer at Prost Brewing on a contract basis.

The name Good River comes from the fact that Odoski and Hartman love paddling and exploring rivers around the world via kayak and other means. In fact, they met several years ago on a trip down the Green River. As a result, they have been donating 2 percent of their profits to river-conservation organizations, something they will continue to do after they open the brewpub.

Some of their beers include Gunny Black Lager, a 5.5 percent-ABV traditional schwarzbier, named for the Gunnison River; Fu Fighter, an 8.9 percent ABV Belgian golden strong ale named for the Futaleufu River in Chile; and Class V, an 8.3 percent double IPA named for Colorado’s whitewater rapids.

The new brewery will include a fifteen-barrel brewhouse, a taproom with an outdoor beer garden, a canning line and a restaurant or food concept. "We are hoping to partner with a restaurant that we can work with to manage a food concept for us," Odoski says.

Good River is located just blocks from both Declaration Brewing and Grandma's House, as well as the future home of Alternation Brewing, which also hopes to open this year on Broadway.

"We talked with the guys at Declaration, and we are pretty excited to be neighbors with them. They have really helped us out a lot, from the very beginning," Odoski says. In addition, Hartman and Grandma's House worked together on a few beers two years ago.

Odoski says Good River hopes to open by the time of the Great American Beer Festival in October, even if it's just the restaurant portion. The brewery may not be up and running until 2018.