Six Breweries Opening This Year in the Denver Suburbs

While Denver is approaching the big fifty when it comes to the number of breweries in the city, the outlying brewing scene continues to boom as well, whether it’s new spots in the southern suburbs or those setting up shop just past our western border in Lakewood or the eastern frontier in Aurora. Here are six breweries that we know are planning to open in the suburbs later this year. 





Barnett & Son Brewing
18425 Pony Express Drive, #125, Parker
Target opening: Late May
The opening day lineup at Barnett & Sons should include an IPA made with 100 percent Centennial hops, a rye pale ale, an oatmeal stout, an Irish red, a Scotch ale and a blonde. You can enjoy them inside the seventy-seat taproom, says owner Andrew Barnett, but the real “place to hang out,” will be the eighty-seat patio. The brewery uses a seven-barrel system from Bennett ForgeWorks in Ridgway; new seasonals will hit over the summer. Barnett recently hired Will Perry, formerly of Anthem Brewing in Oklahoma, as head brewer.


Boggy Draw Brewery
3535 South Platte River Drive, Sheridan
Target opening: May
A carpenter by trade, longtime homebrewer and BJCP judge David Miera built the bars for others breweries, like Caution East and Kokopelli. Boggy Draw will focus on English-style beers, and plans call for an ESP, porter, stout and an English-style IPA, as well as seaonals and one-offs. The flagship beer, Mach V, will be a vanilla porter made with maple, almond, cinnamon, honey and vanilla beans. The 78-seat taproom will have an outdoorsy hunting lodge feel with plenty of natural wood,” says Miera, who is originally from the town of Mancos. “The name comes from an area where I’ve been hunting for 30 years in the San Juan National Forest, near Dolores. I’ve sourced materials from my hometown of Mancos to build the bar.”



Freedom Brewing
15095 East Hinsdale Drive, Centennial
Target opening: Summer 2015
Jason Hensley and Dave Staal were garage-and-basement brewers for ten years before deciding to go pro. They will start with a seven-barrel system, which, like Barnett & Son's equipment, is from Tom Bennett and Bennett ForgeWorks in Ridgway — and plan to brew a variety of beers. They’ll also feature sodas from nearby Elk Mountain Brewing and hope to have a cider on tap. The 2,400-square-foot tap room will include shuffleboard and other games, while the parking lot will have room for food trucks.

Halfpenny Brewing
5150 East Arapahoe Road, Centennial
Target opening: September 2015
Chris Reigrut and Chris Garner, both of whom work in the technology industry, have been friends since high school in Maryland and have been home-brewing together in Colorado since 1996. To start off, they’ll focus on German-, English- and American-style beers, including a dry-hopped “Colorado” common, an oatmeal stout, a helles, an IPA, an amber and an American wheat, as well as some rotators, like a chile-peanut-butter ale, a wee heavy and a bourbon-barrel-aged stout. They hope to eventually add food service to the 2,000-square-foot tap room, which should have room for about 100 people.


Westfax Brewing
6601 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Target opening: November/December 2015
Casa Bonita was recently named a historic landmark by the City of Lakewood, but that’s only one of the things that will make the shopping center where it’s located cool: Anthony Martuscello plans to open Westfax Brewing (formerly known as Grand Avenue Brewing) there later this year. The brewery will include a 1,000-plus-square-foot tap room and a seven-barrel system; possible beers are an English mild, a peach pale ale, a red IPA, a double IPA and a coconut porter.


Launch Pad Brewery
884 South Buckley Road, Aurora
Target opening: May/June
Launchpad Brewery owners David Levesque and Henry Rusch signed their lease in November at this spot in a former emissions-testing facility near Buckley Air Force Base and began renovations and construction in February. The owners hope to have the taproom open sometime in May or June. They will start off with a very small one-barrel Ruby Street system, brewing a wide variety of beers named after the launchpad theme, like Capsule Cream Ale and Soyuz Stout.

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