For this list, well-made brews are the focus, with a slight bump for truly outstanding ambience or special events that elevate the drinking experience.
Here are the thirteen best breweries in Denver, in alphabetical order:
Bierstadt Lagerhaus
2875 Blake Street
720-570-7824
Bierstadt Lagerhaus, which opened in RiNo in 2016, specializes in lager beers. It's not exactly a small niche, as the category — specifically pale lagers and particularly pilsners — are the most widely consumed beers in the world. Still, Bierstadt stands out for its three core beers: its helles, its dunkel and — perhaps the most lauded beer in Colorado — its Slow Pour Pils.
Beyond that, the brewery has regular seasonal beers, from an Oktoberfest to a doppelbock to a Czech-style dark lager. In recent years, the increase in collaborations with some of the best lager breweries in the country has added even more depth to its beer list, and is a reason to keep a close eye on social media. When beers are brewed at Bierstadt, the special releases can hang around for weeks, but when owners Ashleigh Carter and Bill Eye brew elsewhere, the tappings are smaller and they disappear quickly.
What distinguishes Bierstadt is meticulous attention to detail, which results in higher quality and consistency. That quality level also makes the brewery a favorite among nearly all demographics, from post-shift brewers and macro beer drinkers to beer geeks and party animals.
It also serves German pub fare in its lively, expansive space, where you can often find events taking place — though there are plenty of corners to tuck into for an intimate experience, too.
Bruz Beers
1675 West 67th Avenue
303-650-2337
1495 York Street
303-997-5144
Bruz Beers bills itself as "Belgian-inspired," and co-founders Ryan Evans and Charlie Gottenkieny have been deliberate about the source of their inspiration. Starting with their abbey-style beers, the two, along with head brewer Dave Olson, have really brought high-quality, authentic interpretations of Belgium's classic styles to Denver.
The team isn't so narrow as to pigeonhole itself into the ebbs and flows of one aspect of Belgian beer, however, offering one of the larger tap lists in the area with everything from IPAs to pilsners to fruited and spiced beers, all with a Belgian touch.
Anyone who's had the opportunity to travel to Belgium over the past few years knows that the ever-creative breweries in the homeland are increasingly exploring new styles of beer, offering their own takes on varieties that weren't traditionally brewed in the country. Few know this better than Bruz, as it offers yearly guided tours to Belgium — curated trips in which participants visit the country's best beer-centric cities, breweries and bars.
Burns Family Artisan Ales
2505 West Second Avenue
720-693-9099
1236 South Broadway
720-379-7763
Founded by Wayne Burns and Laura Worley, the original Burns Family Artisan Ales is a destination-worthy stop in the middle of an industrial district in west Denver. In 2023, it took over the former Dos Luces space on South Broadway, a move that earned it Best Brewery Expansion in the 2024 edition of Best of Denver.
Wayne Burns has a deep brewing pedigree, with long stints at Michigan standouts Bell's Brewery and Kuhnhenn Brewing, not to mention local breweries like Jagged Mountain, Wynkoop and Holidaily. This brewery is best known for the high-gravity beers that Burns has been brewing for decades, combining new-school heavy chocolate and smooth malt flavors with an overall drier finish, which results in a type of high-alcohol beer you don't typically find around town.
Beyond the high-ABV offerings that Burns Family is best known for are a slew of more typical styles. A recent pint of German pils, a style that won gold at the Great American Beer Festival way back in 1999, was particularly delicious, as was an altbier. Burns also offers Kölsch service on Sundays through the warmer months, honoring the renowned Cologne practice of serving fresh Kölsch beer on a krantz (tray), in a stange (small cylinder-shaped glass), and continuously replenishing it until a patron taps out by placing a coaster over their empty glass.
Perhaps the most distinctive element of Burns Family is that the owners are often at the taprooms, serving beer, cleaning glasses and conversing with patrons. If you have a question about how a beer was made, you can talk directly to the people who made it, while you're drinking it. That type of instant connection is a rarity, even for a small brewery, and it makes the experience that much more special.
Call to Arms Brewing
4526 Tennyson Street
720-328-8258
Located at the northern end of one of the most brewery-dense areas in Denver, Call to Arms is the gem of Tennyson Street. The brewery is tucked into the end of a driveway, and it sits a few feet below ground level. The tight L shape is frequently decorated for holidays of all kinds, making it an appealing place to grab a beer.
Styles here range from hoppy ales and lagers to sours and the occasional barrel-aged treat. The quality is consistently strong, so a first-timer can jump right into whatever suits them. The brewery has become a regular stop for people starting or ending a Tennyson Street brewery crawl or pre-gaming before a show at the Oriental Theater, which is just around the corner. Beer lovers should make Call to Arms a priority, no matter how many eyesore slot condos developers put up on Tennyson.
Cerebral Brewing has been open since 2015.
Sarah Cowell
1477 Monroe Street
303-927-7365
Cerebral Brewing has been a hot spot and regular recommendation for out-of-towners since its 2015 opening in Congress Park. It was an early brewer of hazy, hoppy beers in Denver — in particular, the hazy IPA Rare Trait — but it really compounded its success with the launch of its Here Be Monsters series.
HBM is a barrel-aged imperial stout, with vintages consistently ranked among the best in the state. The series has achieved national recognition as well, notably nabbing a gold medal in 2019 for its Vanilla variant at the prestigious Festival of Barrel Aged Beers in Chicago.
Cerebral hasn't rested on its laurels, though. Last year it opened a pop-up taproom at its Aurora production facility, which is now under construction, with plans to reopen this summer, helping to expand the reach of the brewery. It has also built an expansive lagering program, starring lagers rested in large oak barrels called foeders, which give the beers a rounder, mellower character.
Cohesion Brewing
3851 Steele Street
303-997-7016
Cohesion Brewing has been a welcome addition to the Denver beer scene, and in less than three years has become one of the top destinations for out-of-towners, local industry workers and beer aficionados. It also happens to be the youngest brewery on this list.
Cohesion brews Czech-style lagers in a very traditional way. Co-owner and brewmaster Eric Larkin has focused on using local custom malt from Troubadour Maltings combined with Czech yeast and hops, with luscious results. The brewery also serves its beers in a very traditional way: from side-pull Lukr taps, with plenty of creamy foam on top. (The exact amount depends on which style of pour you choose: hladinka, with a thick, creamy head; šnyt, with four-finger foam; and the nearly all-foam mlìko.)
The bar itself is striking, with gorgeous tilework serving as a backdrop and a wood-paneled nook reminiscent of old Europe to the right. These wonderful details can be credited at least in part to the fact that Larkin has spent nearly six weeks in the Czech Republic over various trips, immersing himself in the beer culture. He's even hired a private tutor, and spends regular time online improving his language skills for future visits.
Comrade Brewing
7667 East Iliff Avenue
720-748-0700
If you click the "Brews" link on Comrade Brewing's website, you'll find a slew of awards listed. The brewery has some legitimate medal stock in the cabinet, but there's also a sense of humor in there. "I Know About All These Awards, Just Take Me to the Beer List!," it says.
For those who don't care about medals, Comrade is consistently recommended by brewers and fans alike as a top stop in Denver, particularly for IPAs, despite the fact that it's a bit off the beaten path for travelers staying downtown. Comrade is best known for hoppy beers like Superpower IPA and More Dodge Less RAM, but the brewery has a rotation of beers on tap at any given time. One style that it does well is hefeweizen, a type of beer that can be difficult to really nail. Stuck in My Cabana is one example of the style that you don't want to pass up when it's on tap.
REDCON is one of the brewery's flagship beers, an Irish red ale that's elevated from the typical lightly malty, sweet offerings, with added depth from the use of Simcoe hops. It's a good choice to open with before diving into Comrade's more flavor-forward hoppy offerings.
The crew at Diebolt likes to have a good time.
Diebolt Brewing/Instagram
3855 Mariposa Avenue
720-643-5940
The brewery bills itself as "the most fun brewery in the world." Its social media, which is some of the funniest in the state, really shows that side of the business, too. When you visit the brewery, it feels like a neighborhood bar. Roll some dice to see if you end up with a free beer, get to know your bartender and nearby patrons, and sip the excellent beer.
Diebolt's rotating pilsner series has been a real hit, expertly crafted and varied, giving the brewery a reliably delicious "house lager" on tap that is still always different. It also serves tough-to-find styles like Biere de Noel. Its Vladislav barrel-aged imperial stout has seen an increase in fans and remains one of the best of its style. In the past year, variants have included Mexican chocolate, port wine barrel, rum barrel and maple syrup barrel in addition to the regular whiskey barrel version.
Hogshead Brewery turned a former gas station into an English-style brewery and taproom.
Danielle Lirette
4460 West 29th Avenue
303-495-3105
Only a decade ago, it seemed like every brewery had at least one English-style beer on tap, whether it was an ESB or an English pale ale, a London porter or even an old ale. Although you'll still find the occasional English porter, and English barleywines and mild ales are enjoying a minor resurgence, English ale as a whole is harder to come by these days. Beer engines are almost unheard of.
Hogshead has all this and more.
But like the other breweries on this list that specialize in a certain style, Hogshead is not stuck. While a majority of its beers are English, it continues to add new and interesting offerings while not straying too far from its roots. One example is Robells, a Dortmunder-style beer also known as a helles export. It's a fairly atypical German-style lager that falls somewhere between the hopping of a helles and a pilsner, but with a little extra alcohol.
Hogshead also knows that not every customer will want cask-conditioned ales; many expect CO2 in their beer. The line between compromising what you stand for and authentically enriching your offerings to please more customers can be difficult to see, but Hogshead always seems to fall on the right side of it. Bottom line: Drink the English cask ales, but sneak in something different every once in a while.
Novel Strand partners Chantel Columna and Tamir Danon.
Novel Strand Brewing Instagram
305 West First Avenue
720-949-0246
Novel Strand's beer list is usually short and sweet, with a variety of lagers, hoppy beers and miscellaneous additions. (There's currently a tripel collaboration with Goldspot and a three-year spon blend with Primitive on tap.)
When you look at the breweries that Novel Strand regularly collaborates with, it's no surprise that the beer is delicious. A recent example is Old School 10°P, made with Cohesion using that brewery's ingredients and techniques paired with the recipe for Novel Strand's Alt School Like That altbier (which itself was a collaboration with Bierstadt).
Novel Strand was also named 2022's Brewery of the Year by Hop Culture magazine, a notable achievement. The taproom is very inviting, with a lot of natural light and wonderful brickwork. It's cozy without being small, and is tucked away in a more residential part of the vibrant Baker neighborhood. Such a location is fairly unusual for a brewery, and an Arvada rezoning proposal recently used Novel Strand as an example of an ideal residential neighborhood business.
Our Mutual Friend Brewing
2810 Larimer Street
303-296-3441
One of the original RiNo breweries, OMF has really come into its own as of late. The welcoming atmosphere, younger crowd and cozy taproom can make it feel a bit like a house party on weekends, with more patrons standing than sitting at times.
With a mix of popular styles like lagers, IPAs of all types and barrel-aged stouts combined with a passion for niche styles like saison and barleywine, this is a well-rounded brewery with something for everyone. And the smoke. Oh, the smoke! OMF makes more smoked beers than perhaps the dozen closest breweries around it combined. The brewery uses cottonwood-smoked malts from the San Luis Valley's Colorado Malting Company and layers heavy smoked flavors to create complex sipping beers that have gained a cult following.
Ratio Beerworks
2920 Larimer Street
303-997-8288
2030 South Cherokee Street
720-242-6921
Founded in 2016, Ratio Beerworks is a key pillar of the RiNo beer scene. Beers like King of Carrot Flowers Saison, Cityscapes Mexican-Style Lager and Domestica Golden Ale are crowd-pleasing winners time and again.
Ratio also hosts some of the best events in Denver, from fantastic comedy lineups to its yearly Genius Wizard release, which is packed with performances from local artists and food from local restaurants. Further, the brewery has supported the local arts scene continuously since its founding, providing necessary funding to performances and events.
Ratio took over the former Declaration Brewing space in the Overland neighborhood in 2022, expanding its presence in the city. It also recently debuted a can redesign and expanded distribution as it continues to adapt and evolve.
River North Brewery
6021 Washington Street
303-296-2617
3400 Blake Street
720-236-8260
River North was one of the original breweries to open in the RiNo neighborhood, and it's gotten a lot of respect for its quality beer and welcoming taproom over the years. In 2019, it returned to its namesake neighborhood while also keeping its production taproom, just a little bit north on Washington Street.
Having an accessible location and not quite bending to the will of the so-called "hype customer" early on has helped River North fly under the radar at times, but the brewery really plays in a lot of different areas and excels at just about everything it does.
Nobody in Colorado — and few in the world (outside of California's Bruery) — make as many 20 percent or higher ABV beers as River North. These aren't just limited to stouts with port-like flavors, but also super Belgian-style beers and barleywines, which are an eye-opening adventure in the flavor, complexity and depth that a beer can offer.
But River North isn't limited to high-alcohol beers, either. It was fairly early to the hazy IPA game; Mountain Haze is lauded for being flavorful yet fairly balanced for the style. Beyond those beers are plenty of other examples that make River North unique, one being its pale festbier. Most breweries in the U.S. make the amber-colored Märzen for Oktoberfest, but River North makes a delicious pale version, the same kind that is actually served at Oktoberfest in Germany.
