The Eleven Best Beers We Drank in 2024

This year, we covered new brewery openings and festivals like GABF all while digging into topics like how local malt plays a key role in the industry — and we took a lot of sips along the way.

From IPAs to Vienna, Mexican and dark lagers, 2024 brought some spectacular local beers. Like last year's picks, this list doesn't include super-exclusive members club-only type beers. It's also not exhaustive — there are hundreds of delicious beers in this state, and unfortunately, we can't drink them all.

But of the many we did try, here are the standouts:
Amalgam Brewing
Coastal Bias
Amalgam makes its small-batch IPAs at Bierstadt Lagerhaus. It's not exactly exclusive, but you can't wait around too long — each release is usually nabbed up within a couple of weeks. It's difficult to choose which of the brewery's fantastic hoppy beers to pick this year, but Coastal Bias stands out. This was the beer that wasn't even listed at Pints for Prostate's Rare Beers festival, but it sort of stole the show. Just about every person I asked that day told me to check that beer out. Luckily, Amalgam was by the door and mostly by chance it had been my first beer at the festival. Loads of ripe, dank fruit, a noticeable bitterness and a dry finish really made this beer pop. Amalgam's IPAs have been a wonderful addition to Colorado.

Bierstadt Lagerhaus
Cerveza Clara y Mas Fina Especial
Affectionately known as "Corn," this collaborative beer with Finn's Manor is an anticipated yearly release for many fans of the brewery. Using blue and purple heirloom corn from Oaxaca, the beer offers flavors of sweet corn and grainy malt, along with that signature crisp, dry finish in all of Bierstadt's pale lagers. That combination makes this a beer that lives up to its reputation.
Brues Alehouse, Pueblo
Keller Vienna
Brues flies a bit under the radar because it's down in Pueblo, but the team there really knows lager. Keller Vienna was an unfiltered cellar version of the brewery's Vienna Lager. It was served in an appropriate Krug with a hefty dollop of foam on top. With aromas of bready malt playing nicely with floral hops and a slight hint of citrus, this was a well-balanced and complex beer. It didn't taste young, but it had a raw edge compared to the filtered version. The Brues team has visited Franconia and wider Germany, and this beer clearly shows that those trips are bearing fruit.

Call to Arms Brewing
Party On Wayne
This collaboration with Cannonball Creek Brewing and Westbound & Down Brewing was a late-summer treat. The first sip was a pungent hit of sticky, resinous pine hop flavors followed by a firm bitterness that lingers on the back of the tongue and cuts through an off-dry finish. The quality of beer consistently coming out of Call to Arms is one of the primary reasons it stands out on a crowded street of breweries.
Cohesion Brewing
12°
Cohesion does a great job balancing fun local and out-of-state collaborations with experimental one-offs and traditional house beers. This brew, 12°, is in that latter category — a traditional, unfiltered Czech pale lager that has spicy, slightly fruity Saaz hops with a grainy character from the local Troubadour malt, exclusively malted for the brewery. The beer has become a staple during my visits to the brewery, and I'm certainly not alone.

Golden City Brewery, Golden
Vienna Calling
Golden City has taken an increasing interest in lagers over the last year, and I've been paying attention. This has been my favorite, a 100 percent Vienna malt beer. It is a gorgeous light amber color, and that maltiness jumps right out on the first sip. A firm, noble hop bitterness grows into the dry finish, perfectly balancing all that wonderful grainy sweetness. The Vienna malt comes from Loveland maltster Root Shoot, and this beer perfectly displays the great job Root Shoot has done with this grain.
Liquid Mechanics Brewing, Lafayette
Lucid AF
So many of Liquid Mechanics's beers could have made this list. The Lafayette brewery has been making top-notch hoppy beer for quite some time. Local high-quality craft beer liquor stores like Mile High Wine Cellars count this among the best-selling IPAs, and I can really see why. The beer is sticky, with notes of honey balanced by intense dank pine and citrus hops.

Novel Strand Brewing
Ninja Sh!t
Novel Strand's Alt School Like That made our best beers list in 2022. That beer is currently on tap (and still excellent), but Ninja Sh!t might be even better. Too many Schwarzbiers are too roasty, bitter or sweet. Ninja Sh!t is none of those things. It has a malty cocoa taste with a balancing, smooth hop bitterness. Those two facets of the beer play off each other into the final sip. This beer is extremely well crafted, and at 4.5 percent, it's at the right strength to drink all day. I usually start with pale beer when I visit a brewery, but Ninja Sh!t is the kind of beer I can start and end with.
Prost Brewing
Kölsch
Prost's new state-of-the-art brewing system can make world-class beers, and every component began to operate fully by summer's end. Kölsch was one of the first beers that made it obvious just how good the beer could be. The beer doesn't shy away from the hoppiness, either, a key component of the Kolsch Convention, created by breweries in Cologne almost forty years ago. That hoppiness is not of the typical American over-hopped Kölsch; it's a well-integrated and smooth bittering and flavoring that complements the snappiness of the beer.

Old 121 Brewhouse, Lakewood
ESB
Old 121 has been making some noise in competitions recently, especially with ESB. This beer has won gold at the World Beer Cup, the Colorado State Fair and the Denver International Beer Competition. It has a fresh, biscuity backbone and is balanced with some wonderfully earthy, slightly citrus-like hops. Denver isn't overrun by ESB, so this is a beer worth seeking out.

Westbound & Down Brewing
XPA
A sessionable hoppy gem of a beer, XPA was exactly what I needed in the alley bar between Denver Rare Beers and the Great American Beer Festival's Thursday session. I'm not sure if extra pale ales will ever truly be a "thing," but it doesn't matter, because Westbound & Down is more than a thing: The brewery is one of the clear leaders in the Colorado brewing scene.