An Empty Glass: Great Divide Shuttering Two Denver Tasting Rooms

Great Divide Brewing will close two of its tasting rooms on June 30. The two spaces — the brewery tasting room located at 2201 Arapahoe Street and the Barrel Bar at 1812 35th Street — are both in buildings that house soon-to-shut-down production operations.

That's because the Great Divide brand and portfolio were acquired by Wilding Brands, which already owns Denver Beer Co., Howdy Beer, Stem Ciders and others, earlier this spring. As a result, production is slated to move to Denver Beer's Sunnyside brewery.

After the sale, Brian Dunn, who founded Great Divide in 1994, retained control of the brewery's branded locations, which include spaces in Castle Rock, Lone Tree and Lakewood; those are run by a restaurant group and will remain open. There's also a Great Divide at Denver International Airport.

According to Dunn, it didn't make sense to keep the production-adjacent tasting rooms going after brewing operations shut down. After building the Barrel Bar space, it was sold and Great Divide remained as a tenant; Dunn still owns the Arapahoe property, which is where the company began.

"It's always been the plan to close those locations," he notes. "We might have kept them open for a few more months, but we decided it didn't make sense."

The physical assets from both locations will be auctioned off in two rounds this summer: one for the major brewery components and another for "everything else," things such as pallet racking, forklifts, office supplies, draft systems and jockey boxes.

Great Divide is Denver's oldest and largest packaging brewery. During its run, it has earned nineteen Great American Beer Festival Medals and five World Beer Cup Awards.

In early 2021, Great Divide announced that it would be scaling back operations; at the time, Dunn said the decision would give the brewery the financial capacity to remain "fiercely independent." The brewery got a major redesign of its labels, logos and overall look.

But over the last few years, Dunn had been considering his options. He could have kept on "for another ten or twenty years if we needed to," he says, but "I had reached a point where I didn’t want to do it another ten or twenty years.”

While other independents had sold to big outfits, nothing seemed right until he was approached by Wilding, which is more of a boutique operation.

“This offer made a lot more sense," he notes. "I think it's really good. And acquisition is where business goes at some point once a founder has put in their time."