Fiction Beer Company Is Making a Comeback on Colfax

It’s a story with a hopeful ending: a group of former trivia hosts at Fiction Beer have purchased the brewery, which former owners Christa and Ryan Kilpatrick closed at the end of 2024 after a decade in business. Located at 7101 East Colfax Avenue, Fiction Beer will reopen on Thursday, March 27 at 2 p.m. with, of course, trivia kicking off at 7 p.m.

A possible comeback has been teased on social media for the last few months. Ted Menendez, one of the brewery's seven new owners, says that many in the group are from the neighborhood and several live within walking distance from Fiction's location. The place is special for the group and once the opportunity to purchase the brewery was presented, it wasn’t something they were willing to walk away from.

“I used to get paid for hosting trivia in gift cards,” says Menendez. “I joked with Christa that someday I would accumulate enough and buy the whole brewery with that card. Though the gift card didn’t quite cover the purchase, and I’d spent it down anyway, little did I know how that would play out sooner than I could have imagined.”

The new ownership group formed Thursday Night Ventures LLC in order to facilitate the purchase. The name was chosen in reference to the Thursday night trivia events they regularly hosted at Fiction. The new group plans to host a variety of events in the near future and notes that Fiction will continue to be a welcoming space for all.

The new owners are brewing the beer themselves. They’re four batches in, having trained under former owner Ryan Kilpatrick. Menendez has also been developing recipes on a homebrew scale for almost twenty years using the same Beersmith brewing software used at Fiction. He plans to continue to use homebrewing systems to test new recipes on smaller brewing equipment before scaling up to full batches at Fiction.
Patrons can expect some of the same familiar flagship beers along with some new additions. “We’ll have Liquid Porches Pale Ale from several years back tapping soon,” says Menendez, who adds that the new team will be pulling from the past as well as inventing on its own. “Fiction has a history of regularly introducing new creative beers and we’re prepared and excited to continue that moving forward,” he says.

Menendez also says that each of the owners has ideas about what they’d like to see on tap. “We have a brewing schedule similar to what we’ve done with our weekly trivia nights,” he explains. “We lay out what we’re brewing in a spreadsheet using input from all of us."

The brewery will be open from 3 to 8 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 2 to 10 p.m. Thursday and Friday, noon to 10 p.m. Saturday, and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday. A larger grand opening celebration is planned for Saturday, April 5. That party will include patio games all day, live music in the evening from Walking Shadows, and food from Cajun-gourmet food truck Sauvage and the Pie Queen. Limited glassware will also be available.

Almost two years ago, the Kilpatricks partnered Chris Belila, a Fiction bartender, to open Fiction Beer Parker. It recently rebranded as Bodega Beer and will be run by different owners than the Fiction Beer Denver business. “We had every intention to continue that relationship under the same or better terms for the Parker locations,” says Menendez. “Their decision to sever that relationship and rebrand was completely their own,” he adds of the Bodega ownership team.

While it looks like the businesses will go their separate ways, two separate breweries with motivated ownership groups is a real win for customers in such a competitive and tight brewery market.

Regular patrons of Fiction Beer will miss the Kilpatricks, but the new group shows both an appreciation for what the founders have done and a motivation for continuing to build on the legacy of the brewery.