Oskar Blues Closes Boulder Taproom After Purchase by Monster

Four years after it opened on the Pearl Street Mall, Oskar Blues has apparently closed its big Boulder taproom and restaurant. The news comes less than a month after Monster Beverage announced that it was buying the brewery's parent company, Canarchy, and four other craft breweries across the country.

Aaron Baker, senior marketing manager for Oskar Blues, tells Westword he can't comment on the closure — or anything else related to the Monster acquisition — but all information about the location has been taken down from the brewery's website, and its Facebook page is no longer operating. It's unknown if the closure is permanent or if Monster has other plans for the space.

The closure comes just days after the Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery group finally reopened its original location on the Pearl Street Mall — after a twenty-month pandemic-induced closure — and a week after Ska Brewing closed its Ska Street Brewstillery, which opened in March 2020.

Oskar Blues moved into the space at 921 Pearl Street, the former home of World of Beer, in late 2017, two years after a private equity firm, Fireman Capital Partners, acquired a majority stake in the brewery. Like OB's other taproom restaurants in Longmont, Denver and Colorado Springs, it featured food, music and a wide variety of beers from Oskar Blues, its sister companies and other local beer makers.

But on January 12, Monster said it was buying Canarchy for $330 million, an interesting move for the energy drink maker, which hadn't been previously involved with alcoholic beverages.

The sale included the Boulder taproom, since its liquor license is tied to the large Oskar Blues manufacturing facility in Longmont (as well as the brewery half of OB's original location in Lyons). However, the brewery's other locations — none of which includes any brewery equipment — are still owned by Oskar Blues founder Dale Katechis and his business partners, who say they plan to keep on running them.

Last week, Katechis told Westword that “there have been no talks or discussions of Monster making any changes [in Lyons and Boulder]." But Katechis is no longer involved with that side of the business.

Katechis founded Oskar Blues as a restaurant in Lyons in 1997 before he added a brewery to the operation in 200 and made it the first craft brewery in the U.S. to can its beer — something that was seen as heresy at the time. The company grew quickly and eventually opened a huge production facility and taproom in Longmont, where it embarked on an aggressive distribution and sales plan. Its free-spirited image, bold beers and subtle marijuana references made it very popular inside and outside the state.