Prost Brewing opens today with a toast to German-style beers

Prost Brewing opens today in Lower Highland, serving up frothy mugfuls of German-style lagers and setting them down on the bar with a hearty thump.

The brewery is one of nearly two dozen that will open this year in the Denver metro area, but is stands apart for several reasons — not the least of which is its intense focus on a thin slice of the spectrum of beers.

See also –Prost Brewing will package beer in growlers, sell to liquor stores –Prost Brewing beers will be available in bars before its taproom opens –Prost Brewing will contract-brew and can for Dad & Dude’s

Prost only plans to make pilsners, bocks, dunkels and other light German lagers, a 180-degree turn from what is popular in craft brewing and the specialty of head brewer Bill Eye, formerly of Dry Dock Brewing.

Four of these beers — a pilsner, a dunkel, a weissbier and a dark wheat beer called Batch 1 — will be on tap today when the brewery opens at noon.

The other primary difference for Prost its its brewhouse, a seventy-barrel system that the owners acquired earlier this year from a brewery that was closing in the famous beer-making region of Bamberg, Germany. The gorgeous copper system was disassembled and sent by ship to the States, where it was reassembled in Denver.

Most new breweries begin with fifteen-, seven-, three-, or even one-barrel systems, while even the largest brewers in the state typically use forty-barrel systems. Prost’s brewhouse means it has the second or third largest system in the state.

But judging from the demand at a half dozen or so bars around town where Prost’s beers are already on tap, the brewery will find a market. It will also use its capacity to contract brew beer for other breweries, including Crooked Stave and Dad & Dude’s Breweria.

See more photos after the jump.

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