Denver and beer are seemingly a match made in heaven. As the city has grown over the last decade, its craft brewing scene has mirrored it. There are approximately 150 breweries in the Denver metropolitan area, which should indicate that the city’s craft brewing scene is growing.
However, talking to folks in the industry, it’s clear that it has grown increasingly difficult in recent years. Nationally, the craft brewing scene took a hit in the last year, with the closure of regional breweries on the rise. Locally, the landscape is shifting and becoming more difficult to navigate.
Ryan Evans, owner of Bruz Beers in Midtown, says the Denver brewing scene faces the same challenges as any other business in town: supply chain issues and rising operating costs. Living in the city isn’t as cheap as it once was, and the same goes for owning a brewery.
“As a brewery owner, it’s getting tough,” Evans said. “It’s getting tight. Supply costs are just skyrocketing and they’re catching up to a lot of breweries. The margins are getting skinnier and sourcing for ingredients, packaging and everything you need to make a good, successful product is getting more and more expensive.”
Evans isn’t the only brewery owner affected by the increased costs of operating in Denver either. Morgan O’Sullivan, co-founder of FlyteCo Brewing in Stapleton, reiterates operating costs within the city of Denver have become a challenge to navigate.
“Some of the unique challenges of operating within Denver proper—the incredible increase in property taxes, minimum wage and costs of goods that we’ve seen in the last five years are relatively unprecedented,” O’Sullivan said. “At least for myself and my partners, that’s something that’s very difficult to combat, especially when you rub your shoulders with folks at [Great American Beer Fest] who are paying a fraction of the cost to operate.”
Despite these challenges, the industry in Denver is still on the rise. More breweries are opening than closing in Denver, which is an outlier across the country.
“[The industry in Colorado] is certainly growing,” Evans said. “I know several people that are opening breweries. Last year and this year, Colorado had more openings than closures, so we still had a net gain in growth, which is kind of mind-boggling because this is the most brewers we’ve ever had in this state.”
In those five years since Colorado’s craft beer boom began, things have undeniably changed. According to O’Sullivan, adapting to these changes has been difficult, but it is all part of the industry.
“The craft brewing scene in Denver compared [to] how it was pre-COVID feels very different,” O’Sullivan said. “Everybody’s been changing and adapting since 2020 and that constant state of change makes things feel a little different than they used to be.”
Regardless of the reason for the craft brewing scene’s changes, the goal of the Colorado Brewers Guild and the state’s local craft breweries has remained the same: continue making the best beer they can for people to enjoy. Local breweries have done just that, maintaining their reputation for producing some of the country’s best beer at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver in early October 2024.
“During the week-long celebration and largest beer competition in the country, Colorado breweries were reuniting with their peers and celebrating everything that is craft beer in Colorado—and they brought home 38 medals from the competition!” said Carrie Knose Wilson, communications manager for the Colorado Brewers Guild. “This is a true testament to the state of our industry in Colorado; we are all in this together.”
In a highly competitive industry and a city with so many breweries, only the best beer will survive. Denverites’ beer preferences have evolved to the point where they can distinguish between good and bad beer and demand the best.
“I don’t know how much the outside knows this, but you certainly have to be quality,” Evans said. “Quality is king right now. Gone are the days where you can open a mediocre brewery and people would show up because it was cool and fun. Now, you’ve got to back that experience with good beer, and the taste profile of customers has risen immensely because they’ve educated themselves over the years with all these good offerings.”
To help accomplish their goal of making the country’s best beer and satisfying the palettes of Denver’s beer drinkers, the community has banded together to form a tight-knit bunch. Even with the competitiveness in the industry, all the brewery owners still work hand-in-hand to help each other and push the industry forward.
“It’s the best group of owners,” Evans said. “I got my MBA from [the University of Denver], and they taught me a lot of great things. But never in a business book will they tell you to bring your competitors over, bring them behind the scenes and share all your secrets, but that’s what we do every day in the brewing industry.”
The group recognizes the competitive nature of the industry, but they continue to share and assist other brewery owners at every opportunity because they believe it benefits the industry and the Denver beer scene as a whole.
“We’re better together,” Evans said. “We all rise together, and as long as the craft brewers stick together, we’re a good and viable business plan and we’re a good asset to the community. If we start fighting each other and squabbling, that’s when the whole house of cards falls.”
O’Sullivan likens the local scene to a friendly rivalry, where everyone is rooting for each other but still wants to be the best.
“It’s more of like a sibling rivalry,” O’Sullivan said. “You definitely want to beat them, but at the end of the day, you want to see them succeed as well. Even if they’re the ones that win, you’re still proud of their success.”
Going forward, brewery owners like Evans and O’Sullivan are sticking together to navigate the drastic changes in the industry. Still, things are not going to get any easier as the cost of doing business in Denver continues to rise, so more change appears to be on the horizon.
“I think that there’s going to be a resettling of things,” O’Sullivan said. “I think that rent is too high in some places. I think that there’s a lot of places that didn’t have calculated into their business model the wage hikes we’ve been experiencing, so I think it’s going to resettle.”
Although the future is uncertain, Denver’s local brewers remain unshaken. The landscape will undoubtedly change and shift, but the beer scene will triumph, regardless of the challenges thrown at them.
“I think you’re going to continue to see places close, and you’ll continue to see places open in some of the local neighborhoods that don’t already have their go-to spot,” O’Sullivan said. “Through it all, I think craft beer is going to remain really strong here in Denver.”
