New Colorado Breweries

Nice place. Beer is fine, with the Wood quite interesting. It's like a mild bourbon (it's a wheat wine aged in Woodford barrels)
It's a bit pricey, though for 10oz pours. Stick the 4oz-ers to save the wallet. Food is good, but also pricey. And not by too much, but even $.50 can make a big difference.

 

Has anyone checked out Westfax Brewing next to Casa Bonita?

http://www.westword.com/restaurants/westfax-brewing-opens-next-to-casa-bonita-7707589

 

Was waiting for it to open....guess I don't have to wait anymore. It's now the closest brewery to my house

 

Yes, I've been there. They actually opened on like the 2nd. Beers are solid.

Same here, we should grab a pint.

 

Closest to my office! Party time in Lakewood!

 

Lakewood deserves more breweries. Caution has been the only (new/good) brewery in that area for a while.
When they decided to close Caution East to concentrate on West, I was happy for Lakewood because y'all need it more.

 

Totally agree! I had a couple from Great Frontier, but I can't get behind a brewer that specializes in gluten free beer.

 

If you're ever in Charlotte, check out Wooden Robot. Gluten free and no one cares- all the beers they make are really well done, gluten or not. I wouldn't be surprised if they start gaining some national notoriety sooner than later...

 

I'm really not looking to try more gluten free beer

 

River North is reopening April 2nd.

 

I have to agree with the posts about pricey beers at New Image. If I remember correctly, they wanted $13 for a pour of Almanac. The beers I had were good but the price is what I really remember. And this seems to be something that's becoming the norm around town. I've made recent trips to Nashville and Seattle and noticed a fairly significant difference in what they charge for beers at local breweries. Anyone else notice this trend? Is the Denver beer scene attempting to keep pace with our real estate prices???

 

Hey folks, just as a heads up, we've recently re-evaluated the pricing for the guest beers. Initially, our prices were set using industry standards based on marginal markup (which usually works for beers that fall within more normal price ranges but makes expensive kegs unaffordable by the glass) and I would have caught this sooner had I not been so pressed for time with getting everything in motion these past few weeks, but recently I've finally had enough time to sit down and come up with a pricing structure that I am much happier with and I think you all will appreciate it as well.

Our goal across the board is to make a high quality experience as affordable as we can. We're a young company and we're still working out some of the kinks and I personally apologize if this oversight took away from any of your first time experiences with us.

We have a lot of great guest beers lined up in addition to the portfolio that we already offer, as well as some great things coming for our food and house beer programs. We are always open to feedback, so feel free to let us know your thoughts so we can work toward offering an ever improving experience.

Cheers,

 

I may be wrong but it seems like growler prices here are high. I cant recall ever paying more than $14 for a fill in other states and I cant remember ever paying that little here. The only places I go here are Cannonball($22) and Comrade($20 if it didn't go up again).

 

As someone who has recently had to go through the process of pricing out growlers, maybe I can provide some insight from the sellers perspective.

First off, you're not wrong making the analogy to real estate, because that's part of it. Commercial real estate in the Denver metro is absurd, especially since the marijuana industry came in and started paying 5 year leases up front in cash, trying to find a space is hard enough and paying for it is even more difficult.

Second, you have to consider the value that the beer has to the seller. Right now, my brewery has just opened it's doors and people are drinking through our beer like its water. We're limited on the amount that we can produce, especially since several of our beers use brettanomyces and difficult to acquire hop varieties, so some of our growlers are priced to limit consumption and not run us out of product.

Lastly, a lot of times I see people compare growler prices to packaged beer prices, and that's not a completely fair metric. Advanced packaging equipment for bottling and canning has made off premise product packaging very efficient, it's still costly, but you're still cranking our units per minute/second on minimal labor cost and with minimal waste. With growlers, your waste is very high due to filling technology, your labor percentage is high because it takes usually several minutes of work for one employee behind the bar to perform, plus, you're also accounting for the fact that that employee/tap handle is unable to move product for a short period of time, which can translate to wait time and potentially lost revenue on the taproom floor. A better cost comparison, and one more in line with how growlers are priced, is to compare the value to what you'd pay to drink the beer on draft at the brewery. That's really what growlers are all about anyway, its not just a way to sell off premise beer, it's a way to sell your product for off premise in the freshest form possible as opposed to in a bottle where a number of factors could deteriorate the product by the time it hits a shelf.

Trust me when I say that most brewery owners want to offer the best prices they can to their customers. Ingredients, overheads, and labor costs have increased exponentially in our industry and we have to keep up with it. For me, I have 20 employees whose income depends on my ability to generate revenue, and that's what I have to consider when I set our price points.

I hope this doesn't come off super preachy, I'm just hoping this can give some insight into the question from the sellers perspective. Hope it finds you well.

Cheers,

 

It's not the newest place, but has anyone been to Baker's Brewery in Silverthorne in the last 6 months? I'm very curious to see how they did during the ski season. When I visited them last summer, they had some consistency issues.

 

I was there a couple months ago and thought there beers were pretty tasty.

 

Are there any good new breweries in the springs anyone would put their name on? New as in the past year or less.

 

I don't know when the opened, but Fossil is churning out some good stuff Lately.
Peaks and Pines opened a couple months ago.
Great Storm has been doing well, but probably open for more than a year.

 

jesus...a lot more coming soon apparently. can't keep up!

https://www.porchdrinking.com/articles/2016/05/06/new-denver-breweries-opening-summer-2016/

 

ISO: Beer Intern

Duties: Drive me to these places and buy me beer.
Compensation: Occasional messy hugs