Black Project Spontaneous & Wild Ales has closed

Sad news indeed. I've been an Agent for a couple years now despite living out of town. James has made consistently excellent beers for years now and this is a definite loss. I wish him the best.

 

This is a real bummer. Didn’t have Black Project regularly, but enjoyed the bottles and cans I came across - best of luck to James in whatever comes next

 

Damn sorry to hear this. I also enjoyed the few beers I tried from them.

Spontaneous fermented and blended beers have to be some of the hardest styles to build a new brand around. You need multiple years of barrels to make the complex blends and I'd imagine you need a whole heap of barrels at a time if you're going to try to pull single batch stuff out.

Props for making it 8 years and hopefully he lands on something cool in the future

 

Oh man, so sad. Was just there a couple of weeks ago. Always a great experience. Truly a big loss to Denver’s beer community.

 

I went there on a quiet afternoon five years ago and had a long and interesting conversation with the bartender, who eventually took me back to see the coolship and brewing operation. Was a very nice experience and I'm sorry to see them go.

That said, it's a little weird to announce out of nowhere that they're closing, effective immediately, and not give supporters a chance to come in and say farewell (and buy some of the remaining product). Turning off comments on the Instagram post and saying the account will no longer be moderated makes me wonder if he expects more criticism than best wishes/gratitude.

 

I've heard from my friend, and fellow Agent, in Denver that for "regulars" it wasn't so sudden. James had apparently already had to let go of effectively the entire staff (save for one person) so it was clear he was struggling for a while and that this was a possible outcome. He is stepping up and fulfilling his obligations to Agents for the balance of the year, which is an awesome move. He did his best, and better than many in his situation. I'm sure if not for the stupid pandemic it would have gone very differently and we would be talking about his amazing beers instead of talking about yet another brewery/beer bar failing and closing...

 

This sucks. Because of the nature of the beers and food allergies on my part I was never able to support these guys.

 

This is a real bummer. Living in a different part of the country, it was tough for me to get a hold of their beers with any regularity, but I always really enjoyed them when I could get them. Definitely a standout in their niche.

 

Too bad to hear. I used to get them early on, but lost my local contact and chase too much beer as it is. I'll have to see if I have one left to toast them with.

 

It's always sad when a quality brewer has to hang it up. I was only able to try maybe a half dozen or so of their beers, but all were very good. I wish everyone connected to Black Project all the best wherever their future takes them.

 

The interesting thing about BP is that they seemed to have a much bigger following outside of Denver. Locally, you'll often hear "I totally forgot they're still around," but I've had friends come into town and BP was on their short list of places to go. I think it's probably related to how common sours (of all sorts) are these days.

Personally, I had mixed results with their beers. I found some to be absolutely amazing, but others (often the same beer + the exact same bottle run) would be the exact opposite. I found that to be the case repeatedly with their bottled products. Yet I found the draft offerings to be quite good. I don't know if I've ever seen their drafts outside of their taproom, though.

Anyway, I'm sad to see any breweries close. Especially ones that have been around a while. I was actually at one of their first events when they were taste-testing a bunch of possible beers for the Former Future opening. It's easy to say it in hindsight, but I kinda wish they stuck with Former Future and never went the Black Project route.

 

I haven't been there in quite a bit, but my most recent trip, more than 3/4 of the taps were guest beers.

 

Huge loss for the beer scene. I didn't make it to that part of town often but I always tried to pop in when I did. James was always down to talk about his process and beer in general every time I met him at the taproom or at a beer fest. I always got the feeling that he and the other big names in sour beer in the state had grown frustrated that many breweries flooding the sour market with poor kettle sours hurt their business, and that IG post feels chop full of frustrations outside of just pandemic stuff. I'll miss BP for sure, I hope James will be able to take his talents elsewhere.