Hogshead Brewery changes owners, makes plans for second location

The interesting thing about this is that (apparently) there is/was some drama around this. There were some Facebook posts from folks close to the situation that described this buyout in rather unkind terms. I believe "screwed over" was used more than once. I'm not close to this situation, so I have no clue about any of that, but at the very least it doesn't seem like everyone is happy with how things have gone down.

Personally, I don't want Hogshead to lose what has made them special. There are a million places making the beers the new owners are talking about, so I'm a little nervous they'll prioritize those vs. English cask beers with a tiny lifespan. Pint's Pub is a piss poor substitute for Hogshead most days, so I don't want to lose our best cask-specialty brewery.

 

Robert Bell is not really a "new" brewer at Hogshead. He has been the head Brewer at Hogshead for the last 2 years. Stephen Kirby has not been involved in the brewing and operations for the past 2 years. So, I think we can expect their cask offerings to remain the same going forward. As long as they keep their cask offerings on par I have no problem with them exploring additional keg additions. I would bet a second location will be larger and will focus more on the keg options, while the original location keeps focusing on what they have offered in the past (speculation on my part).

 

If they open up another location in the City Park region... depending how far north it is, the Clayton/Park Hill area may become the go-to area in town for beer. Right now you can already hit up Cohesion, Ephemeral Taproom, Longtable, and Station 26 on a nice little circuit. 4 Noses is opening near 40th/Dahlia soon. Add Hogshead and that's a hell of a beer crawl.

 

Not sure I'd call that a crawl with at least a mile between most of 'em. Some of those areas can get a little dicey at times, too. It's a hell of an Uber route though. In theory Vine Street could always re-open, too...but at this point I'm not betting on it.

 

Gonna have to follow this one closely. Hogshead is one of my must stops across the country, and an easy must-stop when visiting Denver.

 

Agreed, I'd rather rent a scooter and just do Cohesion, Ephemeral, and Reverence. Hogshead would be a welcome addition if they're nearby to any of those, or even near Cerebral on Colfax which is <1 mile from City Park. I wouldn't even send my family to Long Table.

Technically speaking Hogshead would be a good replacement tenant for Vine Street if they had food and turned it into another English Pub-style restaurant (in lieu of adding Fruit-style beers like the article suggests)

 

The first time I ever went to Hogshead was when I was a wee cask pup and I looked at the left menu and had no idea what anything meant. I was overwhelmed and ended up ordering a Mexican lager from the more familiar keg side of the menu. These days when I'm sitting there sipping on cask offerings many many people come in and order keg beer. Especially when they do those stamp books or bike runs. Lots of people come in asking about sours too. I'm all for it as long as they continue to serve cask beer otherwise they become just another dime a dozen brewery.

As for the second location I live pretty far south. I would love cask beer closer to me and city park would be slightly closer if they go that route. Its hard not to get nervous about expansion though. That seems to be the kiss of death for many establishments.