Craft beer in Denver
Mile-high beer capital
Denver hosts the Great American Beer Festival each fall, bringing 800+ breweries and 40,000 attendees to the Colorado Convention Center. The city's own breweries split between classical lager-focused operations (Bierstadt) and avant-garde wild/spontaneous fermentation (Black Project, Crooked Stave).
Breweries Tracked
3
Specialty
German lagers, spontaneous wild ales, sour blending
Hub Neighborhood
RiNo (River North), LoDo, Five Points
How Denver shaped American craft beer
Coors put Colorado on the beer map in 1873, but it took the late 2010s for Denver craft to find its identity. Bierstadt Lagerhaus opened 2016 with a strict German purity focus — their Slow Pour Pils is regularly cited as the best American pilsner. Crooked Stave (founded 2010, moved to RiNo 2019) made Colorado a Brettanomyces stronghold. Black Project's spontaneous coolship beers — fermented entirely by wild yeast — make Denver one of only a handful of US cities producing true lambic-style beers.
Where to visit in Denver
Tasting Room HighlightsBierstadt Lagerhaus in RiNo for absolute lager precision. Black Project (also RiNo) for wild fermented oddities — their tap list is unlike anywhere else. Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project for barrel-aged sours. Falling Rock Tap House downtown is the GABF home base each fall. Hops & Pie in Tennyson for a beer-focused pizza joint.
Common date code formats from Denver breweries
MM/DD/YY
3 breweries