9 OCTOBER 1-7, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | At Arvada’s Odyssey Beerwerks, co-owner Christopher Hill remembers when he and his wife and business partner, Deana, would participate in upwards of 50 festivals a year, mostly May through September. Eventually, he became exhausted. “We didn’t have a life for six months out of the year,” he says. Nowadays, Odyssey has scaled back to about 15 festivals a year, and Hill has scruti- nized each one to make sure it offers true value to his brewery, or is, at least, for a good cause. He also looks for non-beer attractions and a general “is this fun for us?” sort of vibe check. Full Frame and Troubadour Maltings teamed up this summer to throw the Yacht Rock Festival. The event featured beer from more than 15 breweries, all using Troubadour’s pale “Yacht Rock” malt. Troubadour’s Chris Schooley DJ’d the event himself. The beers were surprisingly varied, with everything from fruited sour beers to hoppy, smoked and lager beers, and it felt like a mini version of the Colorado Brewers Guild’s popular Collabfest. Bruz continues to host its popular Belgian Beer Festival, with local breweries coming together to pour Belgian-style beers on the grassy knoll outside its brewery. Pints for Prostates/Rare Beers ended its 16-year run last year. It was one of Colorado’s last remaining major festivals to feature rare and hard-to-fi nd beers. Another festival that offers some of the most sought-after beers, the Weldwerks Invitational, is coming back for a fi fth time in February, bringing over 40 breweries together in Greeley. One thing that seems to make the Invi- tational work so well is that it doesn’t take place every year, nor even the same month. The event seems to happen when Weldwerks feels there is a good time to host it, and that shows up in the execution and overall enjoy- ment of the fest. Other festivals, such as Mythmaker’s Rauchfest in Fort Collins and Hogshead’s Cask Fest, are highly specialized affairs, and continue to offer something for the niche mar- ket that appreciates specifi c styles of beers. Great American Beer Festival The big festival news this year was the Great American Beer Festival moving to South Denver’s Levitt Pavilion on Oct. 10-11, outdoors and on the grass. The change was met with a lot of social media backlash, and there continues to be negativity online. Yet the Saturday session sold out about two months in advance of the event, and Sunday tickets are on track to sell out as well. It’s a strange sort of friction when so many com- ments about GABF on Facebook or Instagram are fi lled with negativity, while the event itself clearly has enough demand to sell out in its new, smaller (but still quite large) home. Concerns about weather, transportation, bathrooms and so on will likely be viewed in hindsight as strong reactions to change rather than fundamental fl aws. A far larger concern is the impact that moving and scal- ing back GABF will have on downtown breweries and Denver’s small businesses. Breweries in and around downtown have real concerns about how changes to days and venues will affect their business. “It’s something that we’ve planned and relied on every year as being a major eco- nomic boost for us,” says Ashleigh Carter, co-owner of Bierstadt Lagerhaus. Carter says that the venue change has led to her team “kind of scrambling,” not really knowing what to do or expect. She feels that GABF’s shift from Thursday-Saturday to this year’s Saturday and Sunday could change the dynamic of who visits and what they do while in town. “Turning it into a weekend event, I don’t think it’s going to have the desired economic effect for the brewers around here that de- pend on it,” she predicts, noting that there isn’t as much time for side events as there was in previous years. In a typical year, brewers and fans would often arrive on Wednesday to prepare for the Thursday-Saturday festival schedule. This led to Wednesdays and Thursdays at breweries like Bierstadt being busier than usual, on top of a slammed weekend. Based on conversa- tions with Carter and other area breweries, the impact on missed revenue compared to prior years could easily reach six fi gures. The brewery is planning roundtrip shut- tles to GABF for patrons ($10, and it includes a beer), and several events throughout the weekend. But it’s scaled back from what normally happens, for fears of overextending and losing more money. “We’re not throwing our industry tiki party. We’re not preparing the same way at all,” she says. Last year, the brewery saw about 20% less business than typical during GABF – something Carter attributes to a smaller festival and the elimination of Saturday night’s session. “A lot of people left on Sat- urday,” she recalls. Carter feels earlier decisions and discus- sions with Denver-area breweries might have helped prepare for, or even improve the festival’s transition. “Overall, we’re just worried about some- thing that we’ve depended on for the last decade,” she says. Downtown Market Struggling Downtown and surrounding neighbor- hood breweries are still largely struggling, and change doesn’t seem to be happening fast enough. At Woods Boss, Fink says that things are tight, but he’s still hanging on. “We’ve scaled back everywhere we pos- sibly can to keep the doors open and keep the beer fl owing,” he says, noting that his biggest issue is “fi ve different issues.” Fink works more than 55 hours a week to keep the brewery alive, and he says the long workweeks aren’t sustainable long-term with a family at home. Fink notes that the Downtown Denver corridor is still very quiet compared to what it used to be, both in nightlife and the total number of people coming in, adding that an offi ce space vacancy rate of around 40% has had a major impact. “Our numbers are down from pre-pan- demic, and sitting in the same spot year after year, just enough to limp by,” he says. “The Denver proper scene is rough for beer. People are staying closer to home.” Fink isn’t sure what needs to change, but he says the city has done a good job of cleaning up the downtown area. “It’s no worse than it was before the pandemic, and I think, quite frankly, that it’s probably better,” he says, but that contrasts with what he hears from people about the perception that Denver is full of crime and homelessness. Diversifying to Meet Changing Consumers One downtown brewery that has emerged as a bright spot during these challenging times is Full Frame. Co-owner Alyssa Ho- berer says the brewery is producing about the same amount of beer it was under its prior iteration as Jagged Mountain, but additional sales of liquor, wine, coffee and food have helped the brewery stand out from more classic breweries. “We’ve seen a lot of success with large groups, offi ce parties and happy hours where not everyone likes beer,” she says. An expanded and updated food program being offered into the night Friday-Monday and new fall-themed cocktails are in the immediate term, as Full Frame continues to offer quality options to a diverse clientele. Uncertain Future The Brewers Association’s Watson says what people are seeing nationally is also true for Colorado in this evolving craft beer market. The years of explosive growth are over, “but the Colorado market is not going anywhere,” he says. Watson believes many market challenges stem less from consumer demand and more from rising costs in Colorado and across the wider supply chain. He points out that beer quality is the highest it’s ever been, and there has probably never been a better time to be a beer drinker. “I think that one of the things you see in a more competitive market is bad beer gets driven out of the market, and that people gravitate towards quality. That is continu- ing to raise the bar here in Colorado and nationally,” he says. Craft beer isn’t as expensive as a high- end bottle of wine or a fancier cocktail, but it’s also not as cheap as a 12-pack of macro beer, or the beer special at the local dive bar. It lands somewhere between those worlds, and that’s a very tough place to exist today. Watson points out that when craft brew- eries were opening left and right, brewers had much more favorable macroeconomic conditions. “We had growing demand, a pretty stable and low cost of goods for breweries, and a low interest rate environment,” he says, adding that if you’re opening a capital-intensive business, like a brewery, those interest rates are a major benefi t. “Today, we don’t have any of those.” And therein lies the problem: Until some- thing changes in the wider economy, the currents may be fl owing too strongly against the craft beer industry for it to thrive the way it once did. The bright side is that plenty of craft beer is still being consumed, and both innovation and quality continue to grow. But the gap between the business of beer and what should be a celebrated golden age for consumers will likely remain for some time. Email the author at [email protected]. Copper Kettle Brewing owner Jeremy Gobien delivers a tearful speech during the brewery’s 15th anniversary. Fritz Family’s Kölsch Service is a hit event. COPPER KETTLE BREWING FRITZ FAMILY BREWERS