We put a question to staff economist Bart Watson of the Brewers Association to give us a rundown on the top breweries in Colorado.
Watson never disappoints. We asked for those that brew more than 5,000 barrels a year in Colorado, and he gave us Colorado’s top 16 breweries based on the taxable production barrels brewed in 2014 — the latest figures available.
Some interesting facts. These 16 breweries produced approximately 1.6 million barrels of beer in 2014. A barrel equals about 31 gallons. So these breweries produced 50.6 million gallons of beer, which would fill about 77 Olympic-sized swimming pools in sweet, sweet beer.
Another fact, the No. 1 brewer — which should be no surprise to anyone who follows Colorado craft beer — produced 259,261 more barrels of beer than all the other 15 breweries combined.
(As an aside, the information came from the Brewers Association. Some Colorado breweries asked the organization not to publish their production numbers. So some breweries may be missing from this list because of that. Also, several of these breweries produce beer outside of Colorado, like New Belgium, Oskar Blues and Craftworks Brewery & Restaurant Group. Those numbers are not included).
(Image Courtesy of Fort Collins Brewery & Tavern).
No 16. Fort Collins Brewery & Tavern
Location: Fort Collins
Opened: 2003
Taxable production barrels in 2014: 8,252
Next year will be a big one for Fort Collins Brewery, according to the marketing team. The changes will include a complete package redesign, recipe changes to the core brands and adding a few more seasonals to the line-up. Recently, Tina Peters, the daughter of founders Tom and Jan Peters, took over as the brewery’s general manager.
Fort Collins Brewery follows a similar narrative of other breweries in the state. It started out as a German lager house, concentrating on just three brews, but quickly expanded into other styles. In 2007, it added a packaging line and moved into a 30,000-square-foot home in 2010, adding more equipment to keep that expansion occurring. Last month, the brewery won a gold medal in the Great American Beer Festival for its Oktoberfest.
