Our Mutual Friend Brewing

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• Top 6 Breweries in Denver

  Currently #4 · score 0

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Similar places

• Great Divide Brewing Co.

  Great Divide Brewing Co. was founded by Brian Dunn in 1994, opening at the corner of Arapahoe and 22nd Street just north of downtown Denver at a moment when Colorado's now-massive craft beer scene was still a fairly small, unproven category. The brewery didn't take long to prove itself — it picked up award recognition within just a few months of brewing its first batch, an unusually fast validation for a brand-new operation. That early credibility helped Great Divide grow into one of the defining names of Denver's craft beer identity, built around bold, intensely flavored beers rather than easy-drinking session styles — Hercules Double IPA and the barrel-aged Yeti Imperial Stout became genuine reference points for what a serious Colorado craft brewery could do with hop intensity and barrel-aging technique, respectively. Three decades in, Great Divide has stayed rooted in that original taproom near downtown rather than chasing a brewpub-restaurant model — no full kitchen, no dining-room concept, just a working brewery with a taproom built for drinking rather than a broader hospitality experience. That focus has let the beer itself stay the entire pitch. For a Denver breweries list, Great Divide is the essential "one of the originals, still making the beer that built its reputation" entry — a thirty-year-old taproom that helped establish what Denver craft beer was even going to mean, before most of the breweries now surrounding it existed.

• Wynkoop Brewing Company

  Wynkoop Brewing Company opened in 1988 in what was then a fairly rough, underdeveloped stretch of LoDo, founded by John Hickenlooper along with Russell Schehrer, Mark Schiffler, and Jerry Williams. Hickenlooper would go on to become Denver's mayor and later Colorado's governor, giving Wynkoop a genuinely unusual claim among American brewpubs: its founder ended up running the entire state. The brewpub was one of the first of its kind in Denver, combining a full restaurant with an in-house brewing operation at a time when that combination was still a novel format rather than the standard template it's since become across the country. A large billiards hall on the top floor added a social, hangout dimension beyond just food and beer, reinforcing the brewpub as a genuine gathering spot rather than a purely food-and-drink stop. Wynkoop has also built a specific piece of beer-world tradition around itself: the brewery sponsors the annual "Beerdrinker of the Year" competition, a genuinely odd and specific event that's become a small institution of its own within craft beer culture, run out of the same LoDo building the brewery has occupied since 1988. For a Denver breweries list, Wynkoop is the essential "the original brewpub, run by a future governor" entry — proof that Denver's now-massive craft beer identity has real roots in a single LoDo building that predates most of the neighborhood's current development.

• Denver Beer Co.

  Denver Beer Co. started, by its own account, in home garages — a handful of batches of homebrew made by founders with a specific fondness for Bavarian beer garden traditions, long before the company existed as an actual business. That garage-to-taproom arc is a common enough craft beer origin story, but Denver Beer Co. leaned into the beer garden concept more literally than most, building its identity around large, social, outdoor-facing taproom spaces rather than a more conventional indoor bar format. That beer garden approach has become the brewery's clearest signature — communal picnic tables, a dog-friendly patio culture, and food trucks parked outside rather than an in-house kitchen, a format built explicitly for lingering in a group rather than a quick pint alone. It's a specific vision of what a Denver taproom should feel like, closer to a backyard party than a traditional bar. The Platte Street taproom, close to the Lower Highlands (LoHi) neighborhood just across the river from downtown, has stayed the brand's most recognizable location as the company expanded to additional taprooms across the metro area, each one built around the same beer garden format rather than a unique concept per location. For a Denver breweries list, Denver Beer Co. is the essential "beer garden, not bar" entry — a homebrew-garage origin story turned into a genuinely distinct taproom format built around long tables, dogs, and food trucks rather than a conventional indoor pour.

• TRVE Brewing Company

  TRVE Brewing Company built its identity in Denver's South Broadway corridor around an unusual pairing: serious Belgian- and farmhouse-style brewing technique, wrapped in a full black metal aesthetic — dim lighting, heavy music on the sound system, and branding pulled directly from extreme metal album art rather than the rustic-chalkboard look most craft breweries default to. That combination is genuinely rarer than it might sound; plenty of breweries lean into a theme, but few commit to both a specific, technically demanding beer style (saisons and farmhouse ales require careful management of wild and semi-wild yeast strains) and a specific, uncompromising subcultural aesthetic at the same time. TRVE's name itself — a deliberately misspelled nod to "true," borrowed from black metal's own vocabulary around authenticity — signals exactly how seriously the theme is meant to be taken. South Broadway itself has developed into one of Denver's more eclectic strips over the past decade, and TRVE's specific, uncompromising identity has made it a genuine landmark within that stretch rather than just another taproom — the kind of place regulars describe by its theme first and its beer list second, even though the beer itself has built a real reputation on its own technical merits. For a Denver breweries list, TRVE is the essential "metal bar with genuinely serious beer" entry — proof that a taproom's aesthetic commitment and its brewing technique don't have to be in tension with each other.

• Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project

  Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project was founded by Chad Yakobson, who built the brewery's entire identity around wild and sour beer fermentation — a genuinely specialized, technically demanding corner of brewing that requires working with wild yeast strains and extended aging rather than the faster, more controllable fermentation most breweries rely on for their core lineup. Yakobson's academic background in brewing science, including dedicated research into Brettanomyces (the wild yeast strain central to most sour and funky beer styles), gave Crooked Stave a level of technical grounding that's rarer in a beer category often associated more with experimentation than rigor. That research-driven approach to sour beer helped establish Crooked Stave as a reference point for the style well beyond Denver. The brewery operates out of The Source, a converted historic foundry building in the RiNo Art District that's become a genuine food-and-drink destination in its own right, housing multiple vendors under one roof — a setting that puts Crooked Stave's specifically technical, patience-demanding beer program inside one of Denver's more design-forward, high-traffic food spaces. For a Denver breweries list, Crooked Stave is the essential "sour and wild, done with real technical rigor" entry — the counterpoint to the hop-forward IPA breweries that dominate most of the rest of Denver's scene, built by a founder who treated wild fermentation as a genuine research subject rather than just a trendy style to chase.