In the span of 18 months or so, Dewey Beer Co. has become nearly a “national” brand. Well, almost, but not really. The Delaware brewery has expanded its reach into the Colorado market since the start of 2023 by adding distribution to the Denver area, but when Mockery Brewing closed its doors, an opportunity to become a local brewery in that area pushed the Dewey team into a six-month crash course of chaos that sees Colorado-made beer being served in Colorado as well.
“Natasha, our sales rep, immediately saw some barriers to entry and certain bars get broken down, because they would have local-only taps and, now we’re local,” explained head brewer Matt Lindenmuth during a recent Brewer Mag Podcast interview. The brewery was able to use the turnkey system that was identical to their production space to kick-start the brewery. They hosted a Grand Opening in late February with plans to have in-house beer ready to serve by the end of March. “It’s definitely changed, once the beers start coming out of here as well. I think that’s going to be game-changing for sure.”
Going from a sleepy coastal brewery with around 200 people that live in Dewey Beach, Delaware year-round into a craft beer city like Denver was a two-fold dream for Lindenmuth, along with fellow co-owners Brandon Smith, Scot Kaufman, and Mike Reilly. Smith runs ultra marathons while Lindenmuth is a former X Games medalist, so action sports and being outdoors — be it the beach or the mountains — means they get the best of both of their favorite worlds now and imparting that into the brewery culture and each taproom is key for them.
“It was a bit of a selfish endeavor to send beer to Colorado just because I think we’d love it out here so much as a getaway from the beach to the mountains,” Lindenmuth said. “We started poking the bear with sending beer out here, we had some relationships out here that existed from prior and just everything kind of shuffled into place.”
A pop-up event during the 20203 GABF at the then-recently closed Mockery Brewing location showed Dewey Beer that it could find a home there and they quickly worked toward opening the Denver taproom at the old Mockery location.
WATCH: Brewer Mag Video Podcast with Dewey Beer
“We’re trying to be good neighbors and fit,” Lindenmuth said of the River North arts district they are located in. “I think our vibe here in Denver is going to be very accommodating and welcoming to the arts district that RINO is.
“You’re gonna see lots of First Friday art installations, things like that. We’ve got existing murals on the exterior of the building, just like lots of the buildings here. We’ve got some friends already starting to put their bids into updating the murals here in our building. It’s not a cookie-cutter situation. Each location has been a chameleon to the neighborhoods that they’re in, and we’re gonna do the same here.”
DBC (not to be confused with Denver Beer Co., mind you, Lindenmuth said they quickly pulled merch with the abbreviation in Denver so as to not confuse consumers) was founded in 2015 with a small beach block brewpub and grew to add a production space and taproom 12 miles inland in 2021. The goal is to have the same mentality as the original brewpub, Lindemuth said.
“There’s a seven-barrel brew house at the beach. That’s where all the fun experimental beers happen,” he said. “They don’t go to distro, but I think that’s going to be the same sort of creative mentality here in Denver. These are going to be Colorado-exclusive beers, we’re going to get outside our typical styles a little bit. You’re gonna find them mostly here at the taproom, they’re not going to be out in the wild too often and we’re going to have a little bit of fun with that.
“We also have our production beers that are in distro here as well. We’re gonna have this nice triangle of all three breweries kind of rotating beer around a bit. So, it should be fun.”
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