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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.
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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.
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About Wynkoop Brewing Company
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