Denver Beer by Shikes Jonathan;

Denver Beer by Shikes Jonathan;

Author:Shikes, Jonathan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00


11

GREAT DIVIDE BREWING’S BOLD CHARACTERS

When the microbrew market fell through the floor in 1997, Great Divide Brewing was only three years old and hardly in a position to weather the storm. Located in a former dairy building in an industrial neighborhood, it was surrounded by vacant lots and empty warehouses. Homeless people slept on the street out front and in the alley behind. Local bands used part of the space to practice at night. A snowplow company parked its vehicles there.

Founded by Brian Dunn and then-wife Tara, the brewery was the only one in Denver that wasn’t attached to or associated with a restaurant. Instead, it opened by selling kegs to bars and restaurants and twenty-two-ounce bomber bottles and half-gallon jugs out the front door—a door made of steel and with no windows. Things started slowly, with just two beers that Dunn had developed in his kitchen at home, Arapahoe Amber and Whitewater Wheat.

Still, people found their way in, standing around in the taproom, which also served as the employee breakroom, and tentatively asking for tours— not that there was much to see.

Dunn didn’t have time to worry about marketing, though. He was too busy keeping things afloat. While a few breweries went under or sold in 1997 and 1998, Dunn kept his head down. He’d borrowed money from friends and family to start the business and he refused to disappoint them. “It was my life,” he says. “And I had a willingness and a hardheadedness to make sure it didn’t fail.” The head brewer for the first two or three years, Dunn would come in at three o’clock in the morning to make beer before doing paperwork, opening the taproom and then heading out to sell. He worked festivals, managed accounts, cleaned the toilets and asked homeless people to move on.

The reason? Passion.

Dunn grew up in the 1960s and ’70s in Vermont in a home where eating and drinking were important. There were five kids, and his mom cooked all the time. His father liked good beer, wine and spirits, and he’d enjoy them all during big family meals. “He didn’t like Bud, Miller and Coors,” Dunn says. “He liked imports, so that’s what he always drank.”

So, when Dunn grew up and went to college at Colorado State University, that’s what he looked for, too, eventually landing a job at an Old Chicago location in Fort Collins—one of the only restaurants at the time that offered imports and other interesting beers.

After graduating in 1985, Dunn headed overseas and spent five years developing farms in third-world countries, primarily in North Africa. One of his jobs was to buy groceries, so he would take a Range Rover on the ferry to France, where he’d load it up with butter, cheese, coffee, pork and, of course, beer—lots of beer—from Belgium, France and Germany. After his time in Africa, Dunn started traveling throughout Europe and Asia, drinking new beers in every country. “I got really into it,” he says. “By the time I came back to the United States, I’d been to forty countries.



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