Hello Fellow Beer Geeks!
As Colorado Beer Geek, my main focus is keeping track of upcoming breweries for Colorado Brewery List (CBL). In doing so, I live up to my “Geek” moniker with my collection of data.
I thought it would be fun to share some of this geeky information with you.
How many Colorado breweries are there?
Let’s start with some general numbers:
As of the posting of this article, there are 423 open brewery locations in Colorado!
Of those: 340 are a unique or original location and 42 are additional brewing locations of one of those breweries and 41 are taprooms without any brewing operations.
On the constantly changing Upcoming Breweries page there are 23 total in development: 11 that are Under Construction, (actually building out on location) 8 are in an advanced planning stage, and 4 are in early concept stages.
For more definitions of some of these terms please see our FAQ/Glossary page.
Colorado Brewery List also has maps for 18 Cideries and 20 Meaderies.
Where in Colorado are all of these breweries?
Let’s start with the whole state and then drill down from there…
Regionally, 38% of Colorado breweries are in the Denver Metro area, (with nearly half of those being in Denver proper and the rest located from Castle Rock to Golden) 36% are in the remainder of the Front Range, (breaking this down: 15% in the Northern Front Range, 11% in the Southern Front Range, and 10% in Boulder County) 25% is West of the Front Range, and 0.7% (3 breweries) are on the Eastern plains.
More specifically, there are breweries in 41 (soon to be 42*) of Colorado’s 64 counties. The following map shows the breakdown of where the breweries are by county. (*Note: Since I didn’t want to change the map again, I added the Kit Carson county brewery that is coming soon.)
Denver county has the most breweries by far with 70 brewery locations. The next biggest group includes Larimer (48), Boulder (40), El Paso (39), & Jefferson (34).
Let’s talk about the specific towns and cities…
There are breweries in 114 different towns and cities in Colorado with the new additions this year of Kukaro Brewing in Fort Morgan and the Launch Pad Brewery taproom in Bennett. (Also, Zittzers Brewing is coming soon to Seibert.) It is fabulous to see breweries coming to Eastern Colorado.
The largest number of brewery locations are located in the city of Denver which has 72 breweries (two are in Adams County), Colorado Springs with 32, Fort Collins with 26, Boulder with 13, and Longmont with 12. (Click on those city names for individual city brewery maps.)
There are 4 tiny towns with less than 200 people that have a brewery. They are Black Hawk (127) with Very Nice Brewing, Divide (143) with Paradox Beer Co., Florissant (172) with Funky Town Brewing, and Rollinsville (194) with Howlin Wind Brewing. (Also, Seibert (133) with Zittzers Brewing coming soon.)
The smallest town with two breweries is Ouray with 449 people and home to Ouray Brewing and Ourayle House (Mr. Grumpy Pants) Brewery.
Zip Codes
Breaking things down even further I have also collected the data for the number of breweries in each individual zip code in Colorado.
There are two zips codes in Colorado with 10 or more breweries: 80205 (5 Points and RiNo) has 12 breweries and 80524 (Fort Collins) has 11.
North, South, East, West, and Up
The furthest Northern brewery is Old Colorado Brewing in Wellington at 40.70 degrees north latitude.
The furthest Southern brewery is Bottom Shelf Brewery in Bayfield at 37.22 degrees north latitude.
The furthest Western brewery is Reckless Brewing in Fruita at 108.73 degrees west longitude
The furthest Eastern brewery is Parts & Labor Brewing in Sterling at 103.21 degrees west longitude. (Once again, Zittzers Brewing in Seibert will change this to 102.87 degrees west.)
Colorado has the highest breweries in the country! There are four breweries located at over 9,500 ft altitude: Two Mile Brewing in Leadville at 10,152 ft, HighSide Brewing in Fairplay at 9,950 ft, Breckenridge Brewery & Pub and Broken Compass Brewing in Breckenridge at 9,602 ft, and Telluride Taqueria in Mountain Village at 9,547 ft. 
Now for the areas that are missing out…
Otero county with 18,703 people is the largest population county without a brewery. (However, they do host Gold Buckle Beer, a production only brewery in La Junta. Morgan County was the largest but Kukaru Brewing opened in Fort Morgan this year.) The next largest is Las Animas county (14,446 population) which has previously had breweries in Trinidad.
The three biggest cities without any brewery are Commerce City, (62,287) Security-Widefield, (38,645) and Clifton, (20,413).
Three big cities that have breweries but not many compared to their population are Thornton with only ONE brewery for 141,876 people! (Although Someplace Else Brewery is opening their second location there soon where Mother Tucker Brewing was located, that is still only two breweries for over 140,000 people.) Aurora only has 9 breweries and could easily support more with their 386,261 people, and Pueblo only has 4 breweries and 144,962 people, (to include Pueblo-West).
There are three zip codes with over 50,000 population that don’t have a single brewery. They are 80219 (SE Denver where the original Burns Family was located), 80022 (Commerce City), & 80012 (Central & W Aurora). Another four zip codes that are really underserved with over 50,000 population but only one brewery. They are: 80013 (Aurora), 80015 (S Aurora), 80229 (Thornton), & 80011 (Aurora). While there are already some great breweries in these zip codes, I highly recommend that new breweries look to find a spot in Aurora. (More zip code information is available on request.)
When did all of these breweries open?
The following chart is a timeline of the number of breweries that were open at the end of the year since 1979 when Boulder Beer opened. (There are some slight differences between what CBL lists and what is on my personal spreadsheet.)
This chart shows the number openings and closings by year.
24 breweries opened in 2025 as part of the Colorado Brewery Class of 2025.
The average number of breweries to open each year over the past ten years is 38, the peak being in 2018 with 66 brewery locations. (The all-time peak was 2014 with 68.)
The average age of the currently open breweries is almost 10 years.
Brewery Closures
44 breweries closed in 2023 that are Gone but Not Forgotten in 2025.
In the past 10 years, there was an average of 26 closures each year with the most in 2024 with 50.
Through my research I’ve identified these 378 breweries that have opened since 1979 and subsequently closed. In the chart, those marked in blue have closed in the past year and those in yellow are not included in the above charts since I do not have an opening and/or closing year for them. If there are any Colorado brewery history geeks out there that would like to help me fill in those gaps or provide information on other breweries that I might be missing, please contact me.
Of those that closed in 2025, the average lifespan of those breweries was 7.2 years with the oldest being Trinity Brewing at over 17 years and the youngest (not counting additional locations) being Horse & Frog Brewpub in Holyoke at just over one year.
How does Colorado compare to other states?
For this I went to the Brewer’s Association for their help with the numbers (earlier this month). Note: This data has major differences from CBL numbers for CO because they count things differently. While I’m working with the BA to clear up these differences for CO, I’ve used their CO numbers here so that the comparison is from the same source.
Colorado is in the Top 5 for most breweries!
The Top 10 (with comparison from 2023 when I last ran these numbers)
- CA: 979 breweries (+102 / +12%)
- NY: 559 breweries (+61 / +12%)
- PA: 537 breweries (+61 / +13%)
- WA: 423 breweries (+18 / +4%)
- CO: 420 breweries (-18 / -4%)
- NC: 410 breweries (+45 / +12%)
- TX: 408 breweries (+24 / +6%)
- MI: 404 breweries (+22 / +6%)
- OH: 393 breweries (+7 / +2%)
- FL: 368 breweries (+8 / +2%)
FYI, the bottom 5 states are:
46. WV: 37 breweries (+4 / +12%)
47. DE: 35 breweries (+2 / +6%)
48. HI: 28 breweries (+3 / +12%)
49. MS: 21 breweries (+9 / +75%)
50: ND: 19 breweries (-3 / -14%)
In comparison to 2023, here are the biggest movers & shakers by percentage over the past two years.
MS grew the most from 12 to 21 making a whopping 75% growth! (In 2023 they had fewer breweries than DC). The next biggest improvements are AZ who went from 101 to 129 for a 28% growth and LA who went from 42 to 53 for a 26% growth.
ND by far had the sharpest decline (but only 3 breweries) from 22 to 19 for a 14% decline while the next two were NH going from 100 to 95 for a 5% decline and, very sadly, CO dropping from 438 to 420 for a 4% decline. (Only two other states saw a decline: MT (2%) and OK (1%).)
Click here for a chart of the total number of breweries in all 50 states (plus DC).
How many breweries are there per capita (per 100,000 people)? Here are the top five.
- VT (73 breweries for 645,570 people = 11.3 breweries per 100,000)
- ME (147 breweries for 1,372,247 people = 10.7 breweries per 100,000)
- MT (102 breweries for 1,104,271 people = 9.2 breweries per 100,000)
- AK (63 breweries for 732,673 people = 8.6 breweries per 100,000)
- WY (49 breweries for 578,803 people = 8.5 breweries per 100,000)
CO dropped from 5th to 6th (with AK jumping up to 4th) with 438 breweries for 5,812,069 people (more than the top 5 combined) being 7.2 breweries per 100,000.
Click here for a chart of breweries per 100,000 people for all 50 states (plus DC).
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I hope you enjoyed geeking out over these numbers as much as I did in putting this together. If you have any questions or are curious about other data that I didn’t cover, please feel free to contact me!
Stephen Adams