Colorado craft beer enters new era of consolidation

This article appears in the Fall 2025 issue of ColoradoBiz under the headline: Craft Consolidation: Wilding Brands chugs into new era for Colorado brewing.

After 30 years of boom times, the craft brewing bust is in full swing.

An industry that soared from about 100 players in the 1970s to more than 9,000 in the 2020s is finally subject to economic gravity, as craft beer production volume declined by 4% nationally in 2024. In Colorado, the volume losses have been higher, and 468 craft breweries in 2023 slipped to 456 in 2024. The state has seen more than 150 breweries shut down since the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are plenty of culprits: changing tastes, high interest rates, overly optimistic projections, tariffs and trade wars and demographic trends that aren’t kind to alcoholic beverages in general and perhaps craft beer in particular.

But change can be good. If you asked most economists, a decentralized model makes little sense. There’s a reason there were only three big breweries for decades: economies of scale.

Just ask Charlie Berger. As co-founder of Denver Beer Co. and chief development officer of Lafayette-based Wilding Brands, he’s among the victors of the spoils. Now 400 employees, Wilding is a family of Colorado craft beverage brands that’s gone on an acquisition spree in 2025.

“As the industry changes a little bit, I think it should be talked about not as if the sky is falling, but that it’s just evolving into something slightly different,” says Berger. “Any industry that proliferates is going to eventually consolidate around the stronger players. I think that’s a natural thing, and we’re lucky to be on our side of it.”

Wilding is the vision of Eric Foster, founder of Stem Ciders and Berger’s old homebrewing buddy. Berger launched Denver Beer in 2011, and Foster co-founded Stem two years later.

“As we both grew our businesses side by side and got to know the other players and the people in the Colorado craft beverage industry, it was fun to talk big picture and about what the opportunities could be, and timing and challenges, et cetera, just kind of a sounding board to talk it all out,” says Berger.

Along the way, Foster conceived of Wilding as a portfolio of Colorado craft beverage brands. He started small, buying a single lager brand, Howdy, from The Post Brewing Company in 2022. The vision came to fruition when Wilding acquired Denver Beer and Funkwerks in early 2025 to go with Howdy and Stem. Later in 2025, Wilding bought Denver stalwart Great Divide Brewing Company, followed by another Denver brewery in Station 26 Brewing Company.

While Wilding has consolidated most brewing at Denver Beer’s Sunnyside facility, it continues cider-making at Stem’s main facility (and Wilding HQ) in Lafayette and recently announced plans for a new Great Divide taproom to replace its two shuttered spaces in Denver.

Berger says diversification is key, and the portfolio includes not only beer and cider, but hard seltzer and non-alcoholic brands. “It’s true that craft beer has had some headwinds, but as a business, Wilding is much more than that, and we’re finding these pockets of craft beverage growth that are really exciting.”

“So many headlines have focused on craft beer and its struggles. And we’re more than that as Wilding Brands. We have fantastic non-alcoholic options in the portfolio,” says Berger. “Hard cider is performing incredibly well in Colorado. We’re way up, double digits year-over-year, with that brand.”

While the ink is barely dry on the deals, Berger says the combined operations are already enjoying economies of scale on supplies for the brewhouse and taprooms, laundry and shipping, along with collaborative marketing.

“As a part of economies of scale, we’re really afforded the opportunity to invest behind our brands. From a marketing and sales perspective, that’s something that’s harder to do when brands are standing alone. We can afford great teams and can actually invest behind great marketing ideas,” said Berger. “We’re starting to realize [this with] some of them, and some of them will take a little longer to bake into the operation.”

The acquisition of Great Divide, perhaps the city’s most iconic craft beer brand, represented something of an earthquake in the state’s craft brewing landscape. “We’ve known those guys for a long time. My first job in the craft beer industry was taking bottles off the bottling line over there when I was 21 years old,” says Berger. “Brian Dunn [Great Divide’s founder] over there started conversations with us about what it would be like to keep his brand local, because we still are about as local as they come.”

The deal is a sign of the times, says Devin Mills, founder and principal of BoozeWerks, an Evergreen-based consulting firm focused on the craft beverage space. “We’re starting to see some of the more systematic problems coming through,” says Mills. “A lot of these companies don’t necessarily understand cash flow and how businesses need to function in order to make money, outside of a focus on good product, so we’re starting to see some of those players who have those structural problems falling out.”

There’s a funding conundrum at play. “In a lot of these cases, the easiest access to money is actually before you open the doors. You can get a startup loan for basically any business plan,” says Mills. “Even today, with money being tight, startup money is relatively available, but once you open the doors, most banks and SBAs will not lend you until you have three years of positive cash flow.”

“It’s like, ‘Great, you succeeded. Now do it for three years.’ So you’ve bought this 75-hour-a-week job,” he adds. “You’ve got to maintain this level of work for another three years before you can hire staff to start helping you or increase your equipment size. And a lot of people burn out.”

Mills notes that the industry’s losses have been disproportionately borne by smaller producers. Part of the reason for that is the harsh realities of economies of scale. “Unfortunately for the vast majority of producers, you can buy product cheaper than you can make it and better quality,” notes Mills. “Some beers are inexpensive enough that even buying them, paying the profit margin to the manufacturer, paying for shipping to your facility, and then putting it in a can or whatever, that’s still cheap enough that you can then make a larger profit margin on it than you would if you brewed that same beer yourself.”

With that in mind, Wilding’s strategy “makes a lot of sense,” he adds. “Having a brand that has a variety of brand power and the ability to leverage their production volume is where the industry is headed.”

Could consolidation sap the soul from craft brewing? “As a client of breweries, I have concerns about what macro production is going to do to the neighborhood brewery experience,” says Mills. “Going to the old Great Divide tasting room over by the ballpark that was the size of my bedroom was a fun and unique experience that can’t be replicated by a large macro company.”

“As a consumer, I have had concerns, but I don’t see the industry having a choice. Being small really isn’t viable unless the people in your neighborhood just want to give you money. Being medium-sized, you can survive as long as nothing terrible happens,” he added.

Wilding is far from the only consolidation story in Colorado’s craft brewing scene. Dry Dock Brewing and Left Hand Brewing also merged under one corporate umbrella in 2025, moving all production to Left Hand’s Longmont brewery.

In Colorado Springs, Goat Patch Brewing Company acquired Monument’s Pikes Peak Brewing Company from founder Chris Wright in late 2024. Most of the 65-employee company’s brewing for distribution, along with its new Northgate taproom, has been consolidated in Monument, leaving the original location free to focus on small-batch experiments.

Goat Patch co-owner Justin Grant said the deal was serendipitous, but it’s been challenging to integrate the two operations. “We’re dialing in our processes and systems across the board, but still have a long way to go,” he explains. “When you try for brand recognition in all three locations, it’s challenging. Every spot has a different demographic.”

The merger led Grant to pull Pikes Peak out of wider distribution and into Goat Patch’s local, self-distributed model. “It’s not the same industry that it was 10 or 15 years ago,” he says. “You’ve got to figure out ways to get creative and maintain your brand, and that community presence.”

Consolidation “is inevitable,” Grant adds. “It’s got to occur. I think you’ve got to be careful if you’re opening up multiple locations. Are they in areas where you can survive independently from your mothership? Is there enough business? Can you capitalize, or is it cannibalizing your current wholesale strategy?”

The hectic 2025 and ongoing operational hurdles make Grant hesitant to pursue further acquisitions. “I would never say never,” he says. “We’d look at deals, but we’re not doing anything for at least a year.”

Berger says Wilding remains open to bringing in more brands. “What we would be excited about would be having conversations with fantastic brands with great liquid that fit in the independent craft beverage family of brands that Wilding can offer.”

Online:

• Wilding Brands: wildingbrands.com
• BoozeWerks: boozewerks.com
• Goat Patch Brewing Company: goatpatchbrewing.com
• Pikes Peak Brewing Company: pikespeakbrewing.com