Dry Dock Brewing, which opened a massive, 30,000-square-foot production brewery a decade ago on Tower Road in Aurora, announced Friday that it will close the facility next year and shift the majority of its beer-making and packaging operations to Denver’s Great Divide Brewing.
The brewery, known for its Apricot Blonde, will maintain its original taproom at 15120 E. Hampden Ave., however, where it runs a small-batch brewhouse next to its homebrew store.
“The whole thing is bittersweet. We built this big beautiful building and filled it … from one end to the other,” said Kevin DeLange, who co-founded Dry Dock in 2005 with Michelle Reding. But I’m also very excited that the brand is still strong. And I’m looking forward to interacting with customers again (at the original facility), making beers and working at the homebrew shop.”
Great Divide owner Brian Dunn told The Denver Post that his brewery plans to make 7,500 barrels of beer for Dry Dock in 2024. Eventually, Great Divide will also take on a larger role when it comes to the sales and marketing of Dry Dock’s beers. But Dunn pointed out that the partnership isn’t a merger or an acquisition and that the two breweries remain as separate companies.
Some of Dry Dock’s employees, like brewery operations director Joe Savage, will take jobs at Great Divide, Delange said, but not all of them. Delange and Reding will also look to sell the building, at 2801 Tower Road, and equipment to another brewery if possible.
The news marks a stunning change for both Dry Dock and Great Divide, each of which expanded extremely quickly during craft beer’s boom years in the 2010s before facing — like dozens of other mid-sized breweries across the country — overwhelming competition that led to significant sales declines and consolidation.
Great Divide’s own plans to open a large production facility came to an end in 2019 when Dunn announced that the brewery would sell off the land it had purchased several years earlier along Brighton Boulevard in the River North Art District, and consolidate at its now 30-year old location at 2201 Arapahoe St., in the Ballpark area.
“The strategic partnership” makes sense because “by producing both brands at a single facility, increased production and shipping efficiencies will be realized,” the breweries said in a joint statement. Great Divide has the ability to brew 60,000 barrels of beer per year and “will easily be able to handle the production of both brands” in addition to making beer for other breweries.
“Manufacturing is a volume game,” Dunn said, adding that it’s almost mandatory for breweries with as much capacity as Great Divide to contract brew for fellow breweries in order to make their operations efficient. “The business has changed quite a bit in the past few years and become quite challenging … but we are still having fun. That’s why we keep doing what we’re doing.”
Great Divide and Dry Dock are the seventh and eighth largest independently owned craft breweries in Colorado, according to 2022 numbers gathered by the Brewers Association. Great Divide produced about 21,000 barrels that year, while Dry Dock made 13,300 barrels.
At the time that is first opened, Dry Dock was one of the first Colorado craft breweries that focused only on serving draft beer in a taproom rather than on packaging or on food. It is also one of the most award-winning breweries in the state.