MillerCoors’ Blue Moon Brewing, best known for its namesake Belgian-style white ale, announced plans Monday to open a new brewery and tasting room in Denver’s booming River North neighborhood.
Set to open in 2016, the new brewery at 1910 38th Street — across from a Pepsi bottling plant — will provide a more visible public profile and added brewing capacity.
The property — a roughly 26,000-square-foot vacant warehouse — is owned by environmental consulting firm Menalto LLC, records show.
Blue Moon officials would not provide a cost estimate for the project.
The lease arrangement gives Blue Moon a second presence in central Denver, complementing Blue Moon Brewing Company at The SandLot, a 10-barrel brewhouse tucked into a corner of Coors Field.
Blue Moon founder and brewmaster Keith Villa said the main brewing system in River North will be two to three times bigger and feature a two-barrel pilot system for test brews.
“We are at the point where we need a larger place to innovate and create all the recipes,” Villa said. “We have so many ideas and just such a limited amount of tank space at the SandLot. It’s really time for us to have a bigger place so we can experiment even more.”
MillerCoors breweries in Golden and Eden, N.C., are responsible for the mass-production of Blue Moon beers.
By choosing River North, Blue Moon is planting a flag in the city’s thickest concentration of independent craft breweries, with at least nine in operation and more in the works.
MillerCoors calls Blue Moon the country’s best-selling craft beer.
But the Boulder-based Brewers Association, a trade group, has accused Blue Moon of being “crafty” for failing to label itself as a MillerCoors product. The organization’s definition of “craft brewery” excludes Blue Moon because of its corporate parentage and size.
Villa said Blue Moon looks forward to being in the neighborhood “because we have actually influenced a lot of breweries in our 20 years of existence.”
The news of the second brewery comes amid a decade-long decline in sales of mainstream and light brands produced by big breweries, in contrast to booming growth for independent craft brewers.
Molson Coors — of which MillerCoors is a part — recently reported a 31 percent decline in fourth-quarter profit and net sales fell 5.3 percent to $973.8 million. The company attributed part of the income decline to foreign currency losses resulting from the strong U.S. dollar.
Eric Gorski: 303-954-1971, egorski@denverpost.com or twitter.com/egorski
