With a handful of new breweries opening in Denver—and dozens more in the planning stages—2012 was a good year for the Mile High City’s brewing business. In fact, taprooms are popping up so quickly, word of another brewery opening seems as if it’s old news the moment it’s announced. What’s more, the rejuvenated Denver beer scene is not only impressive by way of quantity, but also quality. Many of the new taprooms are pouring tasty brews that are imaginative, yet well balanced. (We recently made our way to the months-old Black Shirt Brewing Co in Five Points and were impressed.) This weekend there was an altogether different kind of good news out of the local scene: A Salt Lake City-based brewery plans to open a taproom in Denver.

After a year-long search for a location, Epic Brewing announced that it leased a 19,000-square-foot space in the River North neighborhood, with plans to install a 20-barrel brewing system and open a taproom by April. A constant flow of new nanobreweries is great, but interest from larger, established microbreweries from outside the state is perhaps a more meaningful signal that the Denver beer scene still has plenty of room to grow.

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