The next step was finding the perfect location. In the mountain towns of Colorado, that’s not as easy as it may seem to an outsider.

“We were just looking anywhere we could find basically, and we found this location which used to be a CrossFit gym,” Casey remembers. “It was right on the river, and it was affordable because it’s not in downtown Glenwood. It was big and cool in there, which is important for these kinds of beers.”

Casey Brewing and Blending officially launched in November 2013, with the first release, a Saison, launching the following February. While a lot has changed in three years, back then, attracting consumer interest was tough.

“Our business plan was to sell maybe 10-16% of our beer through our tasting room and then wholesale the rest,” Casey says. “The first month we had our base beer, Saison, and we sold maybe half of it. The next month, with the second blend of that, we sold maybe a quarter of it. I quickly realized that, if we wanted to get more people up here, we had to give them more options.”

So Casey started experimenting with fruit sourced nearby on the western slope, the section of the Colorado Rockies that sits to the west of the Continental Divide, some of it foraged by his own hand. Word quickly got out about these new and exciting fruited sours being produced by this brand new brewery in Glenwood Springs. In a matter of months, Casey went from building a solid local audience for its beers to people traveling from all over the country in droves.