Kurt Randall grabbed a shovel Saturday afternoon to muck out waterlogged grain in Breckenridge Brewing’s mash tun, a task he regularly performs — just not at the beer-maker’s facility.

Randall and a handful of his colleagues hail from the Stranahan’s distillery two blocks away. They were helping brew a second round of Breckenridge’s ESB beer aged in the whiskey maker’s used barrels.

The resulting Well Built ESB is an outcropping of the neighbors’ long-standing relationship and shared creativity.

“We’re a bigger brewery, so we do some of the same beers a lot. But all of our brewers are artists,” said Terry Usry, a Breckenridge spokesman.

But the booze-producing neighbors could find themselves in a long-distance relationship within the next 18 months.

The rapidly expanding Breckenridge — already expecting to increase production to 75,000 barrels with four new fermenters arriving this week — is shopping for a few acres in the Denver area on which to grow even more, Usry said.

Thanks to the country’s craft-beer renaissance, small and independent brewers such as Breckenridge made up more than 5 percent the U.S. beer market in 2011, a first for the craft niche, according to trade group the Brewer’s Association. Production from craft brewers jumped by 13 percent over 2010, the group says.

Breckenridge has the exclusive right to advertise its ESB as aged in Stranahan’s barrels — one way for the beer maker to stand out in a growing market.

Randall, a former Breckenridge brewer, now produces the “wash” — beer from 100 percent malted barley without the hops — that is later distilled into Stranahan’s whiskey. He says the neighboring companies have a lot in common.

“We’re brewers. We use the same equipment,” Randall said. “It’s where we started as a company.”

Jessica Fender: 303-954-1244 or jfender@denverpost.com