Cortez Brewery Celebrates Expansion

A Cortez Brewery is growing with the goal of better serving the community. This edition of the Local News Network is brought to you by Fast Signs and the Lore Foundation. I'm Connor Shreve. The now six year old Wild Edge Brewing Collective is celebrating the addition of a barrel room to its downtown Cortez location.

Yeah, we just wanted to kind of base this on the old British Pub model of this is where the community comes and interacts and friendships are made and discussions are had and, you know, all over a great pint of locally made beer.

Owner, Tucker Robinson says, the new space, located behind the main tap room, will host smaller, more relaxed events.

I have got a beer tasting set up for March back here where we're going to have some really exquisite bottles of beer that we're going to be tasting and I'm going to do a little presentation. So a little bit more intimate events back here that require a quieter space and where conversations can be had.

The Wild Edge barrel room has been in the works for years, but was delayed by the pandemic. Now, Robinson says it represents a natural addition for the brewery.

We do a lot of barrel aged sour beers here at Wild Edge and as you can see behind me, the barrels are somewhat attractive. And so pre-Covid I was starting to kick around the notion of having kind of a smaller, intimate, quieter private event space in the back of the brewery that people could use if they didn't want to be up in the hustle and bustle of our front tap room.

The area measures about 400 square feet and Robinson's vision is that it will operate as a meeting space for local businesses and nonprofits as well as a space that does a better job catering to smaller, quieter events than his full tap room would.

The whole thing, you know, it's not a huge space. This evening, like I said, we're set up for kind of a speaker series, but it's completely modular so we can have a big conference table in here if you want to have a 15 person conference. I've got banquet tables that can go in here where we can seat 20 to 25 people if you're looking for more of a sit down environment. But you know, we can make this space into what people need.

Wild Edge has supported local musicians and artists since it opened in 2017 and Robinson sees the new barrel room as a way to diversify its support for the artist community.

Another thing I'm hoping to do back here is actually be able to kind of have a music and storytelling event where we get a musician in here and it'll be a small ticketed event, but a little bit more intimate of an experience where a musician can be playing acoustically their music and then having more interaction with the people who are here. You know, kind of that campfire vibe.

In keeping with the Wild Edge brewing collective's mission, Robinson wants the new room to be available to the entire community and he hopes any local groups, businesses, and nonprofits who need a space will reach out to use it. To inquire about using the new barrel room, email wildedgebrew@gmail.com. Thanks for watching this edition of The Local News Network. I'm Connor Shreve.