It was mid-summer 2020, and Kyle Carbaugh had a choice. He could either continue to brew and can beer for distribution to the Denver-area liquor stores that were demanding it during the rush for stay-at-home drinking, or he could focus on making a new line of pulpy, somewhat controversial fruit beers that were selling out within minutes at Greeley’s Wiley Roots Brewing, which Carbaugh and his wife, Miranda, founded in 2013.
“In a pandemic, how do you choose between being able to make money in the taproom or satisfying orders from your distributor?” he asks. “We wanted to do both.”
So that s exactly what Carbaugh is doing. In early December, Wiley Roots took delivery of a huge new thirty-barrel brewhouse that will replace the seven-barrel system that has done the job for the past several years. Only a few Colorado breweries own systems this big, and most are among the state’s largest beer makers.