Four more Front Range breweries closing their doors

New breweries have been opening at a furious pace in Colorado over the last several months — with more than a dozen more on pace to pour their first beers by the end of 2023.

But when the glass is half full, it also means it’s half empty. In the past few weeks, four Front Range breweries or brewery-owned taprooms have closed or announced imminent closures.

Smiling Toad Brewery, Colorado Springs

Smiling Toad Brewing, which was founded in 2013 before closing temporarily in 2020 and reopening a year later in a new location, has announced the end of the road.

“We have news to share. After 10 fantastic years of brewing up a storm, Smiling Toad Brewery is calling it a decade,” owners Bill and Patti Biff wrote on Facebook on April 3. But the brewery plans to keep the taps open into May (or until the beer runs dry).

Front Range Brewing, Lafayette

The Hoglund and Nichols families, owners of Front Range Brewing, made the “extremely challenging decision” to throw in the towel on March 24 after 10 years. They cited the pandemic and its effects in a note they wrote to customers on Facebook last month.

“This decision has not been easy to come to terms with. As this business has given us all an immense amount of joy and purpose. We love this community and are honored to have been a part of it in such a special way. FRBC was truly a living dream for us, but it’s our time to step away,” the message read. “It has been challenging for small businesses post-pandemic as most of you can see. … Despite relentless efforts to overcome the hurdles we have faced, it has come down to the last line that our family simply can’t negate.”

Crow Hop Brewing, Loveland

After a decade in Loveland, Crow Hop Brewing announced that will close its taproom sometime in late July, although it plans to continue to make and sell beer in stores.

The brewery said the effects of the pandemic were simply too much to overcome and that the SBA “continually rejected our efforts to obtain an Economic Injury Disaster Loan.”

“We do not make this decision lightly, but it has become clear that the taproom’s sales just can’t sustain its operations, and we’ve run out of reasonable options to continue to support it,” the owners wrote on the brewery’s website. “Perhaps we would have been able to stay open and recover if the SBA had processed our application, perhaps not, but regardless, we no longer have the resources to keep the taproom going on our own.