TRVE Brewing plans second taproom near popular RiNo music venue

Music has always been at the bloody goat’s heart of TRVE Brewing Co. And music is what convinced the owners of the 11-year-old brewery that it was time for a second location.

At some point in 2024, TRVE will open a 3,500-square-foot taproom next to Denver’s Mission Ballroom, on the ground floor of the 11-story Mica RiNo apartment complex. The building is part of the larger North Wynkoop development at Brighton Boulevard and 43rd Street.

“I had been keeping my ear to the ground and looking at prospective locations. This was the first one that made a lot of sense,” brewery founder Nick Nunns said, talking about the proximity to the music venue. The taproom “will be about beer and heavy metal — the same things we have always been about.”

TRVE will join Left Hand Brewing, a 30-year-old Longmont-based operation, which opened its own 7,400-square-foot foot taproom in the Mission Ballroom complex in 2022.

Unlike TRVE’s existing location at 227 Broadway, the new place will feature a large patio and have a capacity of around 200 people. But Nunns said he plans to carry over some of the “design aesthetic” from TRVE’s deep, dark space on Broadway. For the uninitiated, that aesthetic features a pentagram altar, goat skull, candles and black walls.

TRVE’s heavy metal soundtrack – or, more specifically, the Scandinavian-influenced Black Metal sub-genre – will also make the journey to RiNo.

But TRVE will also put on its “adult pants,” Nunns said. “Now that we are planning in a bigger way on this project, it gave us an opportunity to decide what things are important in our spaces … the patio was a big checklist item, a big bucket list item for us.” The brewery’s existing space doesn’t have an outdoor area – aside from a neighboring parking lot that it borrows on occasion, and which it has dubbed “the dumpster garden.”