O There Are Days In This Life — Our Mutual Friend Brewing in Denver, Colorado
“This place is, and always will be, for everyone,” Our Mutual Friend Brewing Company’s head brewer Jan Chodkowski says. “Yeah.”
At this moment though, “everyone” is elsewhere. It’s a few hours before opening time on Monday, and after the madness that is the Great American Beer Festival (held annually every October in Denver, Colorado,) Jan, co-founder and managing partner Brandon Proff, and the rest of the team are working at a leisurely pace—a welcome change.
Our Mutual Friend, more commonly known as OMF, sits on Larimer Street, in Denver’s River North Arts District. Nicknamed “RiNo,” it’s an area full of life: blasts of colour and spray paint line the streets; bars, coffee shops, dispensaries, tattoo shops, and breweries—there’s 10 or so within a few blocks’ walk—intermingle; and on any given day the pavements are pleasantly abuzz with locals and tourists alike. A colourful, artistic part of Denver, neighbours double up as good friends, and the feeling of community, especially with regard to beer, is strong.
“OMF was one of the first to help turn RiNo into one of the best brewery neighbourhoods in the country,” Tristan Chan, founder of Denver-based magazine Porch Drinking tells me. Walking around the area, it certainly feels like a contender.
***
Vast blobs of blue, pink, turquoise, red, and yellow bound across the outside of the building, ducking under festoon lights above the patio, resplendent in the Colorado sunshine. Above the door, bold white letters exclaim “OMF” in exultant surprise. This striking aesthetic continues inside with shelves that reach from above the taps to the building’s ceiling dotted with bright colours in the form of ceramic dinosaurs (of which one made local news after its theft and subsequent return). These are joined by a rainbow of books of various genres (from travel guides to classic works of literature), an upside-down Pride flag, a scale model of a Maersk container ship, and countless other curios. As knick-knacks go, OMF seems to have it nailed.
If you pay close enough attention to these shelves, you can learn a lot about this brewery. A number of awards are hidden between skulls and houseplants, including a gold medal at the 2018 World Beer Cup, and a couple of silvers at GABF, all in sour and Brett beer categories. A copy of Charles Dickens’ novel Our Mutual Friend sits next to a postcard that exclaims “Dang!”, the brewery’s unofficial motto.
“I hadn’t read it—I found out later that it was a very depressing book,” Brandon says. “But the name just came from the fact that with everybody around me, I became friends with them through beer. The beer is what brings us all together.” I ask if beer is the friend in question. “Exactly,” he nods. “That’s where the name came from!”
OMF opened in 2012, just as Denver’s modern brewery boom was beginning. Brandon tells me that there were around a dozen breweries back when they opened, but now there are closer to 100. A number of these breweries have formed close friendships, and OMF counts other local breweries, such as TRVE and Cerebral, as such.
““They have a willingness to die on a hill for saison and other esoteric beer styles, all the while they’re making stellar zeitgeist beer.””
“Breweries band together within the realm of the years in which they open,” Brandon continues. “I think a lot of us naturally gravitate towards each other for our ethos or values; what we’re willing to talk about or what we want for the world. That, I would say, is one of the biggest things for breweries who become friends with each other—but I think a lot of it is who you go to when you’re scared and new. You go to the people that are in the same situation as you.”
“It always starts with a one-to-one connection, right?” Nick Nunns, TRVE’s founder tells me. “I’ve developed a strong friendship with Brandon over the past half-decade; we act as mutual counselors, helping each other work through the problems one has when one owns a brewery. We vent about the bad times and celebrate the good ones. Through him, I’ve been able to spend time with the rest of the crew over there and they’re all really wonderful folks.”
***
Sitting at the bar marveling at new finds in the endless array of miscellany above me, whilst Jan excitedly thrusts taster after taster at me, I start to get a feeling for OMF’s approach to brewing. From ripe and luscious IPAs that blast so much fruit right out of the glass to zingy fruited sours almost sticky in their jamminess, and from bready, herbaceous lagers through to endlessly complex saisons, it’s immediately clear that Jan and co haven’t hung their hats on any particular style or approach to brewing.
IPAs both New England and West Coast in origin coexist with cream ales and lagers, whilst bretted saisons and mixed-fermentation beers hint at their two foeders (adorably named Bert and Ernie). Along with numerous and varied wine and spirit barrels, these make up OMF’s wood ageing program, which feels extensive for a brewery so small.
“There’s a rough ethos! We just want to brew beers that seem like OMF beers—beers that are really flavourful, beers that are really approachable, and nothing too wild and zany. We don’t really make ‘stunt’ beers,” Jan chuckles.
“We don’t make beers that we wouldn’t drink, but are—I don’t want to say ‘trendy’...” adds Brandon, meaning exactly that. “We only make beers that are genuinely that which we would want to drink.”
Tucked away on a wall amongst countless brewery stickers is a number of small plaques: OMF were awarded Locally Minded Brewery of the Year several years in a row by the Colorado Malting Group. This is no surprise, given how important local ingredients are to the brewery—from Colorado-grown malt and hops right through to fruit grown in the state, they brew with intent with the ingredients they have.
“OMF has a focus on locally sourced ingredients,” TRVE’s Nick Nunns agrees. “They have a willingness to die on a hill for saison and other esoteric beer styles, all the while they’re making stellar zeitgeist beer.”
As with many breweries at the top of their game, crowd-pleasing ‘zeitgeist’ beer such as NEIPA complements more varied brewing, and this multi-dimensionality has helped OMF’s star shine bright in a busy city.
The very first beer I drank in Denver, fresh off the plane from London and thirsty, was a crisp lager on OMF’s patio. The second was the exact same, such was my enjoyment. Though I’ve only spent two respective weeks in the city, I’ve lost count of my trips to the, frankly, absurdly colourful taproom. To my mind, few breweries foster as friendly an atmosphere as OMF, and few are capable of infusing beers with as much joy.
“OMF is, in my opinion, one of the biggest success stories to emerge from the Denver beer scene from the last 10 years. “Brandon once admitted on our podcast that when they first launched, they weren't making quality beer and that if they were to open with those same beers in today's landscape, they wouldn't have made it,” Porch Drinking’s Tristan Chan tells me. “However, they were smart enough to institute a sensory panel early on to provide honest feedback, and I believe Jan's growth as a brewer has led to OMF becoming one of the city's best when it comes to overall beer portfolio.”
***
Back before its most recent brewery boom, RiNo’s landscape was made up of a lot of warehouses, and little else—there were few restaurants and only one or two breweries. Though rent was cheaper, a boon for the young OMF, as footfall was scarce. Without today’s vibrant surroundings, and with the excitement of a new venture all but worn off one year in, sales were low, and OMF was quiet.
““We just want to be kind to everyone, treat every single person with respect, and if you don’t like us, fuck off. I don’t need your six dollars!””
“We were just trying to figure out how to get people in on Tuesdays,” Brandon says. “We were out here on our own, and we thought we could give stuff away to get people in.”
It wasn’t a bad plan: after all, people love free stuff. Not long after this, the brewery’s Keep The Glass programme was born—every Tuesday you rock up, pay for one of several artist-designed glasses (which, as the name suggests is yours to take home) and a few pours, and settle into your evening. Over the six years it’s been running, Keep The Glass has picked up a strong following, and the team have been through 65 different designs.
Somewhere along the line, Hot Dog Mondays became a thing, too: you buy a beer, you get a free hot dog. In any other brewery, these schemes might be seen as cheap and cheerful marketing ploys, but here, it’s become part of the woodwork: regulars and friends (often one and the same) show up like clockwork, glasses fill up kitchen cabinets, hot dogs are scarfed down. “It’s a good deal,” says now-former taproom manager Michele Garrett, “but there’s a really good sense of community.”
This sense of community didn’t happen by accident—behind the bar, a framed sign reads: “We value your colour, class, creed, gender, & orientation. This is a safe space. Anything less will not be tolerated.” One of many of the same found throughout RiNo, this sign is indicative of OMF’s inclusive attitude, though it just touches the surface.
“I think that we feel—especially in this day and age with what’s going on—very adamant about being aggressively outspoken about [inclusivity], because I don’t want anybody to feel unsure about how we feel,” Brandon tells me, soberly.
Beyond being outspoken, OMF readily support Colorado charities: it’s 2019 Pride t-shirt raises funds for the Colorado Name Change Project, an organisation that helps trans and non-binary people officially update their name and gender marker.
“We’ve seen when people even hint at something they feel, and when people disagree and just say ‘I’m never going to that brewery again’ or ‘leave politics out of it’,” he says. “Why don’t you want to stand for something? You’re worried about selling a few more pints? Who gives a shit. I don’t care about losing sales. I don’t.”
Later, over a beer and a shot at the team’s favourite bar a short walk away, Michele says much the same: despite OMF being for everyone, there’s little patience for intolerance.
“It’s all in the name, Our Mutual Friend: we just want to be kind to everyone, treat every single person with respect, and if you don’t like us, fuck off. I don’t need your six dollars!”
