What happens when brewers slow down, walk through a neighborhood, and turn what they notice into beer?
On July 15, 2026 a group of Denver-area brewers set out on foot through the RiNo Art District alongside naturalists, historians, artists, and local storytellers. They walked past murals and studios, along streets lined with native and invasive plants, and through places that tell the story of RiNo's industrial, artistic, and brewing past.
“The whole intention behind this is that you all are making beer that is a portrait of this moment,” said Eric Steen, founder of Beers Made By Walking.
Over the following months, the brewers will turn what they saw, smelled, tasted, and learned into a collection of one-of-a-kind beers inspired by RiNo Art District. Those beers will debut at Beers Made By Walking on Sunday, October 4, closing out Art RiNo Festival.
Participating Breweries:
Flower Shop Beer Werks • Full Frame Beer • Our Mutual Friend Brewing Company • Ratio Beerworks • River North Brewery • Strange Craft Beer Company • Woods Boss Brewing
What Is Beers Made By Walking?
Beers Made By Walking began in 2011, when artist, organizer, and brewer Eric Steen started asking brewers to leave their brewhouses behind and walk.
The idea is simple: walk somewhere, pay attention, and make beer inspired by what you find.
Over the past 15 years, Steen has collaborated with more than 200 breweries across the country. Along the way, brewers have worked with naturalists, botanists, historians, artists, and other local experts to understand the places they're walking through—and then translate those observations into limited-edition beers.
The beer doesn't have to literally contain everything encountered along the way. As Steen explained during the RiNo walk, “Take inspiration from the plants. You might not be able to find the exact thing that you're looking for, but you can find a variation of it commercially.”
That's part of what makes BMBW an art project as much as a brewing exercise. The walk provides raw material; what the brewers do with it is up to them.
Beers Made By Walking's connection to RiNo reaches back to its Colorado beginnings. In 2011, Eric Steen launched the program through UCCS's Galleries of Contemporary Art, where Daisy Fodness-McGowan helped him bring the project to Colorado. Fifteen years later, Daisy is Executive & Artistic Director of RiNo Art District, bringing Steen and BMBW back to Colorado for the Art RiNo Festival.
The RiNo Art District Walk
The RiNo project began with an invited group of brewers meeting Steen for a guided urban hike through the district.
Joining them were:
Eric Steen
Founder, Beers Made By Walking
Daisy Fodness-McGowan
Executive & Artistic Director, RiNo Art District
Lindsay Gillis and Maria Thomson
Majestic View Nature Center
Maeson Cox
CSU Spur (Colorado State University's campus at Denver's National Western Center, located right in the RiNo Art District)
Randy Hunt
Denver Graffiti Tours
Jonathan Shikes
Denver beer historian and Entertainment Editor at The Denver Post
Together, the group explored murals, native plants, public art, ecology, beer history, and neighborhood history, giving the participating brewers a closer look at the layers of place that often get overlooked while moving through the city.
Photographer Daniel Flanders documented the day as the group moved through the district, capturing the people, places, plants, and conversations that became part of the brewers' creative process.
A Different Way of Looking at RiNo
One of the most interesting parts of the walk was how quickly an ordinary city block could become a source of brewing inspiration.
The naturalists pointed out plants growing along sidewalks and in the spaces between buildings, explaining which were native, which were introduced, which were invasive, and which had potential culinary uses.
At one point, the group stopped to examine common purslane, a plant growing in a sidewalk crack.
Its flavor? “Sour and lemony, which is kind of unique.”
Almost immediately, the conversation shifted toward beer: could that bright, lemony character inspire a refreshing wheat beer?
The group also talked about roses, including the possibility of using rose petals in beer.
“People have also used rose petals in beer. It's really soft, delicate; not a lot of people are gonna actually taste it, you know. But if you put it into a really light saison or a golden ale or something like that, you might be able to get some aroma off of it.”
Rose hips offered another point of connection between the natural landscape and brewing. They ripen toward the end of summer, and their flavor changes after a hard frost as starches convert to sugars.
Other plants sparked more unusual ideas. The group discussed sage, mustard-family plants, and garden cress—including the possibility of creating a beer around the spicy character of mustard greens.
“If you wanna do something really interesting, I know that there's chili pepper beers and all of that, but graden cress is a very, very big one.”
A Walk Through RiNo's Brewing History
Plants were only part of what the brewers were gathering along the way.
Jonathan Shikes, Denver beer historian and The Denver Post Entertainment Editor, helped connect the current brewing scene to the city's much longer history.
The group learned that only four Colorado breweries survived Prohibition.
After Tivoli closed in the 1960s, Denver went roughly two decades without commercial beer production.
“There were no beers brewed here for 20 years,” said Shikes. “There was lots of home brewing… including me.”
The story eventually led to RiNo's own brewery boom, including the arrival of River North Brewery and the other breweries that helped establish the neighborhood as a destination for craft beer.
For brewers walking through the district today, that history is hard to separate from the present. Breweries occupy former industrial buildings. Old railroad infrastructure remains woven into the neighborhood. Former warehouses have become studios, galleries, restaurants, and gathering places.
For the brewers on the walk, all of that history became part of the landscape they were being asked to interpret.
Art, Industry, and a Changing Neighborhood
The walk also moved through RiNo's history as an arts district, with Randy Hunt of Denver Graffiti Tours sharing stories about the murals, graffiti crews, artists, and buildings along the route.
One story traced the connection between graffiti and the freight trains that carried the art beyond New York City:
“They started in New York City painting on transit cars, and then as soon as they filled all those, they started painting on freight cars. And then as the freight cars made it from New York to Boston, Philly, Denver, wherever, that's how the art spread.”
The group also stopped to talk about the artists who moved into RiNo's industrial buildings in the 1990s, when inexpensive warehouses offered space for studios and galleries. In 2005, the RiNo Art District was created to help preserve that creative culture. Today, that important history exists alongside rapid development and rising costs.
The walk wasn't designed to resolve those tensions. It was simply another way of seeing them… and considering how the neighborhood's past and present might become part of what gets made here next.
Seven Brewers. Seven Takes on RiNo.
After several hours of walking, talking, looking, tasting, and taking notes, the brewers headed back to their breweries with a very different kind of recipe development ahead.
Seven Denver-area breweries are participating in the RiNo project:
- Flower Shop Beer Werks
- Full Frame Beer
- Our Mutual Friend Brewing Company
- Ratio Beerworks
- River North Brewery
- Strange Craft Beer Company
- Woods Boss Brewing
Sunday, October 4
Beers Made By Walking will unfold on Sunday, October 4 during two public events at the RiNo ArtPark (1900 35th St):
Guided Nature Walk
10–11:30 AM
All ages • Free with registration
Limited to 30 participants
The morning walk gives the public an opportunity to experience a shorter version of the same place-based process that inspired the brewers in July.
Public Tasting
2–4:30 PM
21+ • $35 in advance / $40 day of event
The afternoon tasting is your chance to taste the beers created in response to the RiNo walk. Each brewery will bring its own interpretation of the district, creating a lineup that exists specifically because these brewers spent time looking closely at this particular place.
Tickets include a commemorative Beers Made By Walking tasting glass.
Guests attending the tasting must be 21+ and should be prepared to show a valid ID at check-in.
Ready to taste RiNo?
BUY TICKETS
All proceeds from ticket sales benefit the programs of RiNo Art District, a nonprofit bringing more art, creativity, free events, and vital programs to the certified Creative District in service to the historic north Denver neighborhoods it overlays: Five Points, Cole, Globeville, and Elyria-Swansea.