Despite much news to the contrary, the beer festival as we know it is not dead. While your mom and pop fest featuring a couple local breweries’ standard pours is indeed not doing well in the current climate, there is still room for a top notch festival featuring the best breweries and their best beers to thrive. To that latter end, the 2025 WeldWerks Invitational Festival was a roaring success. 

Kristin Popcheff, Director of Experience for WeldWerks, reiterated how well the festival went. “After a three year hiatus, our team was extremely eager to welcome back our brewery friends and guests to share in the WeldWerks Invitational Festival experience! It was extremely humbling to see people coming from literally all over the world to experience our Invitational Festival, and we were thrilled to see how engaged and enthusiastic everyone was to be in Greeley.” Those brewing compatriots totaled 45 who poured over 130 beers during the festival’s two sessions.

This year’s festival iteration moved from June to February, a potentially fraught decision considering the unpredictability of winter in Colorado and the event’s occurrence on Super Bowl weekend. Despite this, more tickets were sold compared to 2022 with Session 1 selling out and Session 2 nearly doing so. All in, just shy of 1,200 tickets were sold for both sessions combined. While 600 attendees per session seems like a lot to fit in a DoubleTree ballroom, the festival never felt overly crowded. Some of the most hype breweries and beers occasionally had long lines, but there were always less crowded booths and empty areas to be found.

PorchDrinking set out to try as many beers as possible at the festival, but time and reasonable sobriety constraints naturally limited our intake. Of what we did sample, these are some of our favorite pours, listed in rough order from lightest to heaviest.

Messorem Bracitorium La Mort Premium

A pleasant surprise, this Czech Lager from Montreal, Canada was very true to style, accentuated by a lovely breadiness.

Pinthouse Pizza Buddy’s Lager

This collab with Other Half, Highland Park, and Breakside nailed the sweet spot of low ABV and big hop punch.

Amalgam Brewing Uncharted Paths

Amalgam’s first ever New Zealand Pils highlighted their ability to blend easy drinking Lagers with a bold hop profile.

Cohesion Brewing Nakuřované

Using malt from Troubadour Maltings that featured a new wood variety, this Smoked Czech Lager hit on the campfire sensation from initial sniff all the way through multiple tastings while still maintaining Cohesion’s legendary drinkability.

Phase Three Brewing Apres: Peach

A surprise collab drop with Casey had a long line forming, and patient patrons were rewarded with a lovely Saison balancing stone fruit funk with strong tartness.

North Park Beer DDH Hop-Fu

These San Diego masters unleashed the Double Dry Hopped version of their flagship IPA, packing even more juicy hop goodness into an already great West Coast IPA.

Russian River Brewing Pliny the Younger

The legend made its 2025 Colorado debut at the WeldWerks Invitational and appropriately garnered one of the longest lines of the day. Long live the OG king of Triple West Coast IPAs.

Mikerphone Brewing Yakety Yak Barleywine

This 16.9% double barrel aged Barleywine packed a figgy oaky caramel punch capped off with spirit forward assertiveness.

3 Sons Brewing Double Barrel SXXXY Select Barleywine

Beers are always extra sexy when poured from a magnum, and this Florida big boy was no exception.

Voodoo Brewing Dolk

Voodoo brought the heat with this 50 month bourbon BA Stout that oozed with barrel character.

WeldWerks Brewing Macaroon Medianoche

This collab used North Park’s adjunct blend to lend further depth to the base Medianoche, creating a decadent liquid Mounds bar.

Barrel Aged Stouts

There were so many incredible hype BA Stouts that we could not narrow them down. In no particular order, all these were world class beers PorchDrinking could have written separate articles on. There was Toppling Goliath Brewing Assassin with Coconut, Pecan and Vanilla, Side Project Brewing 11 Candles, Xul Beer Double Barrel Das Cake, Phase Three Brewing Eunoia 18, and Mortalis Brewing Thanatos. 

Corporate Ladder Brewing Dessert Station: Rum BA Butter Beer

Last but not least, perhaps the most unique beer we tried was this gluten free dessert beer aged in rum barrels and then conditioned on cream soda, butterscotch, and vanilla soft serve. A flavor explosion that narrowly avoided being overly sweet, this beer truly lacks classification.

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