Beers Made By Walking Brings RiNo Landscapes to Life

Beers Made By Walking is bringing a creative new tasting experience to Denver’s RiNo Art District. Seven local breweries have crafted unique beers inspired by the neighborhood’s murals, plants, public art, and history. The project offers a fresh way to experience the district – by bringing its landscape and culture into the glass.

In a press release, RiNo Art District (RAD) announced that it will be debuting the series of one-of-a-kind “landscape portraits in beer form” on Sunday, October 4.

The beers are crafted by seven Denver-area breweries, each inspired by a guided hike through the RiNo Art District. The public tasting caps off Art RiNo weekend with a free morning nature walk and a ticketed 21+ afternoon tasting. Tickets are on sale now.

Participating breweries include Flower Shop Beer Werks, Full Frame Beer, Our Mutual Friend Brewing Company, Ratio Beerworks, River North Brewery, Strange Craft Beer Company, and Woods Boss Brewing.

The project kicked off on July 15 when an invited group of brewers joined Portland-based artist and beer industry aficionado Eric Steen for a BMBW hike through RiNo Art District. Naturalist and botanical expertise was provided by Majestic View Nature Center and CSU Spur, Colorado State University’s campus at Denver’s National Western Center, alongside public art and history expertise from Denver Mural Tours. The urban hike explored the neighborhood’s murals, native plants, public art, ecology, and beer and neighborhood history, giving the brewers raw material for an imaginative series of site-specific beers built toward the October 4 tasting. Read more about the July 15 walk here.

“Beers Made By Walking is a program that asks brewers to make place-based beers inspired by what we see on the trail,” said Eric Steen, founder of BMBW, during the July urban hike around the RiNo Art District. “The whole intention behind this is that you all are making beer that is a portrait of this moment.”

“Fifteen years ago, I had the privilege of helping Eric Steen launch Beers Made By Walking in Colorado through UCCS’s Galleries of Contemporary Art (GOCA),” said Daisy Fodness-McGowan, Executive & Artistic Director of RiNo Art District. “Bringing Eric and this remarkable project back to Colorado now feels deeply full-circle: Art RiNo Festival arrives as we celebrate RAD’s 20-year history throughout 2026. This project embodies some of what I love most in the arts – the way they invite us to slow down, notice where we are, and transform our experience of place into something we can share. In this case, we can even raise a glass to it.”

Many of the breweries now rooted in RiNo have themselves taken part in Beers Made By Walking events over the program’s 15-year history, making this October’s tasting as much a homecoming for the program as a debut for the district.

Events | Sunday, October 4

Beers Made By Walking: Guided Nature Walk — 10–11:30 am | All ages | Free with registration (capped at 30)

Beers Made By Walking: Public Tasting — 2 pm–4:30 pm | 21+ | $35 in advance / $40 day of the event. Ticket includes a commemorative BMBW tasting glass. Guests should be prepared to show a valid ID at check-in.

GET TICKETS: https://rinoartdistrict.multipass.com/beers-made-by-walking

More about Beers Made By Walking: https://rinoartdistrict.org/do/beer
More about the July 15 walk + history of BMBW: https://rinoartdistrict.org/post/beers-made-by-walking

Beers Made By Walking also serves as a lead-in to the Great American Beer Festival, which runs October 10–11 in Denver.

RiNo Art District is grateful to Presenting Sponsor KeyBank, and to Denver Mural Tours, Majestic View Nature Center, and CSU Spur for their generous support, as well as to the RiNo Business Improvement District (BID) for grant funding that directly supports artistic programming, including Art RiNo Festival.

About Beers Made By Walking

Beers Made By Walking (BMBW) is a pioneering community art and environmental project founded in 2011 by artist, organizer, and brewer Eric Steen. The program challenges commercial craft breweries to step away from their brewhouses and onto urban and nature trails. Accompanied by local cultural experts, naturalists and botanists, brewers identify native plants along the trail and then craft limited-edition, experimental beers inspired by those specific ecosystems—essentially creating drinkable landscape portraits. Over the last 15 years, Steen has collaborated with more than 200 breweries across the United States, utilizing the beers as a creative medium to fundraise for local land trusts, trail conservation groups, and environmental nonprofits.

About RiNo Art District

RiNo Art District (RAD) is a Denver-based 501c3 nonprofit arts organization and one of Colorado’s first certified Creative Districts, dedicated to supporting artists, creative businesses, and community across the historic neighborhoods of Five Points, Cole, Globeville, and Elyria-Swansea. Founded in 2005 as a nonprofit arts organization, RAD stewards the district’s cultural identity through public art, galleries, events, and creative placemaking — working to ensure that diverse creative voices remain central to RiNo Art District’s future.