Aaron Uhl’s love of craft beer deserves a long chat accompanied by a few good brews. Isn’t that how all great stories are told? As the tale goes, Aaron always aspired to do something meaningful that would positively impact other people. Today, as owner of Uhl’s Brewing Company in Boulder, he’s doing just that.
Passion To Profession
When Aaron moved to Colorado in 1998, beer was not on his radar. However, after falling in love with the old Oasis Brewery, the Mountain Sun Pubs and Avery Brewing Co., he began hanging out with other beer connoisseurs and became immersed in the local brewing scene.
After years of delving into craft beers from all across the nation, he started home brewing on his all-grain system.
“The only reason I started brewing was because that Goose Island beer wasn't available to me in 2010, so I figured I could make something similar to it.”
His homebrew career spanned nine years and achieved more than 40 awards and recognitions. After being let go from his retail bike job of over seven years in the fall of 2017, Aaron knew there was more meant for him in the beer world. Like a fork in the road, he made a decision to move forward with his own business.
Making His Mark
By the end of the brand’s first year of business, he had acquired 35 accounts and was actively brewing new styles, looking for that one recipe that would stick. By the end of his second year of gypsy brewing the Uhl’s Brewing Co. brand, a local brewery reached out to see if Aaron was interested in buying their facility. It was at this time that he knew his purpose was starting to come to fruition—with the opening of Uhl's Brewing Company in March 2020.
“We opened as most brewhouses do, with a line-up above and beyond the standard beers currently offered in Boulder,” he explains. “We don't brew ambers, browns or porters, although nothing would stop us from doing so one day. Our main goal was to be Boulder's newest barrel-aged centric brewery. By the end of our first year, we had over 32 different beers aging in various spirit vessels to be pulled when the time was right, hand bottled, waxed, labeled and to be sold to the public.”
Now almost three years later, Aaron’s seven-barrel brewhouse has released 29 different barrel-aged beer projects and more than 225 unique styles of beer. “Since we are a barrel-centric brewery, February is a big month for us. Mountain Sun started the idea of Stout Month and sort of reeled away from it when the pandemic hit, so all the rest of the local breweries took it upon themselves to continue on with the tradition of Stout Month.” Throughout February, Uhl’s will be pulling stouts from the cellar and popping some new ones every week.
By mid-March, Uhl’s will have released 31 barrel-aged projects and will also be celebrating their third anniversary with their coveted Barrel Aged Big Mole Stout and a new Bourbon Barrel Aged Bramble Stout. Throughout the brewing process of all of these unique beers, Uhl’s only uses milk sugar in their popular Coffee Roasters recipe. All of their other recipes are vegan-friendly. “We have one core brand called Hop Down, our Hazy IPA, a Spring seasonal called Lager Down (American Hoppy Lager) and a Fall seasonal called Coffee Roasters (Imperial Milk Stout made with whole bean coffee).”
Coming from the homebrewing world has allowed him to do things that a lot of breweries would be hesitant to try. So today he is looking inward and outward to produce more barrel-aged inspired ales and stouts; as well as pushing boundaries with their IPAs to create a new style or two. The sky’s the limit.
UhlsBrewing.com
