Boulder icon finds a home at former Denver church
Like a phoenix from the ashes, Boulder’s once-beloved Oasis Brewing is rising once again in Colorado.
Oasis brewed its Egyptian-themed beers — Scarab Red, Tut Brown Ale and Zoser Stout being the most notable — in Boulder for the better part of the 1990s. Those three brews, plus some new concoctions, will make their on-tap return next month when Oasis reopens in Denver.
Founded in 1991, it was one of the early purveyors of craft beer. Despite its Egyptian decor and naming scheme, the brewery churned out English-style beers. The brewery won several awards from the Great American Beer Fest back in the day.
Oasis expanded, but it was too much, too fast, founder George Hanna said, and “probably” the reason the brewery closed in the early 2000s.
But the legacy of Oasis never quite faded from the minds of Hanna’s son, Jesse, who still lives in Boulder. Jesse and his brotherin-law Hawk Vanek of Lafayette asked Han- na to restart the brewery.
The beers came first, via contract brewing, to liquor stores around the state. Hanna and family began looking for brewery space, somewhere to resurrect Oasis’ physical form. Boulder was the first choice.
“We were very near signing a contract for a building in Boulder,” Hanna said. “But our negotiations broke down.”
Oasis will go instead to an 86-year-old church in Denver’s Highland Square, as Westword reported earlier this year. Six beers will be on tap to start, a number that will double over time. Original recipes will join more experimental styles and, perhaps, Hanna said, a new staple: a “phoenix brew” to honor the brand’s rebirth.
One of the original brewers will be joining the operation, but Hanna said he was “not at liberty to divulge that name.”
Jamie Fox was a frequent buyer of Oasis beer in college, where he began dabbling in home brewing. “At that time, there was a lot of crappy beer (and) not a lot of craft,” Fox recalled. “Maybe six different breweries? So it was nice to have something good.”
Fox got into the brewery game himself, opening Gunbarrel Brewing Company with wife, Marie, earlier this year. By chance, the Foxes ended up with Hanna’s old mash tun and brew kettle, sold to Bhakti Chai after Oasis closed and then to Gunbarrel Brewing.
It has been 17 years since Fox has tasted an Oasis Red Scarab, Tut Brown or Zoser Stout. It will be “pretty cool to taste them after all this time,” he said.