Top 6 Breweries in Littleton (2026)

Locavore is the longest continuously operating independent brewery at a Littleton address, and after the closures that thinned this town's beer scene between 2019 and 2024, that longevity is itself a credential. It opened in November 2014 in the Columbine neighborhood west of Santa Fe on Bowles, and its own story page claims a small first: the first brewery in Littleton to set up shop in a business zone. The founders are an unusually well-documented pair. Jason Reinhardt served in the U.S. Navy, took a chemistry degree, and spent two decades testing drinking water for contaminants before turning that palate for what is in the glass toward brewing; Andy Nelson is an airline pilot who started fermenting hard cider with his father in the 1970s. The state licence file corroborates the partnership in the driest way possible: both licences are held by JANDY LLC — Jason and Andy.

The licence stack is the deepest of any independent here. Colorado's file records a Manufacturer (brewery) licence, 03-02840, and a wholesale beer licence, 03-02839, at 5950 South Platte Canyon Road, both current to June 2027 — and a third entry that no other brewery on this page has: an alternating proprietor premises licence, 03-10576, at Tommyknocker Brewery in Idaho Springs, which lets Locavore brew production batches on a second licensed system. That is why Locavore beer turns up in Colorado shops and restaurants while the other five independents on this list pour almost entirely across their own bars.

The taproom is the neighborhood institution the name promises: more than 30 taps across European and American styles, a fire pit patio and rear biergarten, more than a dozen pinball machines and dart lanes, and a standing welcome for well-behaved kids and dogs. There is no kitchen — food trucks and three nearby restaurants cover that. Its 211 Yelp reviews are the deepest review base of any Littleton independent. What it does not have is a Great American Beer Festival medal; no entry for Locavore appears in the official winners lists we searched. It ranks first on tenure, licence depth, and footprint, and that reasoning is stated rather than hidden.

Living the Dream holds the only Great American Beer Festival medal of any brewery ranked on this page, and in a market where medal walls are usually marketing, this one checks out: the published 2020 GABF winners list records bronze for Powder Run, a vanilla cream ale, in Category 7, Herb and Spice Beer, credited to Living the Dream Brewing Co. of Littleton, Colorado. The brewery was founded in 2014 by Jason Bell after 18 years in food, beverage, and hospitality, and spent its first decade at 12305 Dumont Way near Roxborough, at the far southwestern edge of the Littleton postal map.

The reason it sits second rather than first is a move, and the move is stated plainly because the brewery itself states it plainly. In early 2024 Living the Dream relocated its brewhouse and main taproom into the former Grist Brewing facility at 9150 Commerce Center Circle in Highlands Ranch, and its remaining Littleton-addressed presence is what its own site calls a satellite taproom in The Sterling Center at Sterling Ranch, next to Atlas Coffee. The state file mirrors the split exactly: the Manufacturer (brewery) licence, 03-02702, now sits at the Highlands Ranch address, while a wholesale beer licence, 03-20368, is recorded at 8155 Piney River Avenue in Littleton 80125. The beer is still brewed by a Littleton-born company; it is no longer brewed at a Littleton address.

The Sterling Ranch room is a good one on its own terms: a digital tapboard, ample indoor seating, dogs welcome on the patio, doors at 1pm daily, and the full range of ales, lagers, and seltzers from the Highlands Ranch brewhouse. For a reader in the fast-growing 80125 corridor it is the closest craft taproom on this page by miles. A medal-holding founder-run brewery with its production two miles over the county line was weighed against never-medaled breweries still brewing on site; reasonable people could order these two either way, and the reasoning is on the table.

Lariat Lodge is the one brewery on this list where dinner is the equal of the beer, and that is not a consolation prize — it is the whole model. Founders Anders and Debbie Ruikka, Minnesota transplants with Anders originally from Sweden, had no restaurant background at all; he was a mechanical engineer and she a former real estate agent when they opened Evergreen's first brewpub on Halloween of 2015. The Littleton location followed in 2019, off C-470 at Ken Caryl Avenue, and runs the same formula: house beer brewed on site, a full kitchen, and lodge-style rooms that fill with families rather than tasters chasing flights.

The paperwork tells you something the marketing does not. Lariat Lodge's Littleton licence, 03-12059, is a Brew Pub licence — the class Colorado issues where manufacture and on-premises sale are permitted together — and the state file records it as county-issued, which is the fastest proof that 12684 West Indore Place sits in unincorporated Jefferson County rather than inside Littleton's city limits. The Evergreen original holds its own county brewpub licence under Ruikka Inc, the founders' family company. Both were current on the file we downloaded in August 2026, the Littleton entry to July 2027.

No Lariat Lodge medal appears in the official GABF winners lists we searched, so it ranks here on what can be verified instead: nearly seven years trading at the Littleton address, doors open every day of the week from 11am to 9pm, and a Tripadvisor review base in which the pork green chili and the Reuben get named as often as the beer. For the west-side reader — Ken Caryl, the C-470 corridor, anyone coming off the hogback trails — it is the obvious first stop on this page, and the only one where you can order a full dinner without waiting on a food truck.