USA, CO: Incantation Brewing shuts down, closing two locations

Incantation Brewing at 4233 South Buckley Road in Aurora and Incantation Beer and Coffee at 415 South Cherokee Street in the Baker neighborhood announced on January 24 that it will close its doors during the weekend.

Saturday, January 25, will be the final day of coffee and beer service at its Denver taproom. The Aurora location is already marked on Google as permanently closed.

Sean Guerrero originally opened the Aurora taproom as Jade Mountain Brewery & Tea House in 2021, nabbing our Best of Denver pick for Best New Collaborative Brewery the following year. But in February 2024, Guerrero rebranded as Incantation, adding a heavy metal edge to the concept. He debuted the Baker location in the former Field and Forest space last August.

In a lengthy post on the brewery's website, Guerrero says the decision is the result of years of struggles at both Incantation and Jade Mountain.

In his statement, Guerrero notes that the seeds of the brewery were planted ten years ago while in China and that he opened “with the goal of creating something truly unique. I wanted to create something that no one had ever seen or tasted before.”

The first iteration of Jade Mountain was forged in a teahouse in China. "I moved to a foreign country, just because it was so difficult to get into the beer industry here in Colorado," he writes. "I taught English during the day and made and sold beer in the evenings. The beer I made was terrible, I had no teacher, no one to show me what to do ... I made beer every day, figured out what worked and what didn't."

As he mastered the language and built a community around beer made with a wide variety of local ingredients, he says he wanted to showcase what he had learned in China back home in Aurora. On May 1, 2021, he opened Jade Mountain Brewery & Teahouse to share the culture and flavors that held such a special place for him, but it was not embraced as planned.

"Was it exactly how I hoped it would go? Not exactly. We struggled from the day we opened our doors. Despite creating something truly unique in the Colorado beer scene, we just never gained the following that we had hoped for," Guerrero writes. "Maybe our branding was confusing, our beer names and styles. Perhaps what I created was too different, too niche, or, more likely, it was because we opened in the middle of COVID in an uncertain political and economic climate."

25 January, 2025