Denver
Denver for food and drink lovers: the Great American Beer Festival each autumn, held outdoors at the Levitt Pavilion in 2026.
- 1food festival
Food festivals in Denver
Quintin Soloviev, CC BY
Map of Denver
Denver, the capital of Colorado, sits about a mile above sea level, which gives it the nickname Mile High City. Each autumn it hosts the Great American Beer Festival. In 2026 it was held on 10 and 11 October. For that edition, the organisers moved the festival out of the Colorado Convention Center, downtown, to the Levitt Pavilion, an open-air venue in Ruby Hill Park, south-west of downtown.
Practical notes
- Union Station, downtown, is the hub of the city’s light rail and commuter trains, including the A Line from the airport.
- October afternoons can be warm or cool at this altitude: dress in layers for an outdoor session.
Denver facts worth knowing before a beer festival
Visit Denver, the city's convention and visitors bureau, points out that the 13th step on the west side of the Colorado State Capitol stands exactly 5,280 feet above sea level, one mile. In that thin air, it warns, alcoholic drinks pack more of a punch than at sea level, the city is very dry, and the sensible rule is to drink more water than usual. Denver sits on high plains 12 miles east of the foothills, not in the mountains, with a panorama of 200 named peaks and about 300 days of sunshine a year. The city counted 713,252 residents in 2022 and nearly 3 million in the metro area.
The bureau also records that the first permanent structure built in Denver, a gold-rush town founded in 1858, was a saloon.
From the airport to Union Station
The A Line train, run by the Regional Transportation District, links Denver International Airport with Union Station downtown in about 37 minutes over 23 miles and six intermediate stops, with departures every 15 minutes between 5 am and 8 pm. Union Station opened in 1881, was rebuilt in 1914 as the Beaux-Arts building that stands today and reopened in 2014 after a renovation, with restaurants, bars, shops and the Crawford Hotel inside. From there, light rail, local and regional buses, Amtrak and the free 16th Street shuttle fan out across the city.
Denver as a beer town
Visit Denver claims more breweries than any other U.S. city and the second-highest number per capita, and lists distilleries, wineries and cocktail lounges alongside them.