The proposed joint venture (not a merger) unites our two trailblazing Colorado craft breweries into one combined company. It allows us to share talent and resources and expand and develop our respective businesses.

The joint venture will create a brewing force with over four decades of craft beer experience, a production brewery with a potential annual capacity of approximately 60,000 barrels, three brewpubs, eight restaurants, and combined brewing production of nearly 40,000 barrels of craft beer in 2010.

It helps our already successful outfits continue our success. As Breck’s Ed Cerkovnik says in the official release, “This is a marriage of opportunity and not necessity.”

For us at Wynkoop Brewing it means we can quickly increase the amount of joy we can spread via Wynkoop beer and craft beer culture. We intend to shift the brewing and canning of Rail Yard and Silverback to Breck’s dream brewery here in Denver.

Breck’s brewery and savvy staff will also be a huge help in our continuing quest to improve the quality and reach of our beer. At our pub it means we’ll have more wiggle room to experiment and create new brews, both boundary pushers and classics.

It also means we can stop bumming jockey boxes from Breck’s Todd Thibault for our beer events. And we can spend time talking Washington Redskins footbal with Todd Usry, Breck’s head of brewing operations and our longtime buddy. (Our histories with the fine Breck folks go way back.)