The Family

Leopold Bros. is an independently owned distillery founded by brothers Todd and Scott Leopold. Todd Leopold received his diploma in Malting & Brewing from the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1996. After graduation, he trained at the Doemens School in Munich focusing on the production of lager beers. He has apprenticed at several breweries and distilleries throughout Europe.

Scott Leopold began his career in manufacturing after receiving a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University then a Masters in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. He spent the early part of his career engineering environmentally sustainable manufacturing processes for Fortune 500 companies as well as designing wastewater treatment systems.

At Leopold Bros, we are dedicated to an ethos of hard work, humility, and a painstaking attention to detail. We produce each spirit using the best possible methods, rather than the easiest, and strive for balance and harmony throughout our portfolio. Fusing heritage craftsmanship with innovative design, our distillery seeks to restore the artisanship of previous generations while adding a conservationist mindset to that legacy.

By restoring practices long removed for their inefficiencies and remaining in concert with nature, our spirits are a return to analog style in an increasingly digital world.

The Distillery

In the mid-2000s, Todd and Scott relocated Leopold Bros. operations from Michigan to their home state of Colorado to focus solely on distilling. They opened shop in a small, rented, workspace in an industrial neighborhood in northeast Denver. Several years later, Todd and Scott purchased four acres of nearby land to build out their ideal distillery, including systems to create a zero-waste facility by recycling water, composting, and other methods. In addition a larger space to accommodate all their fermenters and stills, the site would also be home to Colorado's first distillery malting floor and kiln, as well as a dunnage-style barrelhouse, a tasting room, and education center. The Leopold Bros. distillery as it stands today opened in 2014.

The Process

We pride ourselves on using only the best grains, fruits, botanicals, herbs, and spices. We never use flavoring agents, artificial flavors or colors, glycol, glycerin, or high fructose corn syrup. We are committed to using only the highest quality ingredients from family farms and orchards like our rye fields located only twenty-five miles north of our distillery, the barley growing in Colorado's San Luis Valley, the Palisade peaches on Colorado's Western Slope, and more.

In keeping with the practices of traditional methods, we adhere to the Pre-Prohibition technique of mashing and fermenting our grains at lower temperatures for longer periods of time than most distilleries today. We even ferment mashes to make our own neutral grain spirit instead of shipping it in from a mass producer.

Distillation, Malting & Maturation

Taking one of the earliest possible steps in spirits production, we floor malt our own Colorado-grown grains on-site at our distillery. We are one of a handful of distilleries in North America, and the only one in Colorado, that utilizes this method that dates back centuries. Leopold Bros is home to eight stills in five different styles, made by some of the finest craftsmen in the world. We are the first distillery in the world in over fifty years to run distillations of a Three Chamber Still, a truly rare and unique piece of engineering and art. The results are two dozen unique spirits.

Our onsite dunnage-style barrelhouse is capable of holding up to two thousand barrels at full capacity. In maintaining our commitment to environmental sustainability, the entire barrelhouse is naturally lit by skylights, and contains no climate control thereby cutting down on water and electricity use.