After a decade in business, in three locations in Colorado Springs, Smiling Toad Brewery is leaping off into the sunset.

The brewery announced this week on social media that when the beer runs out, so will the Toad.

“After 10 fantastic years of brewing up a storm, Smiling Toad Brewery is calling it a decade. Don’t worry we are not hopping away just yet,” read the statement, which promised doors would remain open “until the beer runs dry,” in the next six weeks to two months.

“We want to thank you for joining us on this wild adventure filled with good times, great beers, and unforgettable memories. We could not have done this without you!” the statement went on. “Thanks for being such amazing guests and making (us) part of your family. It’s been a blast.”

Smiling Toad will be the third local brewery to turn off its taps in 2023.

Battle Mountain Brewing Co. closed its Springs location Saturday, with plans to relaunch the brand in Castle Rock. Rocky Mountain Brewery also called it quits after almost 15 years dispensing award-winning craft suds on

the city’s far east side.

While Smiling Toad co-founder Biff Morehead conceded he did shed a “small tear” as he wrote the Monday Facebook post announcing the closure, it’s a move the Springs’ oldest brewer said he is ready to make.

“It’s been a great time … (but) ... I’m 71 and done,” he said, adding that he’s “ready for retirement.”

One of the city’s most peripatetic breweries began as its smallest, first as Kevin Baity Kraft Beers, and then Smiling Toad, after home-brewer Morehead bought out his friend’s 2-year-old operation, one of the region’s first nanobreweries, in 2013.

Nano it was, with a half-barrel brewing system, a handful of taps and a taproom where more than a dozen patrons equaled a tight crowd.

In September 2014, Smiling Toad officially shed those tadpole beginnings when it moved to an end unit in a sprawling strip mall off South 8th Street. In early 2020, it expanded again. After many months of renovating and retrofitting a former hangover factory on the west side, the brewery reopened in the roughly 4,500-squarefoot property it had bought at 2028 Sheldon Ave.

The building underwent major renovations under the Toad’s relatively brief tenure, including a total interior remodel and infrastructure overhaul that included new wiring, water and sewer connectivity, before hitting the market last year at an asking price of $1.1 million, later whittled to $845,000.

Morehead said the building has sold, and the new owners plan to bring in a French restaurant.

And, “Know anybody looking for a 10 (beer-barrel) system?”