A Brewery Experienced

Cam Stewart

A man in classic German attire pumps his accordion. His face rapidly changes from somber to grimacing while the camera zooms in on his eyes and a red light burns from beneath. Then in a Hendrix-like fury he sets his accordion on fire and dances feverishly around his blazing instrument. While this may all sound bizarre (and it definitely is), perhaps what is most surprising is that this video is not an advertisement for spicy German sausage but for Bell’s Brewery. Or maybe it’s only strange until you really think about it for a moment.

Bell’s Brewery, Inc. makes beer like Jimi Hendrix played the guitar: both using a shared knowledge of classical rules with which to experiment to produce something that is wild and unique. But while Hendrix revolutionized guitar music, Bell’s founder Larry Bell focuses instead on ales and stouts, porters and lagers.

And his focus has met its bounty.

Recently christened the “4^th Best Beer Town in America” by Livability.com, Kalamazoo, Michigan owes this acclaim largely to Bell’s success. The award comes at a time when Bell’s Brewery is focusing on expansion and distribution, its product being sold in fourteen states and counting.

In 2003 Bell’s opened a massive brewing facility in Comstock, a neighboring town to Kalamazoo. Its exterior is like some military base where every person is stiff and upright, all walking in front of grey, dwarfing brewing barrels that look like upturned beer mugs. Comstock’s quaint atmosphere and its spanning open land make it an obvious choice for Bell’s main brewing facility. Here, nearly 180,000 barrels are brewed annually, allowing the brewery to be 8^th in volume out of all domestic craft brews in 2010. While downtown Kalamazoo could not facilitate such immense beer production, it is still home to the brewery’s main pub and eatery, the Eccentric Café.

Walk through the heavy doors of Bell’s Eccentric Café and see what appears to be a haphazard combination of company product, local art and 1930’s African Safari. A tribal mask hangs to the right of the chalk board on which the bar’s draft beers are written. In three columns the available beers and occasional sangria are listed. High on the back walls are large posters advertising the brewery’s beers. They hang like grand statements of some higher knowledge, like what you are looking at is the culmination of infinite attempts at greatness. To judge whether or not the brewery has reached that level, one must only shift one’s gaze downward, to the swarms of people that, in gleeful cycles, parade to and from the bar with plastic cups of amber liquid.

It is March 26 and is the official release day of Bell’s most famous beer, Oberon. A wheat ale robust in fruity aromas and spicy malt, Oberon is the ultimate sign of spring in Kalamazoo. The bottle’s label looks like a Michigan sun spread out against a pale blue sky. Looking at the bottle is like looking into a summer afternoon void of any predicament or bad news. Drinking the beer is like one’s first experience listening to ‘Purple Haze’: everything you tasted before it becomes stale in a wash of intense flavor. Just like many would argue “Are You Experienced” to be Hendrix’s best work, many craft brew fanatics would claim Oberon to be Bell’s master work. Looking around the bar on that Monday night in March, a scene more reminiscent of a rowdy Saturday night, one would be hard-pressed to disagree.

I approach the bar with my plastic cup, a material used only on Oberon day due to the high-volume of customers, and order an Oberon. The bartender, a tall man with focused eyes, asks me if I would like an orange slice in my beer. All around me I notice patrons with slices of orange in their ales, so I say yes, I’d like mine with an orange slice. I drink the beer and it is cold. Behind me four men are toasting one another, singing the praises of warmer weather all while holding cups of foaming Oberon.

The beer comes from the same Comstock plant roughly 20 miles away. The same plant that is faced with the riveting yet daunting task of expansion, of pushing one’s product further into the market. But doing so can often be met with conflict. In 2006, Larry Bell pulled his product from the Illinois market due to a dispute over distribution rights within the state. Bell felt that his product was not going to be thoroughly represented under the strict laws and therefore decided to withdraw completely from the state, a bold statement that embodies the passion Bell has for his product.

Through clever labeling tactics Bell has begun to reintroduce his beer into the Chicago-area market. Under the guise of “Kalamazoo Beer,” Bell has put two new beers back into the state of Illinois, a move that proves his desire to become a national institution.

I return back from Oberon night at Bell’s and think again about the online commercial and its intended message. Why am I so convinced of the image of Larry Bell bent over his voodoo potion like Hendrix knelt before a guitar engulfed in flames?

Maybe there truly is an existent parallel between Jimi Hendrix and Bell’s beer. Something in the wailing blast of wheat and orange notes would make Jimi smile. After sipping his beer, that is.