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Into the Eccentric

Cam Stewart

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. 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 with the fact that Oberon’s release is something of a cultural event in Kalamazoo.

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.

Both Bell’s Brewery and its main eatery, the Eccentric Café are Kalamazoo institutions.

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. This café functions as the epicenter for everything Bell’s. It is the heart of the company’s endeavors and it embodies its many quirks and unique stylistic choices.

I return back to the Eccentric Café a month and a half later with my friend and Kalamazoo College Senior, Alex Griffin. It is a bright sunny afternoon and the inside of the café gleams with light. The crowd is older and dressed largely in business- casual attire. We approach the counter and the bartender studies our eyes. Amongst the clutter and décor of the Eccentric Café’s walls is perhaps the most important piece of wall fixtures, the draft board. Here the draft beers are written in chalk and updated daily. In the second column are some of the rotating beers, the seasonal ales and the beers available only at the café.

            Currently featured in the café are two of Bell’s Experimental Ales. These beers are brewed exclusively for the Eccentric Café and are attempts at seeing how differing hop levels affect a batch of beer. Another noticeable change from my last visit is the addition of Sangria to the board. A mixture of red wine and Bell’s fruity brew, The Oarsman Ale, the sangria tasted flat and bland- perhaps a result of mixing beer with wine.

            The rest of the board is filled with some of Bell’s more common brews. Toward the bottom of the list is The Smoked Stout. A dark beer that tastes like a breeze of campfire blown across a massive bar of dark chocolate, it is a brave mixture of disparate flavors.

            Also included on the list are Bell’s Amber Ale, Porter, Lager of the Lakes, Best Brown and Hopslam. Each of these beers are the result of Larry Bell and his team’s efforts, they are what keep crowds of people pouring through the Eccentric doors.

            Food at the café takes a backseat for beer. The Roast Beef Bleu Cheese Sandwich was a pricy venture into ordinary deli fare. For the price, one would expect a larger sandwich crafted out of high-quality ingredients, but what one receives instead is a basic sandwich whose sole purpose seems to soak up the beer.

            Five men sit at the bar, backs bent forward into the wooden counter, sipping beer and laughing loudly. They do not notice my friend and I as we approach the bar.  Alex engages the bartender and asks him what beer he would recommend.

“Seems like a good day for Deb’s Red,” says the bartender without hesitation, grinning.