A New Year Beerthday for Bell Brothers
Bell Brothers is celebrating their 2nd anniversary with a full-fledged New Years' party. I sat down with Cody Bell recently to talk about their first year and plans for the future.
I hope you all had wonderful Christmas celebrations (or whatever holiday you observe)! As we wrap up 2023, I’m hard at work figuring out the awards for the Focal Pint Local Picks, which will be released next week (Exact date TBA).
Along with ringing in the New Year, Bell Brothers will be celebrating their 2nd Anniversary this Sunday with a party starting at 4pm. They have multiple new beer releases, live music and even a champagne toast to help ring in a new/third year.
I sat down with Cody Bell last week to check in on how the youngest Downtown brewery was doing.
So you’re celebrating two years now! How does that feel?
Cody Bell: There's definitely times where we’re like “wow, it's been two years already” but often I feel like it's been only 10 minutes since we started. On the other hand, there’s even days where it feels like it's been 10 years.
That's a good thing, right? It sounds like you're settling into your space and the downtown scene.
CB: Yeah. We're definitely kind of hitting our stride, getting things figured out.
We're playing with some details here and there, adding in more events, trying out new ways to create a fun community gathering place. We’re at the stage where we’re throwing out new ideas, trying out different things—really trying to see what people respond to and what sticks.
Aside from trying new things to get people in the door, do you feel like you're where you thought you'd be two years in?
CB: In some ways? Yeah, but others, no. We feel comfortable in the sense that I'm not sitting here like, oh man, how do I make sure I've got beer ready for this or how do I catch up on that or that? We have established brewing systems running, and great beers are coming out on time. Our current staffing is incredible and people are liking what we’re doing.
So, here at the end of year two, one thing I notice is that we’re getting pretty consisten four and five star reviews online, with the occasional bad review. Because of that, we're not sitting here thinking “what do we do instead?” People are pretty happy with what we're doing, so that feels good.
On the flip side, we're still not seeing the numbers we want, in terms of people coming in the doors, so that’s our focus this next year with more events and the like.
At two years we expected to have established our brand pretty well, but that’s something we’re still working towards. It’s a constant battle letting people know Bell Brothers is here.
I feel like some of that is what a lot of breweries are noticing post-pandemic. Bringing people back out of their homes, back into the public is a true struggle.
How has the current economy affected Bell Brothers?
CB: Our ingredient costs went up a little but not enough where we need to raise prices. I just need to increase our foot traffic and sell more to each customer. We don't need to charge more for a beer at this point. We just need to sell a couple more beers to each customer and we'll be fine.
We just need to sell a couple more beers to each customer and we'll be fine.
In your opinion, how has Downtown fared over the past year or so?
CB: I think downtown is doing all right, but I really think the city could do more in terms of ways to really get people downtown.
I've been to a lot of places, like Beale Street in Memphis, where they close down the downtown blocks regularly for block parties. It could be a really great draw to bring people downtown, both to explore what our businesses have to offer, but also to enjoy things like street vendors and live music. The kicker would be to allow open-carry, so you could grab a beer from Bell Brothers, a burger from another place and carry them down to watch live music elsewhere.
I think that would really drive people downtown, especially during summer. But even so, Colorado's weather is pretty nice, so it could happen year round.
Let’s get back to Focusing on Bell Brothers Beer…
What’s one thing you’ve dialed in with your processes, or hope to continue improving going into year three?
CB: Recently I've been really focusing on our beer’s finishing ph—really trying to tune that in because it can really affect the flavor and mouth feel substantially.
So I've been working with each beer to establish some guidelines for each style: how it’s supposed to look, what gravity it needs to finish at, what pH I’m targeting.
Beyond that, I'd like to try and win some more awards this year. Previously we’ve won Crowd Favorite at Bines and Brews in 2022 and Silver at Feast of Saint Arnold last year. I’d really like to step it up to the larger competitions like GABF, too.
Other than that, trying out just more, more different flavored stuff, like our series of Gruit beers. I did one earlier this year and we have a winter one on tap right now. I’m planning a spring Gruit coming up for release in April, most likely. Really, we’re just trying to see what people are responding to and keep going with that!
You’re releasing three beer releases for the anniversary, but which are you most excited for?
CB: I think the firkin, actually. It’s a Belgian dark strong with honey brewed with around 30 pounds of honey with another about half a pound of honey to prime the firkin. It's just gonna be delicious. We’ll be serving it using the beer engine, and everything's a little different through the hand pull. So I’m excited to see how it comes out.
How long have you had the hand pull? Do you do a lot of cask beers?
We got it earlier this year from a customer who wasn’t using it. It's not the most popular style, but it's 10 gallons of beer which doesn't cost that much for me to make. Even if I only sell half of it—great, we made money and people had a good time. It’s that opportunity to provide something that most breweries don’t do. It's all for fun, but also gives me a chance to try out new stuff at a much smaller scale. I did a hot cocoa stout and people loved it, but I would have never tried that recipe at a full scale. It kind of makes up for the fact we don’t have a true pilot system.
Yeah. But, uh, no, if we got to the point where I needed to, you know, I got busy. I don't know. It's kind of the, the future plan is like, yeah, when we get to that point where we're like, hey, I can't keep up, you know, the system here just can't make enough beer to keep up with our demand. Um, Then that's when it's time to get a new spot. Uh Hopefully, as we, as we build into that, we'll try and plan out like, OK, hey, we're hitting, we're seeing this trend, we're gonna hit, you know, peak, peak beer that we can produce in this space and you know, if we stay on this line, it'll be, you know, two years or a year. Ok, we need to start saving money because we need to buy the spin off location. Uh get going on that and you know, I would love for that to be the case, you know, to say, hey, yeah, we're gonna have to open, you know, the second Bell Brothers because we need to get a bigger brew system and a bigger space and then keep both. Um I think if we, if we get that brand awareness to the point where we are looking at having to get another space because we can't brew enough here. I would hate to give up this spot that is kind of like our core, core place that got it started birthplace. You don't want to give this up to open somewhere else. So I'd love to just keep this one. Get a second one, you know, go to like a 10 or 15 barrel system over there and then that would handle the, the work work horse brewing gets happens on that one. And then I could do a little test,
Looking towards the distant future, what’s the the long term goal for Bell Brothers?
CB: If you didn’t know already, we originally wanted to open up on the south side of Colorado Springs—towards the Widefield/Security area. It would be really cool to get to that point where we need to open a second place, and choose to do it down there.
The dream with a second spot would be to make it bigger, with enough capacity to feed both locations. Maybe it would be the time to push into canning for more off-site sales, but we still need to get to a place where we need that. It would be great to get a canning line, put together some cans, and start pushing into liquor stores down the road.
You have a limited number of your Rover Smasher barleywine bottles left, I noticed.
Are you planning any more bottle releases this next year?
CB: The Rover Smasher is definitely special, and there’s only a handful left. Every year when we do that one, Phantom Canyon helps us use their bottling system so we can get that packaged. We are looking at 16oz four-packs using our crowder machine, but it's not quite at the scale where we're sending it to liquor stores, yet. We'll have a case or two here and there.
If I were talking to someone with no prior knowledge, what could I say that Bell Brothers does best?
Our tagline is “precision engineered beers” because consistency is something we strive for in every aspect of Bell Brothers. One thing that’s been a surprise hit is our beer cocktails. We went the brewpub route in the beginning just to be able to have liquor and wine, but the beer cocktail menu ended up kind of being a serendipitously cool thing. We never planned for that, but now I'd say it's one of our, big, gold star items. I always have new ones coming out and I think it really creates a cool experience that people don't really get to have anywhere else.
Beyond the beer and the beer cocktails is our commitment to service and a friendly environment. Many of our reviews highlight great service, great service, great service. So I feel like we do a really good job there and when you come here, you're gonna get exactly what you expect because I do my best to make sure that every batch tastes exactly as it’s supposed to taste.
For anyone planning a new brewery, what’s some advice you would share from your first-hand experience?
CB: It's gonna take longer than you think to establish your brand. When we were first working on opening, we knew year one would be tough, but we envisioned that near the end of year one, Bell Brothers would be an established brand in the community.
Coming into the end of year two, we still have people coming in for the first time saying “I’ve never known you were here…”
So it's like it's going to take longer than you think to get that brand recognition established.
As far as something that has jumped out to me over the past two years, it’s just the little stuff. Beyond the beer or the food, the little details do matter a ton. Whether it's service, keeping the space clean, doing those little things just right really makes a big difference to your customers.
These days, the other big part is events. You have to have events. When we first opened, we thought we could do a little bit here and there, but now we need to have some event every night it seems.
So for a newcomer I’d recommend focusing on these:
Good Beer
Good Branding
Good Events
If you can do all those things great, you have a better chance at succeeding.
I hope if you need something to do this New Year’s Eve, you at least stop by Bell Brothers downtown to wish them well and grab a beer (or two).
Bell Brothers Anniversary New Year’s Party
Music by Roots & Rhythm Band 9pm - 12am
Beer Releases:
4pm: Event Horizon Black Lager
5pm: Pina Colada LEO Australian Pale Ale
6pm: Belgian Dark Strong Firkin Ale
Prize Drawings:
7pm: $10 Gift Card and Coaster Set
8pm: $15 Gift Card and Pint Glass
9pm: $20 Gift Card and T-Shirt
10pm: $25 Gift Card and Mug
11pm: Mug Club Membership and Mug