Encore Magazine September 2021

'It's Been Quite a Story' Larry Bell has changed beer for the better

BY JOHN LIBERTY

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ven after 36 years in the business, Larry Bell still gets a kick out of seeing his beer as he travels the country.

For example, during a six–week trip he took to Arizona earlier this year to coincide with the Chicago Cubs’ spring training, Bell enjoyed a Two Hearted Ale from a golf course clubhouse. Since Bell’s Brewery is now the seventh largest U.S. craft brewery by volume sales, with distribution to 43 states, its portfolio of beers has become easier to find. But for the head of an empire that started in 1985 with $200 and a 15–gallon soup kettle, little moments still matter.

“It still gives me such a thrill to be so far away from home and to find my beer on tap, and it was delicious. It makes me giggle,” says the 63–year–old founder and president of Bell’s.

Over a series of phone interviews starting in June 2020, Bell discussed a range of topics, including the pandemic, his health, his community involvement, his philanthropy, his huge collection of brewery–related items, and his succession plan.

For many in the area, Bell's biography and the origins of the brewery are well known. He moved from Chicago to Kalamazoo in 1976 to study history at Kalamazoo College. While working at the original Sarkozy Bakery, he was introduced to the world of grains and fermentation. He launched his home–brew store in July 1983 and sold his first beer on Sept. 19, 1985. In the decades since, Bell and his brewery have helped transform the country’s drinking habits and turn Michigan into one of the premier beer states in the nation.

David Ringler — the owner of Cedar Springs Brewing Co., just north of Grand Rapids, vice president of the Michigan Brewers Guild, and a Kalamazoo College graduate who worked at Munchie Mart during his college days — says he remembers drinking Bell’s beer in the early days of Bell’s Brewery, when it covered its brewing equipment with plastic cling wrap to keep undesirable elements from the atmosphere from getting into the brew. Ringler says Michigan beer owes a “debt of gratitude” to Bell for laying the industry’s foundation.

“If there’s anything about Larry that can be said, it’s that he does what he believes is right,” Ringler says. “Whether you agree or disagree, he’s going to do what he thinks is right. You’ve got to have a lot of respect for someone who lives with integrity.”

‘The right way ’ Along the way to the massive growth of his company, Bell helped change outdated industry legislation and became entangled in several legal battles in many states — often over distribution agreements — developing a reputation as a confident, hard–driving businessman with his own unique set of standards.

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Charlie Papazian, the author of The Complete Joy of Home Brewing (1984), is considered the godfather of home brewing after releasing his popular book on the subject in 1984. Papazian also founded the Association of Brewers and the Great American Beer Festival and was the long–running president of the Brewers Association, the Colorado– based trade organization promoting U.S. craft beer and home brewing.

Papazian says he remembers hearing about Bell and his Cherry Stout despite Kalamazoo being “off the beaten track” of U.S. beer. It was “very extreme” to use fruit in beer in the late ’80s, Papazian says, and Bell quickly became known at brewing conferences and festivals.

“People kind of migrated to Larry. He was always telling stories.

People loved to hear his stories. He was going against the grain and winning,” Papazian says during a phone interview from his home in Colorado.

Papazian eventually made treks to Kalamazoo, including one in 1993 to see Bell’s Eccentric Cafe, the first on–site taproom for a Michigan brewery. He returned several years later to take part in Eccentric Day, Bell's Brewery's annual winter celebration where people are encouraged “to come as you aren’t.” Papazian calls Bell a “leading maverick” in U.S. craft beer, particularly for his role in rather public battles with distributors.

“He’s fiercely independent," Papazian says. “He has always been one of the leading advocates of doing things — I want to say two words at the same time — the right way and his way. And his way, more often than not, was the right way for him and his brewery. Whether it’s retailing or distribution or trade practices, he was above–board. (He was) going by the book in some ways but protesting in some ways that the book wasn’t written in a way that’s fair to smaller businesses.

He pushed the envelope and oftentimes got things straightened out, whether that’s on a local level or an example for a national level as well.

"He wasn’t afraid to take people to task, whether it’s to court or whether it was contractual–type stuff. He did what he thought was fair and what was right for all parties, not just one–sided agreements.

He took a stand and often won. That set a precedent, certainly in national beer–distribution laws. If it happened in Michigan and someone is willing to fight for it and win, other breweries in other states take note and use those incidents as examples.”

An eye on succession Bell is proud of his brewery’s legacy of independence. In his early and mid–20s, Bell worked at the downtown Kalamazoo private dinner club The Park Club (he is now the president of its Board of Directors), in part to network with potential investors in his brewery idea and “to get paid