Two days with the two brothers of Two Brothers Brewing (Day 1)
Keith Gribbins
Jim (left) and Jason Ebel (right) are the brethern behind Two Brothers Brewing.
EDITOR’s NOTE: This is just Part I of our conversation with Two Brothers Brewing. Part II of the Ebel Dialogs will post tomorrow at 12:30 p.m., so clear your schedule.
Brothers in businesses always make for great stories. Find two obsessive overachievers from the same gene pool, get them focused on building a business, and you have a pretty good recipe for success. Jim and Jason Ebel, the two brothers behind Two Brothers Brewing Co., share that impressive sibling resume, but instead of cars or politics, these brothers are brewing geeks.
Both were ex-pats in Europe who fell in love with bold beer styles and started homebrewing, which led to the brothers opening a beer and wine making store called The Brewer’s Coop in Naperville, Ill., in 1992. Jim went to DePaul University’s College of Law, while Jason went to the Siebel Institute of Technology, earning his diploma in Brewing and Fermentation Sciences. Jason moved to Colorado to brew, but was coaxed back by brother Jim to start Two Brothers. Eighteen years later, Two Brothers produces some of the best craft beer in America through multiple brewpubs, a wholesaling company, 400 employees and distribution in 10 states (Illinois, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Arizona, Missouri, Iowa and Pennsylvania).
We got the opportunity to meet the Ebel brothers at the recent Craft Brewers Conference in Portland, and like most brothers, the two had plenty of interesting stories to tell. Ensuring a fitting backdrop, we met the brothers under the golden pendulum of the Oregon Convention Center. I grabbed a table (with CBB marketing guru Pete McNeil), and we stretched out our legs. In typical CBB fashion, I had no questions prepared. Luckily, the Ebel brothers were just naturally entertaining. I threw a few questions their way, and this excellent interview became the result.
CBB: Hey guys, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedules here at the Craft Brewers Conference — especially around lunch time. I’m sure you guys are pretty busy.
Jason: Yeah, I’m on the Craft Brewers Conference committee. We get all the presentations sent to us, and we select all the talks. Been doing that for 11 years; so yesterday, I was just doing intros for all the talks I helped pick and then helping to put panels together.
CBB: I imagine that job has grown since you’ve started.
Jason: On my gosh. Unbelievably. The number of tracks we have: You’ve got the marketing track, the brewery packaging track, the technical track. When I started, that didn’t exist. There were just a couple of things. Now the color chart is amazing for the display.
Jim: Ten tracks.
Jason: Exactly. But it’s been a great show. Over 11,000 people attending this year. There were maybe 500 at our first Craft Brewers Conference years ago.
Jim: No! Well, maybe 500, but there were only 50 breweries in the U.S. back then. ‘97 was our first conference. It’s changed quite a lot.
CBB: Has the feeling changed? You mentioned before we started that a high tide raises all boats, but doesn’t the industry feel a little different these days?
Jason: From the perspective of comradery, it still feels the same. But now, we don’t know anybody. We used to know everybody.
CBB: You’re like the old guys now?
Jim: That’s for sure.
Jason: I think it’s great overall. We’ve got so many people now bringing craft beer into the industry. The way I look at it, and I think about it on a regular basis. If you’re a good brewer, it makes you have to be even better.
Jim: Yep.
Jason: So for Two Brothers, we always have to be on top of our game. We’ve got to be better than we were yesterday, and we have to constantly be involved, because there are so many choices now.
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CBB: Speaking of choices, talk about the tracks you put together. What topics did you feel were relevant to the brewing industry?
Jason: I’m on the marketing and packaging brewer tracks. We have to divvy it up now because there are so many tracks. For us, it was important to talk about a couple of big things. How does an established brand continue to stay relevant? That was a big push this year; so we did one on how to maintain a flagship brand. So we brought in some start-ups who had no flagship brand intentionally, and on that same panel we had Sierra Nevada and Deschutes — guys who have super established flagship brands. We got them to talk about each philosophy so the attendees could begin to think about which direction they want to go. It helps to hear people in the same boat — like Sierra who at one point was 80 percent pale ale just 15 years ago, and now it’s down to 50 percent of its sales. How do you maintain that flagship, and do you want to?
Another big thing is social media and marketing and POS, but the newest portion of the tracks that I put together, in its third year now, is exit strategies. Because you’ve got guys who have been in the business for 30 plus years. They weren’t looking at legacies. They were pioneers in this industry as a whole. Now, they’re saying, “I’m tired. This is great, and I’ve built a hell of business, but what am I going to do? Maybe I don’t have kids or maybe my business partners just want to be finished — whatever it is — we need a way out.” It’s an interesting thought because even just 10 years ago, no one was thinking about that.
And how do you make them not feel guilty for wanting to get out. There’s nothing wrong with it. It happens in every single industry out there, right?
Jim: You have to retire at some point.
The impressive color chart of all the excellent seminar tracks at the CBC, some of which Two Brothers picked and helped put together.
CBB: Sooner than later in our opinion. In non-retirement news, what’s cool and new with Two Brothers? We did a story not too far back on you guys expanding and working with Mueller for a new centrifuge and fermentation tanks.
Jason: We did a new centrifuge about a year ago — not quite a year ago. Two weeks ago we installed a new high-speed can line.
CBB: Nice. Who are you using?
Jason: We used CFT. They are actually an Italian company, but they have a U.S. headquarters right outside of Chicago; so they have all their techs in America so they can service all their equipment. Great people. They put the machine in, and we’re super happy with it. It does 300 a minute. We shoehorned it in. We’re really running out of space in the brewery — just like everybody else. Normally, we only buy American-made stuff, but we went with these guys because they have such a strong presence in the Chicago area, and we knew we could get the support we needed from them if anything goes wrong.
Jim: It’s the right size and capacity too. Sometimes it goes from the little machine to the huge machine, finding that middle ground can be kind of tough.
Jason: Also, I don’t believe there are any seamers made in America, so you have to get your seamers overseas anyway. So if you go with someone like KHS for your filler, they’re just going to buy a seamer from Angelus or someone like that and ship it over here and marry it up. CFT is the only company that makes its own seamer too, so it’s integrated into the whole system, so the footprint was a lot smaller. And we’re out of space, so that worked well.
Also, we just opened a brewpub and restaurant in Arizona — in Scottsdale — that’s been going for about eight weeks.
CBB: How did you decide on Scottsdale?
Jim: Family. We’ve been making the pilgrimage down there for about 15 years.
Jason: Almost 20.
Jim: What? Goddamn it. I hate getting old. Anyway, we got to know the market real well down there. In fact, we’re actually the first brewpub in Scottsdale. It’s funny. Scottsdale is the second largest city in Arizona. I think a big part of it is that 10 years ago Scottsdale was primarily a retirement city. Now, there’s a lot younger demographic moving there, so the dynamics and the pull of craft beer down there makes it a pretty interesting market.
CBB: Are you looking to do more of that? Brewpubs, expanding.
AT THE SAME TIME: Jim: Possibly. Jason: In Arizona.
Jim: Come on! He wants to move there in three years, and so he’s got these grand plans for Arizona.
Jason: Look [smiling largely], at this brewpub, we’re putting in a 10-barrel [bbl] brewhouse. The restaurant portion is the only part open now. There’s no brewing going on there now and all the beer is coming out of Illinois. But the 10-bbl brewery being made by Mueller in Springfield is coming soon.
Two Brothers Tap House & Brewery located in Scottsdale, Ariz., is Two Brothers’ most recent restaurant project.
Jason: We really like those guys. They have fantastic engineering, we’ve built a great relationship and we have a lot of their tanks. This worked out really well. It’s a very nice system, and we’re super excited about it. It’s going to be installed this summer. It leaves their plant in mid-August.
CBB: What kinds of beers will you brew?
Jason: All the year around beers will still come from Illinois, but they’ll be doing a lot more of the fun stuff. They’ll have five serving tanks in the system and there will be five beers on tap at the pub — just made there.
CBB: Can you tell us about the evolution of the beer lately. What cool new techniques are you using over at Two Brothers? Are their certain ingredients, brands or styles that you’re getting geeked about these days?
Sorry folks, you’ll have to tune in tomorrow to hear the answer of that question. Part II of the Ebel Dialogs will post at 12:30 p.m.
