IOB - The igan Daily Weekend azine -=Thursday, Septemb17, 1998 0 0 2 Road-Trip of the Week Rell's: experience great beer from start to finish The MIChigan DaiIekend Magazi Gotafake ID? Beware: Area stores have seen it before BY .. S.. rt Weekend, Etc Editor forUaxing&S in Care Nees CLSTOCMU "How much do you know about brewing beer?," Bell's Brewer Steve Buszka asks cheerfully enough. But his face darkens a bit for his next and more serious inquiry: "You do drink beer, don't you?" In 1985, Bell's owner Larry Bell, whose home-brewed beer was already making cultured palates water all over the area, opted to try his hand at a little professional brewing. Armed with four employees and small-scale brewing equipment including boilers, storage drums, pressure gauges, bottling equip- ment and the like, Bell inked a lease to house his operations in a pair of ram- shackle Kalamazoo warehouses sur- rounded by little more than forgotten industrial wasteland. Today, while dingy trains still thunder by the brewery, Bell's has become a kind of crowded campus of busy buildings. Complete with a bar and outdoor beer garden, the brewery features an array of cluttered buildings where 40-plus employees and enormous pieces of machinery team up to brew enough beer to fill thousands of kegs and hundreds of thousands of bottles every month. "Microbreweries have caught on and become a very big deal recently," Buszka admits. "We were a bit ahead of our time over here." Bell says that even though the market may now be crowded with small brew- cries lookingw to cash in- businesis still boomin. "Microbrew sales have slowed since a few years ago, but we're still going strong with a growth rate last year of 15 or 20 percent," he said. "We used to grow at 59 percent but you can't grow that much every year." Bell's' 14 different varieties of beer begin in the company's mill house (a building not much bigger than a phone- booth) where as many as 25 different kinds of barley from all over the world are weighed and readied. A series of two- and three-story machines separate and boil the grain's sugar in a larger warehouse, while other steel-plated beasts add ingredients including assort- ed flavors of hops and other grains, and still others douse the whole concoction with yeast. The "Microbr resulting liquid is then piped into have caa open-air vats for fer- mentation - during afd becc which the vats' con- tents look more like bid deal surreal cheese pizza than the beverage We W Er that complements pizza so very well. OUr fim Each of the metal vats holds about 800 cases of beer; Bell's fills two at a time igh on ahead of - Steve Buszka Bell's Brewer turn up in stores one day." Buszka said Bell's currently sports about 40 different beer recipes, all of which have been or will be avail- able in the brew- ery's bar. The company sells about 30 percent of its beer in the Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids area, another 30 in Ann Arbor and bag of grains transforms into mountains of chilled silver kegs and box after sim- ple brown box of beer, the brewery also provides those who turn up the oppor- tunity to try beer unavailable anywhere else. "The people in the bar are our guinea pigs," Buszka explains. "With new recipes we usually brew about four kegs worth. If the employees like it, we sell it in the bar. If the customers like it, it may CLOSE TO CAMPUS PLENTY OF FREE PARKING To make an appointment call: 913-5557 Services will be discounted 15% with this ad. almost every day of the year. After about two days the contents of the vats have assumed a more beer-like color, but the process is still not quite finished. "We bottle all of our beer flat," Buszka explains. "We add sugar to the mix so that carbonation occurs in the bottle or the ke Bus~a fsai the ber sits in 42- degree concrete storage caverns for 10 days, then each keg and case is checked for pressure before it is sold on-site or trucked away. "We get to poke every keg to make sure the pressure's OK- that's always a lot of fun" he added. As well as teaching visitors how a ARBOR HILLS HIR & BODY SALON 2295 S. STATE ST. percent to students ii In i" i " III i 'gym 1 .._ .r/M W k 11- Ann Arbor m1i 241 E. Liberty Ann Arbor 998-0008 Fax 998-0303 Mon.-Sat. 11-12 AM Sun. 12 noon- 10 PM ~I~I wI Plymouth 447 Forest (Behind the Mayflower Hotel) 459-3332 Fax 459-3113 Mon.-Sat 11 AM-11 PM Sun. 12 noon-10 PM of M Women's Basketball Walk-On Tryouts October 19, 1998 7:00 pm @ Crisler Arena. customers in Detroit and another third to beer enthusiasts in the Chicago area. ~The remaining beer is shutled to parts of Northern Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. Bell's Amber Ale currently out- sels its micro-brewed brothers "about etery other brey'' Bells pro- duces on a dzl bas is Ambe Ale, Yearly the comfpanb sells sonc 20,000 kegs and e40,000 cases of beer "We have college kids in here all the time buying our kiegs, says bartender Rob Rostar, who recommends a glass of Bell's thick and hoppy Stout. "We can't really give much of a discount here, but they know they are getting a superior product."' Outside the comfortable, well-worn red brick bar, with its checkerboard tables and sparse decoration, is an enclosed outdoor patio that easily holds 700 people and is known lovingly as the "Beer Garden' A covered sstaesnetled under rows of sprawling hops vines, hosts many local acts who are attracted to the venue by the promise of all the good beer they can drink. Last weekend, local blues-stand-out Robert Bradley entertained close to1,000 beer-sipners. "We have a good time out here; Buszka explains. "It's worth the trip if you just want to hang out or if you're looking to take some beer home with you." And IBuszka says students need not worry about themhouranoe- ru ing over the taste of beer sold cold. "A beer only really gets skunked because of sunlight;' he explains. "Unless the beer goes from like 30 degrees up to 150 degrees the tempera- ture really won't affect the taste. If the beer's in your trunk, it's fine." If skunking the beer isn't a con- cern the only thing that may be left to worry about may be a speeding ticket. M Store owners say fake licenses from warmer states are common By Will Weissert Wekend, Etc. Editor If you've got a fake ID chances are it resembles a driver's license from Florida, California, New York or New Jersey. You are also most likely to use it late Friday or Saturday night - especially after a Wolverine football game or just before the hockey team takes the ice. If you've paid some sketchy fel- lows with a lamination machine to make one for you, it will feel, look or even smell funny. If you are in possession of an older ID that once belonged to a friend/sibling you may slip up when asked about the ID's birthday, address or even the spelling of "your" name. If you've tried to change one of the numbers of your date of birth using a pen or computer printer, you may get laughed at. Ann Arbor's bouncers and door- men, cashiers, rnanagers and store owners say they have seen and heard it all. They say they are very strict about carding everyone who wants to buy Iisuor 'l'hey say they know dohat t look i our when they look at an 11) and :hat they try very hard not toob.'oid "'l'here are six ways to tell if an ID is fake they are secrets of the trade say Bill I ages, owner of Bill's Market and Deli at, 709 Last Packard Rd. "I can go through them all in about five seconds while you stand there And also, if you don't look like your picture I'll catch you too." But fake lI~s do work, at least some of the time and at least for some stu- dents. "I had an ID taken away at READ DAILY ARTS. mug shots. "The police do checks - if we get "It's a caught we lose our liquor license and her e that will cost us our business," said a this is 9 Village Corner cashier, who asked (m y that his name not be published. "It's a problem here because of all the students." Most beer and liquor stores in town have some kind of "Wail of Shame" paying homage to past users t fake IDs in one form or another But Lagos said he doesn't see the need to put them on displ:ay Why put them up when we can add them to our collection downstairs, he asked with a smile. "e have more than a hundred down there mn we've never been 'Arong" Some students who will admit to having a fake ID say Ihey are using somebody else's old driver's license a small square piece of plastic that they may or may not have memorized back- ward and forward. "I just use a license that was my friend's - it looks enough like me that I usually don't have anyone ask me any- thing," said Sarah, an LSA sophomore who didn't want her last name pub- lished. "I really don't know anyone who St. Batwo said he does not keep fake IDs, only refuses sale of any kind of liquor. "If there s any problem they don't get any beer," he said. But I can't ake aw heir property tha 11 is stil theirs" And a en theud tore amd har empo ees at'al rtis have seen every S ruik i the book, it' not uncommon a encounter a new chap- te r "The funniest thing I ha d happen involved a guy who just didn't have an ID at all" said 'led Ilumphery, a manager at Diag Party Shoppe, 340 South State St. "He claimed to be a football player and was yelling and screaming when I wouldn't sell to him without his ID He just kept yelling 'you'll know me one day when I'm famous.' "I don't think he was ever famous." { (Village Corner) - my picture is still up over there and I've had peo- ple tell me they recognize me," said LSA senior Parag Desai, who is now 21. "I had four IDs at the time so it really wasn't a problem - it didn't slow me down much." At Village Corner, 601 South Forest St., Desai's ill-fated ID would have been cut to pieces and his picture plas- tered on walls, cash registers and coun- ters with dozens of other identification pi sc a actually had a fake one made for them - I've heard those look really bad." Lagos said he thinks students do not have IDs made in the area. Instead, they tend to come back from vacation excursions to warmer cli- mates armed with IDs that some- body made for them there - a prac- tice that explains the overflow of obviously fake IDs from the sunnier states, he said. But Gus Batwo, a manager at Campus Corner Party Store, says he 'ro e has seen IDs that usually come from somebody's older fraternity brother or college sorority sister "They have these IDs that are Cashier in the Greek hous- Village Co er es and we see them sometimes," said Batwo, whose store is located at 818 South State } "' " i Primo Kang, owrw of Blue Front, d It away If it Is a fake. 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