Twenty-five years later, Jim, left, and Jason Ebel, right, continue to oversee the growing operations at Warrenville-based Two Brothers Brewing Company.
It began 25 years ago with two brothers, a pair of hand-me-down dairy tanks and a dream.
Today, Two Brothers Brewing Company has blossomed into a beloved and still-growing Warrenville-based business that symbolizes the boom that occurred in the craft beer industry during the last two-plus decades.
Once at the cutting edge of an unknown future, Jason and Jim Ebel — the “Two Brothers” — are now grizzled veterans and an inspiration to aspiring amateur brewers.
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Two Brothers Brewing, the brothers are hosting a free event on April 21 at the Two Brothers Roundhouse restaurant in Aurora. The party will feature a History Flight with new and returning beers, spirits and coffee, the release on draft of a Two Brothers Double IPA and live music from Old Shoe, Jake Mack and others.
The brothers are hoping for a big crowd to celebrate the past, present and future of a local staple.
“It’s been a 25-year labor of love,” Jason Ebel said. “It’s hard to believe we’ve been at it this long.”
A gift from grandpa
Asked what he was doing 25 years ago, Jason Ebel said, “probably not much.”
He and his brother likely were waiting on their first batch of official “Two Brothers” beer to finish the weekslong process of actually becoming drinkable. Then they had to figure out where to sell their barrels in an industry that heavily leaned on established distributors of Budweiser, Miller and other brewing powers.
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“We had two fermenters and no accounts,” Ebel said. “When we brewed two batches of beer, we had to wait three weeks for them to be ready. We just tried to find a distributor who would take our beer and sell it in the Chicago market.”
Jason Ebel, 50, developed a love of brewing beer while studying abroad in France. Jim, 54, did the same and the two decided to take their shot at the burgeoning business of “micro-brewing.”
After beginning to learn the ropes in Denver, Jason Ebel earned a Brewing and Fermentation Sciences degree from the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago — one of only two programs in the country at the time — and started trying recipes.
The brothers poured their entire savings into launching the Two Brothers Brewing Company. Their grandfather, who’d just retired as a Nebraska dairy farmer, sent them milk and cream tanks for fermenting their beer.
With each tank creating about 15 kegs, the next step was selling the product. Jason Ebel remembers the kegs riding shotgun in his car as he drove to countless restaurants and bars that declined to sell the Ebel’s Weiss wheat beer on draft.
A friend, John Karwoski, ultimately agreed to sell the beer at his Winfield restaurant, John’s Buffet. The delivery turned into a massive party as friends and family celebrated the beginning of an era.
“I was so proud that we actually got to that point,” Jason Ebel said. “We just about killed the whole keg in one night. It was quite a celebration.”
Hitting their stride
Even with a tasty first keg, success was far from certain.
It took a long time for the brothers to start drawing paychecks as every dime went back into keeping the business alive.
While most craft brewers self-distribute now, it was unusual — and unsuccessful — for individuals to drive around selling kegs. The brothers were still a few years away from bottling their beer, so bars and restaurants were the only option.
Both brothers worked side jobs to keep money coming in.
“It took years to where people cared about craft beer and gave us even a second glance,” Jason Ebel said. “It was really a grind, but we were determined to make it work.
“It took some great people throughout Chicagoland to have faith and give us a shot,” he said.
Then something interesting started happening. Dozens of craft beers started popping up throughout the country, and the brothers teamed up with other brewers to streamline the process of distributing the different brands.
“We needed to bond together and figure this out and create an industry,” Ebel said. “It was very fraternal back then.”
In 2001, the brothers tried retrofitting wine bottling equipment to get their beer in stores. That didn’t work very well, so they eventually acquired secondhand beer bottling equipment that was supposed to go to an Asian brewer that instead went bankrupt.
That’s when the Two Brothers Brewing Company started hitting its stride.
In the years that followed, the brothers’ varieties spread throughout the city, suburbs and in more than a dozen states. In 2008 they opened the Two Brothers Tap House, a restaurant attached to their Warrenville brewery. Three years later, Two Brothers Roundhouse opened in Aurora.
Along the way, new ideas kept motivating the brothers into additional expansions while Two Brothers remained family-owned.
“Craft beer was supposed to be a fad,” Jason Ebel said. “We’re the grizzled veterans, but we’re still constantly pushing the envelope, innovating and trying to do some new stuff.”
The next 25 years
In its first year of operation, Two Brothers Brewing Company made 162 barrels of beer.
Today in their Warrenville brewery, the Ebels have a 40,000-square-foot facility with a 50-barrel brewing system and 3,000 barrels of fermentation space. As evidenced by the countless number of awards they’ve won, the brothers haven’t sacrificed quality as they’ve increased their quantity.
They also have added coffee and spirits to their repertoire, and in 2015 opened their first out-of-state restaurant in Arizona. In the future, they’ve hinted at food products in grocery stores.
More than that, though, Two Brothers has become a training ground for numerous beer creators who have gone on to work at established companies or started their own. An industry that had dozens of craft breweries in the 1990s now has about 9,000.
Twenty-five years in business is just part of the celebration on April 21.
“I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of friends from my past,” Jason Ebel said. “We’ll have a lot of people come out to wish us well and congratulate us. That makes me excited and emotional at the same time.”
Wherever the next 25 years take the two brothers, the guarantee will stay the same.
“You know you’re going to get quality beer,” Jason Ebel said. “You know you’re going to pay a fair price for that quality, and it’s going to be consistently great every time.”
