Branmor's Pours Free Beer. No, Really!

Free beer.

That's right, free. As in, at no cost.

Simply uttering the two-syllable shibboleth gets the 21-and-older crowd as excited as children in an amusement park. Grown men become giddy. Their wives sometimes roll their eyes. Everyone has become a bit more happy because somebody said "free beer."

As local business owner Roumel Reynon has quickly found out, free beer can quite possibly be the best advertising slogan ever known to the beer-sipping man.

Reynon is the general manager at Branmor's American Grill, which has hosted a handful of free beer-tasting events to lure customers during the summer months. The restaurant already has hosted free beer tastings with breweries such as Sam Adams and Leinenkugels. Each customer receives eight tickets for free samples and the hope is they will come back to try new brands or enjoy the ones they already tasted.

August's event featured Bell's Brewing, a Kalamazoo, Mich.-based brewery celebrating its 25th anniversary.

"It's just a great way for people to try different types of beers from around the area," Reynon said. "Hopefully, they will like the things they taste and bring it into the restaurant. It's also just a great way to meet new people in the community. We get lots of new guests that come in for these events. We give away free appetizers, prizes and obviously the beer samples. It's an awesome way to give back.

"It's really a win-win situation to cross market both brands. We donate the food, they donate the beer and everybody has a good time."

Reynon said plans are in the works for Branmore's to host similar events in the coming months, including wine and martini tasting on top of bringing in other regional breweries.

For Bell's, the event represents a unique way to market its beer.

"The company was started in a real grassroots fashion and is still very much that way today," said Bell's representative Jim O'Connor. "We don't do large advertising campaigns or buy advertisements in newspapers or on TV. We are still very word-of-mouth oriented.

"We make beer for beer's sake only. If we are making good beer, we think the beer will make us known."

Reynon said the beer-tasting events have grown from just a handful of people who attended the first one to more than a hundred who packed Branmore's for Bell's samples.

Denise Kucer, of Joliet, said she and her husband eat at Branmore's a few times a month and thought the idea sounded like fun.

Not normally a beer drinker, Kucer found herself enjoying the tasting event.

"I'm learning to like (the beer) and distinguish between the different tastes," she said. "It's definitely a learning experience, learning about how the beer is filtered and hops and everything. It's a lot of fun."

For more events, visit Branmor's in Patch's directory or friend the establishment on Facebook.