Cue the accordion player for a round or two of “Roll Out the Barrel” to celebrate The Barrel’s tenth anniversary today.
Opened on June 13, 2015 on an empty lot on Elkhorn Avenue as an outdoor venue, the Bavarian-style outdoor beer garden and indoor beer hall which features eighty-four rotating taps of craft brews from local, national and international breweries, along with meads, ciders, high-end distilled spirits, wines, and non-alcoholic beverages moved to its present location on Moraine Avenue in 2017.
The ambiance is casual Colorado. A patio and an indoor space merge when a wall of garage doors is opened. The bar at the original location was situated inside a shipping container. The Moriane Avenue venue carried the shipping container theme forward with the patio bar inside two side-by-side metal boxes that can be opened or closed depending on the weather and the size of the crowd.
Picnic tables with umbrellas and bistro lighting provide a relaxed atmosphere, and a rotation of local food trucks offers patrons a variety of food choices from barbecue to Mexican to gourmet hamburgers. The calendar of food vendors is posted on The Barrel’s website, and, because The Barrel is not a restaurant, it is dog-friendly.
When The Barrel opened, it subleased the land where the Park Theater Mall once stood. That building burned to the ground on Oct. 19, 2009, displacing 12 businesses. The concrete slab foundation sat empty for more than five years. The Rocky Mountain Performing Arts Center hoped to break ground on the site in 2016 or 2017, but those plans were never realized. If they had, The Barrel might have occupied a rooftop location in the new building.
Instead, in 2017, the beer garden relocated to the site of a former newspaper office and printing facility. The interior of the building was renovated, and the new address allowed a year-round indoor and outdoor operation. The shipping container bar was relocated to the patio with the help of a crane.
Over the past eight years, The Barrel has worked hard to attract the business of locals with weekly Boozy Bingo nights during the shoulder season and with visitors, including people who have enjoyed a day of hiking and want to relax with a pint or two. It also caters to more than 100 destination wedding couples annually who want a fun place to gather their wedding party for a pre- or post-ceremony event.
Several times a year, The Barrel brings in speciality liquor vendors for occasions such as a whisky or vodka tasting, a “pints for pints” blood drive, and since its inception in 2023, the Estes Chamber has held its Women of Impact recognition event at the location to celebrate local women who are making a difference in the community.
Owners Ingrid and Lou Bush
Ingrid did not initially plan on becoming a bar owner. Raised in Houston, Bush graduated Manga Cum Laude from the University of St. Thomas, a private Catholic university in Houston, with a bachelor’s in political science and marketing in 2004.
Two years later, after earning a master’s degree in international governance and institutions from George Mason University, she took a job in Washington, D.C. with UHY LLC, a national audit, tax, and consulting firm. There she met Lou, who had studied accounting at the State University of New York in Plattsburgh and worked in the auditing department.
The couple married in 2008, and after first moving to Houston, they relocated to Loveland to work for Mueller and Associates, an accounting firm owned by Ingrid’s parents, Paul and Teresa Mueller. Ingrid worked as the marketing director for the firm, and Lou worked in the accounting department. In 2017, the firm rebranded as Mueller Pye and Associates and has offices today in Loveland, Estes Park, and Katy, Texas.
In 2011, three years after their wedding, the Bushes went on a belated backpacking honeymoon in Europe. “We fell in love with Germany and German beer gardens where people could sit at long tables with old friends or make new ones,” said Ingrid.
After returning home, an interest turned into a passion. The couple built a 14-foot-long bar with five beers on tap in their Loveland home and found themselves volunteering to help with various beer vendors at special events. Friends encouraged them to consider creating a business out of what had become a serious hobby.
Frank Lancaster, who was the Town administrator at the time and now sits on the Estes Park Town Board, floated the idea of a beer garden to the Muellers. Ingrid’s dad said he thought he knew someone who might be interested in the prospect. In short order, Ingrid and Lou petitioned the Town for a liquor licence to open a beer garden, and The Barrel was born 10 years ago today.
Marking a decade in business
The Barrel has just updated their long beer garden tables with sun and weather-resistant ones constructed of polyethylene, a durable material made from recycled milk jugs and other plastics. They have also put up new sun sails. Some of the old tables will be donated to the Estes Park Senior Center, and some will be sold.
Their current location on Moraine Avenue operates one bar at a time, an indoor or outdoor venue. The outside bar has sixty-four rotating taps and is open May through October. The indoor bar has twenty rotating taps and is open October through May. The indoor and outdoor spaces allow The Barrel to serve drinks during good or bad weather. Additionally, you can always expect fresh variety.
According to Ingrid, The Barrel differs from many other bars because “We don’t have any dedicated tap handles, like the majority of others. We heavily rotate.” With kegs arriving weekly from brewers across the country, the beer garden has a constantly updated selection, meaning no two visits will be the same.
Roll Out the Barrel
Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun;
Roll out the barrel; we’ve got the blues on the run.
The classic beer garden song “Roll Out the Barrel,” also known as the “Beer Barrel Polka,” was composed in 1927 by Czech musician Jaromír Vejvoda. In 1934, the year after Prohibition was repealed, songwriters Lew Brown, an immigrant to the U.S. from present-day Ukraine, and Wladimir Timm gave the tune its English lyrics.
By 1939, it had become a popular drinking anthem that the Andrews Sisters recorded, followed by many others, including the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Liberace, Nat King Cole, and Bobby Vinton.
The song grew in popularity with U.S. and British troops during World War II. In 1945, at the war’s end, General Dwight D Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, claimed that the song helped to win the war.
For over 50 years, the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team has used ” Take Me Out to the Ball Game ” as its seventh-inning stretch tune, Wisconsin’s unofficial theme. The song has also been part of the musical backdrop of numerous movies and television shows, including the Marx brothers’ films “At the Circus” and “A Night in Casablanca,” and episodes of “M.A.S.H.” and “Fraiser.”
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