New Belgium founder Jeff Lebesch shares insights on life after beer

A beertender’s face turned bright red during a recent routine ID check at the New Belgium Brewing taproom.

The 60-year-old being carded was brewery founder Jeff Lebesch, the Fat Tire creator who left the company nine years ago but gets free beer for life. He’s taken such a low profile that being unrecognized was hardly a surprise, even if his life story is recited to more than 200,000 people on New Belgium tours annually.

While Lebesch has largely sailed off into anonymity while pursuing hobbies from breadmaking to cycling, the Belgian influence he helped introduce to the American beer scene will be soon preserved at the Smithsonian Institution. He’s donating the handwritten tasting notes from the 1988 Belgian biking tour that first inspired New Belgium and its flagship Fat Tire.

“When you are in the middle of an evolution, you don’t always realize it’s happening,” Lebesch said on a February afternoon at his Fort Collins home.

Lebesch departed New Belgium in 2009 when his divorce with his former wife and co-founder Kim Jordan was finalized. Jordan is chair of the board after a long career as New Belgium CEO.

Since Lebesch left New Belgium, the country’s fourth-largest craft brewery has nearly doubled production and grown in ways he never foresaw. There’s even now a second Fat Tire flavor — a Belgian White released last summer that he emphatically rates as a “nice beer.”

Lebesch, long known for his quiet demeanor, has given few public interviews since his last Coloradoan profile in 2003. The beer business, however, has largely followed his lead.

Along with Texas’ Celis Brewing and Maine’s Allagash Brewing, New Belgium is considered a pioneer in bringing Belgian influences to an American beer industry long dominated by English and German beer styles. After New Belgium found success, major brewers Budweiser and Coors released their own Belgian-style beers, including Shock Top and Blue Moon.

“New Belgium was unique because the success of Fat Tire enabled them to brew their more distinctive Belgian styles,” said homebrewing pioneer and Great American Beer Festival founder Charlie Papazian.

“Jeff (Lebesch) had a very large impact on the craft beer world. He engineered breweries with lots of innovation.”

Discovering Belgian styles

Lebesch was born in Milwaukee where the Miller brewery has operated since 1855.

He later studied at Washington University near the Budweiser headquarters in St. Louis. He then moved to Colorado in 1980, first residing in Golden, where the Coors brewery operates.

“I say this guy was born with a beer bottle over his head,” joked his girlfriend, Zia Zybko, with whom he shares a north Fort Collins home. “It was like he was destined to come start his own brewery in Fort Collins.”

Lebesch, then an electrical engineer, moved to Fort Collins in 1983. By the time of the infamous 1988 Belgian biking trip, he was an avid homebrewer making traditional English and German beers.

But his eyes were soon opened to a whole new culture of brewing.

Lebesch ventured to various Belgian bars via a mountain bike, picking the brains of bartenders and brewers while tasting beers unlike anything he had tried before. He filled up the notebook with thoughts and observations.

“I didn’t have any idea that there could be such sophistication,” Lebesch said of discovering Belgian-style beers. “All these little things are done just so and it was very important to the (Belgian beer) culture.”

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Upon returning to the U.S., Lebesch tried re-creating Belgian-style beers known for using spices, fruits and small amounts of hops.

Lebesch struggled at first, as there was little information available at the time on homebrewing Belgian styles. His first breakthrough came when he cultured yeast from an imported Belgian beer.

“That’s when I realized you absolutely have to have the right yeast strain to make this work,” Lebesch said.

His homebrew experiments became the original amber ale Fat Tire and the Trappist-inspired beer Abbey. Both beers are still produced by New Belgium today, with the original Fat Tire still ranking as the fifth-most checked-in beer on the rating app Untappd in 2017.

“The whole concept behind Fat Tire was a beer of normal alcohol content ... but with lots of flavor,” Lebesch said.

Helping build New Belgium

Lebesch and Jordan went commercial in 1991, launching New Belgium together out of the basement of their old Fort Collins home on Frey Avenue.

Lebesch designed the brewing system using repurposed dairy equipment. Jordan, then a social worker, helped with production and led the sales and distribution side of the business. Both initially kept their full-time jobs and were raising sons Zak Danielson and Nick Lebesch together.

The original plan was to make 90 cases a week, but the popularity of Fat Tire quickly took off.

In 1992, New Belgium moved out of the basement and into space at 350 Linden St. By 1995, the brewery moved to its current location at 500 Linden St.

As New Belgium began expanding beyond his wildest dreams, Lebesch came to a harsh realization.

“My limited formal training was limiting the brewery,” Lebesch said. “People were coming to me with problems and I didn’t know what to do. ... The top guy has to know the answer.”

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Lebesch stepped aside to a plant engineering role in 1996 after hiring Belgian-born Peter Bouckaert as head brewer. The two had previously met when Lebesch visited the country in 1994.

Lebesch and Bouckaert worked closely together in developing numerous New Belgium beers. Bouckaert created one of the country’s first commercial sour beers, called La Folie, a Belgian style Lebesch had never thought of attempting.

The two have stayed close after Lebesch’s departure. Bouckaert left New Belgium to start Purpose Brewing & Cellars late last year.

“Once trust and understanding was built, we worked great together and it was easy going,” Bouckaert said. “We have so many great memories together.”

Lebesch semi-retired from New Belgium in 2001, at the time citing that the amount of work and the stress were getting to be too much. He remained as a consultant with various duties until leaving completely in 2009, when the company bought out his shares and retired them.

Part of Lebesch’s past duties were to guide a tour of New Belgium employees through Belgium. The brewery still re-creates his 1988 biking trip annually for employees celebrating their fifth work anniversary.

“It was important for me to share and explain the Belgian beer culture,” Lebesch said. “Then hopefully translate that back to our own experience in Colorado.”

Since Lebesch was last affiliated with New Belgium, the industry has tripled to more than 6,000 total U.S. craft breweries.

“It has been really cool to see how the appreciation for different flavors has grown in the beer drinking population,” Lebesch said.

Story continues below the photo gallery.

New Belgium has also expanded well beyond his original vision.

Lebesch said he never expected New Belgium to reach distribution in all 50 states, a feat accomplished last year. The company that now employs more than 700 people had always been conscious of the amount of fossil fuels used to transport its beer but found a solution by opening a second brewery in Asheville, North Carolina in spring 2016 to more efficiently serve the eastern side of the country.

Both New Belgium breweries are considered industry leaders in water efficiency and using alternative energy.

At the end of February, New Belgium laid off 28 employees companywide — including 25 in Fort Collins — citing that the industry is growing at slower margins than a few years ago.

Lebesch also said he never anticipated that New Belgium would make beers outside of strict Belgian influence — the first was Ranger IPA in 2010 — but also conceded that “making IPAs was probably inevitable” given their dominant share of the U.S. craft beer market.

“Growth vs. no growth is always the quandary of running a brewery,” Lebesch said. “It would be great to make a brewery mid-sized and stop investing. ... But you also learn by growing the company, it gives pretty incredible opportunities for your employees to grow their own careers and financial stability.”

Finding new hobbies

Biking, sailing, hiking, woodworking, car collecting, traveling and breadmaking are among hobbies that have kept Lebesch plenty occupied in his life outside of beer. He’s also been an active local philanthropist and political donor with Zybko.

“If he’s sitting still, he’s thinking about what he’s going to do next,” Zybko said. “He’s always busy. This is the way he enjoys retirement.”

As Lebesch has aged, his palate for beer has faded.

Though his noncompete agreement with New Belgium expired, he has had little urge to brew even on a homebrew scale since he left the industry.

Wine and spirits are now more his go-to drinks, although his garage beer fridge — next to a collection of Porsches and classic cars — is regularly stocked with Abbey and sours from California breweries Russian River Brewing and The Rare Barrel.

“I don’t get into the depth with wine and spirits like I did studying all the styles and minutia of beer,” Lebesch said.

Lebesch instead focuses his attention on being active.

He’s still a regular on Fort Collins bike paths. When visiting his cabin northwest of Fort Collins at Glendevey Ranch in Jelm, Lebesch carries a battery-powered chainsaw on bike paths to clear fallen beetle kill pine. He’s repurposed the fallen wood in his shop in various ways, including making a dining room table for his Fort Collins home.

Sailing has become one of his biggest passions, and the ocean has often called Lebesch away from Colorado.

“Sailing is 50 percent delightful, 45 percent boring and five percent terrifying,” Lebesch joked.

Lebesch competed in sailing races to Hawaii in 2008 and 2010. He was the lone passenger on his boat for 13 days and nights, with the engine turned off for the entire voyage.

“You try to sleep three hours straight at least once a day and then catch cat naps,” Lebesch said. “But if the weather is (bad) at night you don’t get those hours. It’s like being hungover.”

His first boat was named Hecla after an 1820s British exploration vessel. He then had a custom catamaran commissioned in 2011 named Hekla after an Icelandic volcano.

Hekla’s maiden voyage was to Patagonia in southern South America. The boat has sailed numerous other adventures throughout the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

But even thousands of miles away and living in obscurity, the shadows of his past life with New Belgium never completely leave Lebesch.

While docked at a marina in Belize a few years ago, a man approached after noticing “Fort Collins, Colorado” painted on Lebesch's boat.

“He asked “Isn’t that where they make Fat Tire?”” Lebesch said with smirk.

Follow Jacob Laxen on Twitter and Instagram @jacoblaxen.

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New Belgium since Lebesch left

Amount of barrels sold.

2017: 950,752

2016: 957,968

2015: 914,063

2014: 945,367

2013: 792,293

2012: 764,741

2011: 712,843

2010: 661,169

2009: 583,160*

*Lebesch left in December 2009

New Belgium Brewing timeline

1988: Jeff Lebesch discovers Belgian beer styles on bike tour through Belgium

1991: New Belgium launches out of a Frey Avenue basement

1992: Operation moves to 350 Linden St.

1995: Brewery relocates to current 500 Linden St. location

1996: Peter Bouckaert hired as head brewer while Lebesch transitions to plant manager

1999: New Belgium becomes the first wind-powered brewery

2000: Costumed bike parade called Tour de Fat is introduced

2001: Lebesch semi-retires to a consulting role

2008: Brewery adds canning line

2009: New Belgium buys out Lebesch's shares of stock and retires them

2012: The brewery becomes completely employee-owned

2016: Second brewery in Asheville, North Carolina, opens

2017: New Belgium reaches distribution in all 50 states