At the end of the day, all that most people want in a local brewery is solid music, good beer in their glass and a cool environment where they can hang out with friends or even by themselves.
“What else could you want?” asked Rob Bessett who will open Milieu Fermentation on May 4 with business partner Andrew Bergeron in the former Ursula Brewery at 2101 Ursula St., in Aurora. “We created the space that we always wanted to hang out in.”
Bessett had a bit of an advantage, though, because he was the head brewer at Ursula before it closed, so he’s familiar not just with the space but with the brewing equipment.
“It was a little weird at first, but it has been really great overall. I knew all the quirks and all the problems that needed to be addressed. It made renovations easier, and was nothing lurking or hiding for me,” he said. ” As I was brewing, it was like riding a bike.”
Still, he thinks people walking in the door will be surprised by the physical changes he and Bergeron made to the former Ursula. The bar, for instance, has been chopped back a ways, and the aesthetic has a “sleek, more contemporary” feeling with earth tones and greenery, Bessett said. “We’ve curated a bit of a different ambiance.”
In addition, Milieu will serve a wider variety of non-beers, including hard tea, kombucha, hop water and seltzer, which is something people have come to expect these days at breweries.
“We built our plan around being a little more than just a brewery and a taproom. We wanted to open our doors a little wider,” he said about alternative beverages. “People in the industry just need to be adapting their business and way of thinking for the future.”
But there will be plenty of beer of course, including a hazy IPA on opening day, along with three collaborations that Bessett and Bergeron did with other breweries. Coming up soon, Milieu will have a West Coast pilsner, a West Coast IPA, a Keller pils, a Kolsch, and an oatmeal stout.
Eventually, there will be barrel-aged beers, sours and saisons. Milieu still has Ursula’s old canning line as well, so they may package beers in the future.
Bessett — who was also head brewer at Loveland’s Verboten Brewing — and Bergeron, a financial and budget analyst, first met eight years ago in Chicago. They began homebrewing together after they both moved to Colorado and hatched a business plan during COVID.
Ursula Brewery closed in December after nine years, with owner Scott Procop saying he wanted to focus on his family restaurant, Cedar Creek Pub, across the street from the brewery.
