Brewing, Cideries & Spirits  December 4, 2018

Syntax takes over iconic Greeley Elevator

Gustav is the distillery cat at Syntax Distillery. Dan England/for BizWest

GREELEY — Heather Bean hadn’t seen Gustav for three nights in November when she heard his yowl at the door at 10 p.m. on a Sunday.

They hold hands, paw to flesh, while they sleep, but Gustav loves to socialize, especially with people who aren’t her. He will come home smelling of perfume after visiting other downtown bars. So she laughed when Gustav strolled in with a filthy coat, ragged ear and no collar.

Bean forgave him, as she always does. She understands him and loves what she calls her open relationship with him. And she knows how hard the transition’s been on him.

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Bean bought the Greeley Elevator in downtown Greeley a year-and-a-half ago, and she moved her business, Syntax Spirits Distillery, to it nearly four months ago. She hasn’t had customers for a few months now, and as a result, Gustav is making more rounds than usual. He misses the visits. He misses the extra laps. He misses the fun.

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If you go

Syntax Spirits Distillery

Located in the Greeley Elevator building
700 Sixth St. in downtown Greeley.

970-352-5466

The business will be closed Monday and Tuesday, but that could change. It opens every other day at noon on weekends and 4 p.m. weekdays.

www.syntaxspirits.com

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That should change by late December, or maybe mid-January, when Bean and a small crew finally finish with the complete overhaul of the building. It’s been a lot of hard work, and it’s taken longer than she thought it would.

However, unlike Gustav, Bean didn’t mind the break from customers. She opened Syntax eight years ago in a building that technically remains downtown Greeley (say the distillery’s name out loud, and you’ll hear her quirky and dry sense of humor). The business did well, and that was a blessing and a curse, as she found herself working pretty much all the time on making product and running the tasting place and distribution. By the time she had to move four months earlier than she planned into the Greeley Elevator, she was burnt out.

She and Jeff Copeland, her longtime boyfriend and business partner, took the time to catch up on life and all those house projects they’d ignored. They fixed up their cars, cleaned gutters, trimmed overgrown trees and fixed a fence that had blown down.

That’s delayed the distillery somewhat. She originally hoped to be open by Halloween, but renovating a 100-year-old building (it was built in 1904) takes time. It’s also expensive. She paid $250,000 for the building, and she thinks she’ll spend that much on renovations when it’s done.

But the price tag was hard to resist. She expected it to be at least twice that. It was, she said, one of the last good deals in downtown Greeley. She bought it a year-and-a-half ago after dreaming half-heartedly about moving into it. She always loved the funky towers and old wood and silos that stored grain she used to buy when she first opened.

She just always figured it would be too much. Instead, they paid cash for it, and their rent went away. When her employees revolted against the manual labor and walked out, she was on her own, essentially, and found it was a good time to back off for the first time since she opened the place: She had no immediate bills to pay. So she distilled a bunch of inventory to keep the distribution going and enjoyed working on her home with Copeland.

Now she’s hired a friend who builds custom homes, and his work, along with her own sweat, means things are moving much faster now, even with the delays on permits and inspections and other hangups. It’s tedious work: She spent two weeks recently designing her decks to fit ADA requirements and track down all the parts.

She’s also excited about it. The new building will have lots of room for inventory and her wholesale business, as well as a meeting room with cozy couches for special occasions, and outdoor seating, along with the more public tasting room and bar, where Gustav can move from person to person, especially the pretty ladies with the nice perfume. The location should be a little less intimidating and easier to find than the last location, which was barely downtown, in a place that was hard to find and even harder to walk to: She expects to draw in a lot more newcomers now that she’s essentially next door to WeldWerks, Greeley’s most popular brewery.

“I think it will be a lot more accessible for everyone,” Bean said. “A little less edgy, more suitable and more mainstream. I can’t help but do things kind of weird, but it will be less alarmingly weird, a little more classy and a little less carnival.”

She will still feature her four main products, vodka, gin, dark rum and whiskey, but as with WeldWerks, she will have specialities and fun experiments to taste every month, such as wine-barrel-aged rum and bourbon. She’s also hoping to possibly coordinate with WeldWerks for food truck service. She also enjoys bringing in live music and a different artist every month.

Regardless of what happens, she thinks she will be open by the new year. But that may not happen, and if it doesn’t, trust her, she’s working on it.

“I’m just excited to get cranked up and ready to go,” Bean said. “Things are getting more relaxing in general.”

Read more about Syntax Spirits Distillery.

Gustav is the distillery cat at Syntax Distillery. Dan England/for BizWest

GREELEY — Heather Bean hadn’t seen Gustav for three nights in November when she heard his yowl at the door at 10 p.m. on a Sunday.

They hold hands, paw to flesh, while they sleep, but Gustav loves to socialize, especially with people who aren’t her. He will come home smelling of perfume after visiting other downtown bars. So she laughed when Gustav strolled in with a filthy coat, ragged ear and no collar.

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