Milwaukee - Lakefront Brewery - Ye-haw!

First let me say that I went on this trip to Milwaukee to visit my best friend from college who is 7 months pregnant. I figured we would skip most of the beer stuff and opt for a quieter visit. Boy was I wrong. My friend (who I always though) was a rock star! Although she did not participate in the beer drinking she didn’t let that stop her from encouraging us to enjoy the local brews. So I did.

So let’s get to the stuff you are interested in – BEER.
Lakefront brewery – The “environmental” tour is perfect for everyone (beer lovers and non-beer lovers) because the tour was a hoot. It is lead by one of the owners and he is such a typical brewer. A little off skew but really nice.

He talked about the things he is doing to recycle and make the brewery as eco-friendly as possibly. That in itself is cool.

He was also very casual about the fact that they won first place in the big Los Angeles Barley Wine contest. Now if you are not as much as a beer geek as me, this may not seem like that big of deal. HOWEVER if you are a beer geek you realize that the most acclaimed Barley Wines in the US are from California breweries called Anchor Steam and Sierra Nevada To win that huge contest on home turf it big – yet the owner was casual about it.

Typically on brewery tours they talk about how brewing is in their family history – and to be like the larger breweries he talked about how his grandfather drove the Schlitz street sweeper and delivery truck (but his delivery on that story had us all laughing).

When you buy you ticket for the tour, you get 4 beer tokens, and they encourage you to use them. They are also generous about the pours and about sampling. In fact, about half way through the tour he took us on a pit stop to refill our beers – HOW cool is that!
The bartender at the main bar is nice, but not knowledgeable. He did not find it strange that they had their Oktoberfest on tap already. And when I asked him what kind of Wheat beer they had he said he was not sure what kind of wheat they used. LOL.

I don’t want to over blog, so I will conclude by saying a few last things about my trip to this beer city.
Hofbrauhaus – free beer every Friday at 6:00 – Ye-haw.
Bell’s Two Hearted – It really is as good as they say.
Last but not least – I can’t wait to head back to this city.