Beer Forum

I'm going to Milwaukee over mothers day to meet my GFs family. We are going to have some free time and I was wondering about any places to go? I'm not sure where they live in Milwaukee but anything would be good.

Milwaukee's Best? <ducking/>

Of the breweries...

Lakefront has an awesome tour on Saturdays. If memory serves, it's like $5 at 1:00pm or something like that, and they'll give you like 4 or 5 full pints of beer before, during, and after the tour.

Delafield Brewhouse is pretty darn good for food and beer. It's out in Waukesha area, so a bit of a hike, but if you're out that way, it's worth checking out. There's also a Water Street Brewing (brewpub) out that way, also good, and of course...

Water Street Brewing and Milwaukee Ale House downtown on and near Water Street, great stuff.

For brewery tours there are Lakefront Brewery, Milwaukee Brewing Company, Sprecher Brewery, Miller (eh). All the tours are good, and you get bunches of beer with the tours, especially Milwaukee Brewing Co. Lakefront is probably the best known and is the best in my opinion. If you have kids, they'll love Sprecher because they have all you can drink gourmet soda.

For brewpubs there are Milwaukee Ale House, Water St. Brewery, St. Francis Brewery, Rock Bottom, Horny Goat Hideaway (dumb name, and ok beer, but awesome patio on the river), Stonefly Brewpub, Delafield Brew House & Sweet Mullets (both are West of MKE a bit). The Ale House and Rock Bottom are right on the River and a good place to hang with good weather.

There are great beer bars too. Burnhearts is my favorite, with more of a corner bar feel with killer beer & craft cocktails and shuffleboard. Sugar Maple specialized in WI and regional brews (60 taps). Cafe Centraal is a great Belgian beer bar and is next to Sugar Maple. Benno's is in West Allis and is a bit of a hole in the wall, but great beer selection. Roman's is a Milwaukee beer bar staple and comes complete with the owner's attitude and is a bit pricey in my opinion. Comet, Lulu & Honeypie are great for locally sourced home cooked food with great beers.

www.onmilwaukee.com is a good source to look at.

I hope this helps.

We went on a tour of Lakefront Brewery and had a flight at Water Street Brewery.

While we were having lunch with my girlfriend's stepbrothers and it was mentioned that I'm a homebrewer. At that point one of them mentioned that he worked at a malting house in town. He offered to give me a tour of the facility. They said I was like a kid in a candy store. It was really cool getting to see everything and taste the barley all along the way.

The beers at Lakefront Brewery were really good, the Stein beer and Cafe Fuel Coffee Stout were my favorites. Their other lagers were really good too.

Soaking the barley, it's just air bubbling through the water and barley. Four of these vessels make up a batch of malt.


Another pic of the soaking room


The germination room.


One of the kilns. They only make base malt at the facility so they don't have any roasting equipment.



I did find a homebrew system at Lakefront Brewery...

Wow, that is really sweet. Glad you enjoyed Lakefront.