Milwaukee, WI (4)

I have already contacted a few breweries from Germany, including Mobcraft Brewery. I met with the owner and master brewer Andrew Gierczak here. He studied microbiology and started the brewery with a friend at a different location before moving to the current location with a bar and kitchen in 2016.

First, we tried some beers from their portfolio. Apart from Kölsch, Sour Ale, Eastcoast IPA, and Westcoast IPA, they only had beers outside the Reinheitsgebot, but made with purely natural ingredients. However, there were some very interesting compositions.

Then he took me on a tour of the brewery. 30hl brewhouse, about 10 double-batch-capable CCTs, ABE can filler, a separate sour beer section with 3 tanks, and plenty of bourbon/scotch barrels for barrel-aged beers. He places special emphasis on quality control, as he had often encountered problems at the old location. The laboratory was nicely equipped with everything necessary, and some things were simply put together by himself. He also showed me an experiment where he tries to grow mushrooms on the spent grains and then process them in the gastro. They also work with propagation yeast, which they raise in 1L and 10L glass containers and then in a 50L keg. Typically for Americans, they mash in the lauter tun and do a single step infusion. They achieve the temperature only by mixing hot water, tap water, and grist, and then holding it for a long enough time. Then comes the wort kettle and a whirlpool. He left room for a mash tun, but currently lacks the money for it. Ventilation is done with O2 from a bottle, and shortly thereafter the yeast is added. The fermentation tanks are always cleaned alkaline and disinfected with an oxidative cleaner. He cleans all three fillings with acid. An employee built him a small pilot plant for brewing the pilot beers. A homemade blender is used for pureeing fruit, etc. The end of my two-hour visit was the office with 3 employees and a bottle of a beer that is supposed to taste like Nutella.