Milwaukee, WI (01.03.-07.03.) (7)

Eagle Park Brewing

Tasty little pub brewery in a not so flashy industrial style. You can find the cream bricks here too. The beers are consistently very good. Only their White Stout was made with milk chocolate, which made the whole beer too soft. I would have used coffee and dark chocolate instead, maybe rounded off with a little milk chocolate. On the same evening I drank a Pils from Minneapolis (Minnesota), which was very close to a German Pils and I enjoyed it very much (Bauhaus Brewery - Wonderstuff 5.4%).

Lakefront Brewery

Here they offered not only regular brewery tours but also a technical tour that goes into more detail about the technology and concludes with a food pairing. Of course, I had to visit this! The building was an old power plant and was bought for only $10,000 in the middle of nowhere of Milwaukee. The mash tun cannot be heated. The mashing temperatures are achieved by adding hot water. They also work with enzymes for support (the Brut IPA of course with even more enzymes). They do all this in a 160hl brewing kettle. Only the old copper mash tun from the old SH remains, but is now used as a wort pan. The beers undergo 2-6 weeks of fermentation and aging and are then carbonated. 40% of the filling is done with a small KHS filler into kegs. 60% of the filling goes into bottles, also with a KHS filler. I must say that it was the dirtiest filling line I have ever seen in my life. The floor in the brewhouse/fermentation & lab cellar was also catastrophic, everything was full of dust and every now and then there was some indescribable, drinkable stuff on the floor. A few fermentation tanks also overflow and nobody cares. They work with dry yeast, sometimes with harvested yeast (5-7 generations) or pitched yeast. Despite such a dirty brewery, the beers are not bad at all, but they have a very high risk! A cool thing is that every employee (after a certain duration of employment) is given the opportunity to brew a beer, including everything that goes with it (label, marketing, release party, etc.). As for food pairing: the combination of ginger beer and curry was particularly interesting, creating a unique spiciness. Also, the Pils and smoked salmon paired really well. In the end, we were also recommended to combine things ourselves. I found the combination of a pickled cucumber followed by the New Geist Pils very intriguing. But even something simple like salami and Pils, I saw from a completely different perspective.

Good City

I liked the new brewery a little better. It was better furnished and I simply felt more comfortable there.

One highlight was also my first hunting experience, where I was able to shoot 1 1/2 pheasants (we're not sure if it was me or Zach who got the second one).