New Glarus Brewing Company

STEVENS POINT, WI

Stevens Point Brewery 2617 Water St • $3 ages 12 and up, $1 ages 5-11, FREE under 5 • 344-9310 • www.pointbeer.com • When you’re talkin’ beer, age is a good thing. 150-plus years into the brewing experience, Stevens Point Brewery had to muscle through the Great Depression and the Prohibition era. Fittingly, they produced soft drinks and “near-beer” drinks during that time, but now their premium root beer, black cherry cream, and orange cream sodas are just as popular. The tour guides invite you to “feel the malted barley” and “watch the yeast being ‘pitched’ into the cooling wort” during the 45-minute tour. Tours every day at 11am, noon, 1pm, 2pm.

GLENDALE, WI

Sprecher Brewing Company 701 W Glendale Ave • $4 adults, $3 seniors, $2 under 21 • www.sprecherbrewery.com • (414) 964-BREW • Sprecher isn’t pretending to be a German brewery. But they are the “next best thing.” Meander through the brewhouse, aging cellar, and bottling line (where you can ogle Bavarian murals), all while being peppered with facts. The tour pans out into an indoor beer garden, complete with oom-pah music. The kids can choose from up to eight sodas, while the adults have their pick of four (out of ten) draughts. A souvenir glass is complementary. Tours weekdays 4pm; Sat 1, 2, and 3pm; and Sun noon, 1, and 2pm.

2010 Wisconsin Beer Lovers Solstice Tasting Saturday June 26 • Bayshore Town Center, 5800 N. Bayshore Drive • 1-5pm • $50 per person ($90 for two) • www.welcometoglendale.com • The first event of its kind in Wisconsin, this annual festival will offer a hundred unique beers from craft breweries all over the state. Admission includes unlimited sampling and food pairings from area restaurants, plus a souvenir beer glass.

MILWAUKEE, WI

Lakefront Brewery, Inc 1872 N Commerce St • $7; includes a souvenir glass, four pours of beer and a coupon for 1 free beer at various locations • www.lakefrontbrewery.com • (414) 372-8800 • This “backwards” format to a brewery tour – offering beers before and during the educational part – represents Lakefront’s philosophy that there is a “direct correlation between attention span on beer tours and drinking beer.” Furthermore, tour guides tell jokes and go with the flow, not following a certain script. Now offering five ales, three lagers, eight seasonal brews, and one gluten free gem, this brewery has accrued quite a following. And the whole thing grew from sibling rivalry – who could make the better beer?

Miller Brewery 4000 West State St • FREE • (414) 342-1167 • www.millercoors.com • One of the largest brewing sites in the nation, Miller has 150 years of brews under its growing belt. During the tour, wander through the “caves” – tunneled beer storage that is now used for displaying antique bottles and hand-made brew-tools, then view their modern brewing technology, packaging center, and distribution warehouse. To finish the visit, sit down at the Miller Inn, modeled after a Bavarian patio. Tours are generally offered Mon-Sat 10:30am-4:30pm and Sun 10:30am-2pm.


MADISON, WI

Capital Brewery 7734 Terrace Ave, Middleton, WI • (608) 836-7100 • www.capital-brewery.com • $3/person • Founded in 1984, Capital has quickly accumulated many enviable blue ribbons at the regional, national, and international level, including “No. 1 Brewery in America” in 1998. The copper kettles came from Germany and thus carry the magical spirit of the old Bavarian brewmasters. After the tour, the Bier Stube is a comfortable room in which to hang out and sample everything from the Island Wheat to the Capital Dark. Tours run each Friday at 3:30pm and each Saturday at 1:30 and 3:30pm.


NEW GLARUS, WI

New Glarus Brewing Company 2400 State Hwy 69 • FREE self guided tours, $20 guided “hard hat” tours • (608) 527-5850 • www.newglarusbrewing.com • Come explore this small but mighty brewery on your own, or schedule a guided “hard hat” tour that takes you behind the scenes of Hilltop Brewery – into the brewmaster’s state of the art lair. Owned and operated by Daniel and Deb Carey, this brewery’s tour will treat your taste buds. After the hard hat comes off, (literal or figurative; we’ll let you decide which) they invite you to sample six to eight brews, from the popular Spotted Cow and Fat Squirrel to their Wisconsin Belgian Red – no joke, it contains over a pound of Door County Cherries in every large bottle. Four to five complementary cheeses are also provided.

LA CROSSE, WI

City Brewery 925 S 3rd St • $5/person • (608)785-4222 • www.citybrewery.com • Back in the day, G. Heileman Brewing Company was considered the “third largest brewer in the United States,” nipping at the heels of Big Dogs Anheuser-Busch and Miller. Now named City Brewery, the facility still produces over 50 million cases a day, making it one of the largest beverage producers in the country (they now produce teas, sodas, and energy drinks as well). The biggest draw to this historic brewery is the world’s largest six-pack, viewable from the exterior. The towering storage tanks are wrapped in “La Crosse Lager” can imagery. Open to groups of 25 by reservation.

Pearl Street Brewery 1401 Saint Andrew Street • (608) 784-4832 • www.pearlstreetbrewery.com • FREE • Most beer lovers are aware that hops are a necessary element of the brews they love, but rarely do they get to see them growing. Visitors can see hops ripening on vines just below the “Pearl Street” banner outside the brewery.  During formal tours, you’ll get to absorb the ambiance of PSB’s new (as of 2007) tasting room, complete with 100-year old wooden floors, barstools, and counters crafted by the Brewmaster himself.  Recently, the brewery took home a #1 overall placement at the 8th Annual Between the Bluffs Beer, Wine, & Cheese fest, out of 38 breweries.  If you come, be sure to take a growler or a six-pack with you. Don’t know what a growler is? You soon will. Tasting room open to the public Tuesday – Friday, 4-8pm; tours and tastings Saturday 12-5pm.


BLACK RIVER FALLS, WI

Sand Creek Brewing Company 320 Pierce St • FREE • 284-7553 • www.sandcreekbrewing.com • Sand Creek is proud to be one of Wisconsin’s largest microbreweries. Using a little tool we like to call gravity, grains are gradually sifted downward between floors during the brewing process, ending up in “cooling caves” below ground, in the original cellar that the Pioneer Brewing Company used (before their Prohibition-induced demise). “We probably have one of the most unique back-stories of any brewery,” says owner Jim Wiesender, mentioning the fact that they were around before Leinie’s, Heileman’s, and Point. Today, Sand Creek brews and bottles 29 different products, including ales, lagers, hard lemonade, and sodas. Tours Fridays at 3pm. Also open Sat 3-9pm.



BROOKLYN CENTER, MN

Surly Brewing Co. 4811 Dusharme Dr. • FREE • (763) 535-3330 • www.surlybrewing.com • Let the charismatic crew of decidedly unsurly people guide you through this maze of grain-transformation. The tour itself is an hour long and touches on the family’s history as well as the nitty gritty of the brewing process. After soaking up the trivia, you can reward yourself by hunkering down with some free beer. Founder and owner Omar Ansari would like to remind you that, “while you’re enjoying the full-bodied flavor of the beer, remember that it was more than 10 years in the making.” The name, Surly, refers to the anger fueled by the inability to find good beer – which ends, of course, on the Surly premises. Tours most Friday evenings from 6-8. Sign up in advance – they fill up fast.


ST. PAUL, MN

Summit Brewing Co. 910 Montreal Circle • FREE • (651) 265-7800 • www.summitbrewing.com • English beer. German beer. Czech beer. Beers that reflect Summit’s own tastes and beliefs about what great beer should be. This is Summit’s take on what kind of beer you will be partaking of, and why. Having tripled in size by 1993 – only seven years after the first keg rolled out of the brewery – Summit founders were prompted to build Minnesota’s first new brewery in over 100 years in 1998. Still brewing strong, the brewery just (and I mean, like, this month) took home a Gold Medal for their Extra Pale Ale at the World Beer Cup. Tours Tues & Thurs at 1pm, and Sat at 10:30am and 1pm with reservations.

Vine Park Brewing Co. 1254 West 7th • pricing varies • (651) 228-1355 • www.vinepark.com • Most tours claim to be up close and personal, but this is the only brewing company in the Midwest that allows laypeople to brew their own beer on the premises. A Brew Coach will guide your every move as you measure the necessary ingredients for your own ale, porter, stout, wheat, lager, pilsner, or bock. It takes one week to ferment, and an additional week to cold-age before it is filtered and carbonated and ready to bottle. When you come back for your bottling duties, you have the option of customizing a label, or of leaving them naked. You are now a brewmaster.
 

DALLAS, WI

Viking Brewing Company 234 Dallas St West • FREE • 837-1823 • www.vikingbrewing.com • Family owned and operated, this small craft brewery is located in the historic Dallas Creamery Building on the mill pond. Built in 1994, Viking Brewery was the first of its kind in northwest Wisconsin, and now produces 22 different styles of beer. Open Sat 9am to 5pm with formal tours at 1pm.