Sprecher Brewing and Lakefront Brewing brought craft beer to Milwaukee in the 1980s. The summertime tour, along with these four years of reporting on beer in Wisconsin, has taught me that the state’s brewers are a committed brunch who build community by working with each other instead of against each other. I joined the Pink Boots Society in 2016, after I felt seasoned enough to feel like bee r really was my job. More than that, I had motivation to continue to write about craft beer. I have the best “What I did on my summer vacation” story ever. I didn’t like the beer at Kozy Yak in Amherst as much as I hoped to but I did like the feeling that I was in someone’s living room and the hosts were happy to see me. Some, like Bloomer Brewing in Bloomer, Wis., served as the neighborhood bar - a place where at least one day a week people came together for beer brewed with original and historic recipes and tacos served from a card table covered in a plastic tablecloth. They use the same ingredients but each brewery is as unique as the people behind it. Sometimes I just went to breweries like a tourist - occasion ally as many as five in one day. The time) to the southern border of Wisconsin’s Driftless region where Deb Carey, founder and president of New Glarus Brewing, spent an afternoon showing me the brewery and the new canning line. My research took me to the northern tip of Wisconsin where I met Allyson Rolph, head brewer for Thirsty Pagan Brewing (at Last summer I spread my beer evangelism ac ross the state for research on a book B eer Lover’s Wisconsin: Best Breweries, Brewpubs and Beer Bars for Globe Pequot publishing. What does this taste like to you? This one tastes too sweet? This was our wine conversation but now it was about beer. My friend and I spent years sipping wines and talking about what we liked about them. I remember the night I realized that I had intentionally switched from a wine lover to a beer lover. It’s amazing to consider that most beers use the same ingredients but they can taste co mpletely different. I cover it for people like me who like beer and get excited by the endless possibilities. Not since the 1960s and ‘70s, when Schlitz, Pabst, Blatz and Miller ruled the nation’s beer supply has beer been a centerpiece for the city. This growth spurt is great news for Milwaukee. It became an opportunity to witness a new wave of Milwaukee’s craft brewery growth from the ground up. Two more are expected to open this summer. There were nine breweries and brewpubs in Milwaukee. Or offer unsolicited advice on fruit beers they might like. And yet bartenders would still automatically hand over the wine list when they sat at the bar. I found that plenty of women knew about beer several worked in the industry and others were more-than-competent home brewers. The f irst story wasn’t so far off track from the original assignment. The women of Milwaukee’s Barley’s Angels group helped me out. I wasn’t a big beer drinker at the time and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I wrote about h ow women are a fast-growing component of craft beer’s growth. The first story I wrote was about women and beer. Then I accepted a challenge to write about issues important to women - “Lean In” was big at the time. I was a general assignment reporter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which meant I could write about anything editors asked from stories about an overnight children’ s shelter to spending 24 hours at a casino. I write about the culture of craft beer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |