Ray's Growler Gallery (Milwaukee,WI)

hoping to pop in but not for the Founders. will a potential crowd at the growler gallery impact ability to navigate the rest of the store?

 

The growler gallery is on the 2nd floor of the building, so the store part will be wide open.

 

Do you guys have plans to sell SS swing top growlers at any point?

 

The beautiful thing about growlers is that they are meant to be shared and enjoyed with friends and family. We will only be allowing 32oz fills to try and spread the love around that way, but it's really up to you beer lovers to get a good group together and share the goodness! Cheers!

 

But 32oz of KBS is... so... tempting... to drink by myself.

 

In line an hour early and it looks like I won't be getting any KBS #buzzkill...only a 1\4 barrel...oh well

 

Welcome a city whose craft beer scene has finally taken off. Gone are the days of Zombie Dust sitting on tap for multiple days!

 

Also, an hour + in line and $25 a fill. Plus whatever else you buy- Ray's has a cash cow on their hands. At least until somebody else figures out how to do it better.

 

Not worth it

 

Guess I'm glad I didn't go. Couldn't have waited in line for 1+ hour... and pricey

 

Crazed lines does not mean a scene has taken off, it means we've all gone crazy. Who would be upset that zombie dust is on tap for more than a day?! That means for the most part milwaukee is filled with people who realize it's just beer,

 

I'm not sure what the actual wait for KBS was. I would guess the folks how got there an hour early all got some.

And as far as crazed- a 1/6 barrel yields about 40 pints. A half barrel yields about 120. I like Milwaukee because I can get to Sugar Maple before ZD or PF or KBS kicks- maybe 20 people order it in the first two hours. But as beer education/appreciation increases, those numbers will go up. There isn't a huge difference between 20 and 40 people ordering a beer- it only takes a bit of marketing and suddenly your sixth of ZD has kicked in an hour vs. 3-4 hours, or even overnight. Beer bars are getting a bit more savvy in putting the info out there.

 

So how does that mean the "scene" has taken off? There are plenty of MKE folk who have been drinking craft for many years who are also very knowledgable about beer. Just because we don't run out and act like maniacs for every single bottle that is released doesn't mean we didn't or don't have a scene. So 20 more people come to the bar and order ZD and now we can be recognized as "actual" craft beer drinkers? I gather from your 300 or so posts that you recently moved to the area but we've had a scene and have a scene.

 

I grew up here, but really spent my 20's in San Diego. The scene out there is unreal. World Class beers in literally every neighborhood. Nano-breweries growing into Micros growing into breweries like Stone, Ballast Point, Coronado, Alpine, etc. There are way more people out there, so the beer goes faster. But Milwaukee is only just beginning to explore what it can deliver to the beer world. Brenner's has been awesome, Biloba has been awesome. MKE and Lakefront are anchors but could use some time developing styles that they haven't been allowed to develop (by the market demand- these guys need to stay in business!)- only recently have Milwaukee brewers been allowed to experiment more liberally with hops, barrel-aging and sours. So outside breweries (TG, Surly, Alesmith, and soon Ballast Point) have been needed to fill the demand for beers that our brewers are still figuring out how to produce. Central Waters, Black Husky and New Glarus are notable exceptions, along with some great stuff out of Tyranena and Lazy Monk. But notice that none of these are Milwaukee breweries. I have great hopes for D14 & Brenner, but we need more breweries to fill the demand that is only going to rise rapidly over the next 3-4 years. Milwaukee's "scene" has been Lakefront, MKE, and Sprecher for way too long.

 

Look at Chicago- most of their truly impactful craft brewers are less than five years old. That's AMAZING. I think Milwaukee will follow suit- in five years our brewing landscape will look nothing like it does today.

I'm passionate about beer and about how beer can impact a local community and economy. I don't mean to come across as an asshole expat who knows everything about beer. I don't. I love Milwaukee and I think that beer can help this city reclaim it's modest greatness- it's part of who we are and where we come from. But it can help our communities even more than it already does. Imagine breweries that are able to restore pride in neighborhoods- build a park, sponsor a little league team, etc.

I just don't think there is any excuse for putting out crappy beer (Horny Goat, Big Bay, Chameleon) and making a buck off of hard-working people. Make them hard-working beer, at least. That's all I've got to say.

 

I agree Milwaukee breweries have room for improvement in the development of styles many of us enjoy and breweries outside of Milwaukee are needed to fill in the gaps, but it's not Surly, Alesmith or Ballast Point. Surly is a great brewery and I look forward to their arrival, but none of their regular offerings are jaw dropping. Alesmith is following the path of Stone's brief history in WI, an average overpriced option that sits on the shelves. Alesmith is here and Ballast Point is coming not because they offer something we don't already get from other breweries. Rather they're coming here, because we consume a lot of beer, not just macro offerings. I truly hope Alesmith and Ballast Point succeed here and I'm disappointed Stone left, but there already are many great beers we have access to from others that are just as good and priced lower.

Breweries like New Glarus, Three Floyds, Central Waters, Black Husky, Ale Asylum and Tyranena are the ones in demand that are delivering what we can't find from a local brewery.

The good news is the Milwaukee breweries are headed in the right direction. Johnson from Lakefront was a home run in my opinion and I hope to see more of the same in the very near future.

 

I don't think more breweries necessarily means greater beer culture. I think our market is already over saturated where several excellent brews just sit on shelves. (In before you quote freshness of Alesmith bottles). I wouldn't say the SD brews are filling a glaring hole in the beer landscape, but simply adding another option to an already heavy IPA selection. I'd say its unfair to classify this as WI being unwilling/unable to create a style. You quote young chicago breweries as an excellent example. While great brews, half acres twelve different pale ales and pipeworks seven different varieties of the same base IPA hardly seem to be cutting edge impactful ideas. It seems to me (through your examples given) that you think MKE is lacking mostly in the IPA/Pale ale dept, and are confusing that with beer culture here being stagnant. We don't have to emulate other cities and their brewery models because we simply aren't the same type of city or the same type of beer drinkers.

 

Milwaukee's craft brewers (since Lakefront started, really) have had to do commercial battle with big beer, namely American adjunct lagers. It's taken 20+ years to break that stranglehold on our city, but breweries are finally able to make payroll by brewing and releasing beers other than Lagers and Pale Ales. Riverwest Stein is an awesome beer, and it has paved the way for Lakefront to finally break out of the box w/ the My Turn series. But you gotta admit, there is a learning curve involved when 99% of their product has been brewed to sell in a market dominated by AAL's. For years, New Glarus was the most experimental brewery in Wisconsin because they had figured out how to capture $'s w/ Spotted Cow and had developed their fruit beers to perfection, capturing an entirely different demographic of beer drinkers. Granted, Dan Carey started NG with more brewing education than the Klisch brothers at Lakefront. So Dan had a leg up (also brilliant to keep distribution local- allowed him to focus on quality and freshness v. satisfying nation-wide distribution) from the start.

I'm excited for breweries like Biloba, Brenner's, and D14- although I haven't tasted a D14 beer yet. It takes 2-3 years of brewing on the same equipment for a new brewer to really hit their stride (Lake Louie is a great example of this), so as MKE adds breweries over the next few years watch for a snowball effect of brand new breweries being "helped out" by the breweries that were established a few years earlier. I don't see any reason why Milwaukee won't have 30 good craft breweries (of varying size) 5-7 years from now.

Now if we could just get rid of Horny Goat...