Best beer selection in the Milwaukee area.

Discount Liquor. 50th and Oklahoma. Not too far from Miller Park.

 

Agreed - this store will be easily be your best bet for selection and proximity to Miller Park. Have fun!

 

Yep, absolutely cannot argue with Discount.

As a sidenote, as a non-native Milwaukee resident, I'm really shocked at how many liquor stores here are fairly.... well, weak.

 

Just curious as to which stores you are referring to? There are lots of crappy liquor stores around here, no doubt. But as for craft beer, I feel like there is Discount, Ray's, and a small handful of other store (Three Cellars, Downer, Groppi's, Otto's on Oakland, et al) that serve the craft beer community quite well. And for being primarily grocery stores, both Woodman's and Sendiks have a pretty good selection IMO.

 

I don't know, I just feel like there aren't enough good bottle shops, and some of them (Discount, Ray's, Three Cellars) are incredibly inaccessible to me (I live in Riverwest and don't have access to a vehicle. Looked into taking the bus to Discount once and it was 2 hours each way. Not to mention having to juggle 2 or so boxes full of beer anyway...). Downer and Otto's have done me well, but you can only go to the same store or two so much..

 

"Good" is all relative I suppose. If all I had was Downer and Otto's on Oakland, I think I'd be doing alright. They don't stock the depth of selection that Discount or Ray's does, but they both get (or have gotten in the past) most if not all of the limited or allocated beers (GI BCBS/Rare, Founders KBS/CBS/CBH, etc).

However, if "good" for you means having every beer available in the market on the shelves on any given day for your perusal, then Discount is probably the only "good" store. This isn't Chicago, where you have two Binny's within spitting distance of each other.

Being in Riverwest, I would also recommend checking out Whole Foods at Prospect & North. They have a pretty good selection, although they don't get too much limited stuff.

 

I guess I just meant I wish there were more Downer/Otto's caliber stores within walking distance, heh. I'm originally from Philly, so I guess I just got too used to not having a car. That Whole Foods seems weird with randomly stocking limited stuff. Early/mid December I found a lone bottle of King Henry next to a lone single of BCBS.

 

I've had some interesting finds at the Whole Foods as well, including a King Henry.

I grew up in suburban Philadelphia (Media), and the dynamic there is just so much different than anywhere else in the country I think. Beer distributors separate from Liquor Stores, and bars selling sixers to go. I could see living in certain parts of the city (or even certain suburbs) where you could walk to any one of a number of good bars and grab a sixer to take home with you. Also, if you lived within walking distance of something like The Foodery, Hawthornes, Monk's, Pinocchio's, you would definitely be spoiled. Couple all that with the fact that Philly has probably the best distribution of any major metropolitan area in the country...