MKE Distro

A quick check on http://www.seekabrew.com/distro/index.html shows that Stone is apparently not distributed to Wisconsin, so you'll probably have to go back to illinois to get your stone fix for now.

I'm not sure if there is anything particular with the distribution of IPA's to Wisconsin and how old they are. I would have to imagine that is just a case of there being too many IPA's in the market and they don't move quickly enough to keep fresh product on the shelf.

Would need someone more local to have a better answer to that last question

 

1) We don't get stone
2) Yeah it sucks, but it's just the way it is, you have to look at the dates always. Unfortunately all places seem to get dumped huge hop shipments at the same time, and then they just all sit forever.
3) Our distro of limited beers is probably 1/20 as good as chicago. The worst craft beer place, or binny's or even whole foods for that matter in Chicago is better than almost everywhere in WI. Most places that get your said zombie dust get 1 case, and therefore sell by the bottle. It's better than them keeping the 4 6 packs for 4 employees at least.

Anyways, welcome!

 

You can get Zombie Dust 6 packs anywhere in Illinois?

 

You moved to the land of German beer. Try a Sprecher Maibock, Black Bavarian, or Special Amber. Or a Lakefront Fixed Gear Red IPA, Riverwest Stein beer, or Klisch Pilsner. Or a Booyah Saison from MKE. Anything from New Glarus...

 

Welcome to Milwaukee. Also, sorry about Milwaukee. I also moved from Chicago and I miss my Chicago offerings dearly.

 

MKE being the brew-city is a bit behind in the craft scene. 2016 looks like it will be a big year for new breweries though, so stay tuned. Start broadening your horizon with the local WI stuff. Black Husky, Karben4, and Tyranena all make very high quality IPAs. The Lakefront and MKE Brewing tours are a good time and they both make solid brews.
It's a pretty overcrowded market here and people are loyal to the WI breweries, so you'll see stuff like Abrasive and Alesmith IPA collect dust.

There are a lot of quality craft beer bars in the MKE area, so you'll honestly have more fun hanging out in those places and drinking limited stuff than trying to truck chase for the "rare" bottles that only make it to a tiny amount of stores.

 

This statement is false, IMO.

This is the correct answer, IMO, especially the part in bold.

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There's a lot of very good craft beer available in Milwaukee. We do get less than top-notch allocations from out of state breweries (as well as some breweries not even distributing here, e.g. Stone), but that's directly related the second quoted statement. There are some notable styles which are sadly underrepresented by WI breweries, but as you said, hopefully that will change soon.

 

I can elaborate. I don't have the exact article to quote from, but Wisconsin was ranked as one of the bottom states for brewery growth in the country. Even Madison outpaced Milwaukee. That will be changing though this year since there are a huge amount of breweries slated to open up in MKE this year.

Somewhat irrelevant, but if you look at the beer trading scene, people go after the New Glarus fruits and R&D bottles, the CW anniversary & black gold, and that's about it for WI. Funk Factory is just starting to take hold. Pretty slim compared to other big "beer" states.

 

If I had to guess, brewery growth is slow in Milwaukee because of the significant number of established breweries - Sprecher, Lakefront, Milwaukee... add in the likes of Capital, Central Waters, New Glarus, Black Husky, Ale Asylum, Tyranena, and even relative newbies Karben4, and the business proposition of starting a new brewery here feels bad.

Absolutely irrelevant. The absolute worst measure of beer quality.

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Listing out that list of breweries above, I'm really struggling to see what we're missing here in Wisconsin. Aside from beers with "trade value."

 

I happen to think we're pretty spoiled here, especially considering how small the population is. We get stuff from a lot of the major breweries on both coasts and everywhere in between. You just happen to be moving here from one of the few places that gets more.
I can't speak for the quality of the IPAs here, as I don't drink many of them, but part of it might be that people drink them more seasonally here. They might rotate through faster once it starts warming up a bit. You know, in June or July...
In the meantime, keep checking your bottle dates and try some of the local IPAs mentioned above.

 

Okay, you do realize you've went on a completely different tangent, right? We're talking about the Milwaukee craft beer scene... Wisconsin as a whole is doing very very well, but that's not the point. Let's get back on topic... Most of the breweries you listed are Madison area, hence my point that Milwaukee is lagging...

Also, you misunderstood my comment about the trading community. I didn't say anything about trade value having any relevance to quality... Craft beer is still highly restrained by distribution ties. Most quality breweries don't get their products into the hands of the population, and the easiest way to get the word out is through the trading scene. That is what gets people talking. My point was, what breweries are people talking about? Any from Milwaukee? Not really... If you look at the big cities in the Midwest (Chicago, Minneapolis, Indy, St. Louis, Columbus, KC, etc etc), they all have a thriving beer scenes and people in the trade community want their products. What from Milwaukee does anybody want? I can't really think of any.

Does that clear it up for you? All I said from the beginning is that Milwaukee HAS BEEN lagging in the craft scene, and that's based on facts. I just gave you some other angles to look at, which also support that.

 

I see Zombie Dust on the shelf in Madison 1-2 times a month, full 6 packs. Who cares? I have been killing my finances with all the beer that has been coming into Madison and I can't imagine that Milwaukee is that far behind. TG Sue is always here, does MKE have it? Try some CW Illumination or HHG.

 

I've seen Sue at Discount. Picked up Illumination & HHG there on Sat.

 

The first 8 posts on this thread had to do solely with distribution and then you said that MKE was behind. Which I said was false based on my opinion of the distribution we received. Then you started talking about breweries, and how that's why MKE is behind. OK. But Sprecher (1985), Lakefront (1987), Water Street Brewing (1987), MKE Ale House / MKE Brewing (1997), Silver Creek Brewing (1999). This, all considering this is a Macro beer sort of town.

You say MKE is behind. I'm just not sure what we're behind in, other than having beer that you can trade. But I've already stated my opinion regarding trading and perceived trade value.

EDIT: I'll also throw in that MKE seems to have a great homebrew scene, but that's from my limited perspective. Maybe someone else can chime in there.

 

I think we're talking about two different topics, which explains why we weren't in agreement. Semantics. Personally, when talking about the beer scene in a city, I would think it would be in regards to the product actually created there. That's why I said that MKE is lagging because it's been slow with new breweries being opened. If you go from the booming Chicago scene to Milwaukee, it's a whole different world here. Sure you could take the angle of what beers is available on the shelves, and obviously being the biggest city in the state, it has the best selection. Not really sure what the proves though, since it's in comparison to nothing.

Anyway, no need to beat the dead horse any further.

 

Home-brewing: B or B-. I'd love to see some independently owned home brew shops open up around town. I personally don't enjoy the Northern Brewer shop- always feels impersonal and corporate. I used to be able to ride my bike to a few different homebrew shops in SD, now I have to drive 45-minutes round trip to get goods at NB. I'd rather give my $$'s to a local business.

MKE distribution: C+. We get a good variety of beers from all over the country, so if I left it at that this would probably be a B+. But our distributors are a bit disorganized, and the overall marketplace is still trying to figure out special releases/special events/allocations.

MKE Craft Beer Scene: C. We're years behind MSP and Chicago. When we should have been honing our craft, we were instead dealing with a flood of contract brewed beer from Chameleon, Big Bay, Horny Goat, St. Francis, etc. Breweries concentrating on distribution instead of their own tap rooms stunted some of the early growth (imagine if you replaced those breweries with Half Acre, Revolution, and Pipeworks). But breweries like Three Sheeps and Tyranena have been busting their butts over the past few years to make sure they got better with every batch. That gives me high hopes for the future.

In five years, I think the likes of Black Husky and Good City will create a new hub for craft beer in Milwaukee. By then, the new breweries of this year will have found their recipes and tuned their kits. More brewers will defect from Lakefront/Sprecher/Miller when they see that the Milwaukee scene is on the rise. The food here is incredible, the beer is good (and getting better) and the people are ridiculously friendly. It's a good time to be in Milwaukee.