I am headed to Milwaukee 1/16-1/19. I need some advice on areas to stay in & awesome places to check out. Any help is appreciated! Cheers
Check out Places > Wisconsin > Milwaukee on the top row of the website. Enjoy Lakefront Brewing, Milwaukee Brewing, there are a number of smaller little brewpubs in the area now as well (Tornado, Brenner, District 14 I think). Discount Liquor, Ray's, Woodman's should have you covered for your buying needs. Three Cellars and Draft and Vessel are nice little stores/beer bars as well. This should be a good start for you
Shameless plug, but I run @MKEBeerRadar on Twitter. I tweet whenever new or exciting stuff hits bars or stores. Might be worth giving it a look when you're in town to figure out where to drink (most stores have the same or similar distro, so I'm less help to outsiders there).
Romans is awesome a tad expensive but considering their consistently great tap list it's worth going at least occasionally.
Chicagoan here. I love visiting MKE and my go-to is Sugar Maple for beers and whiskey. Non-beer suggestions: get coffee at Anodyne (both locations are great). And GO TO BRYANT'S. Can't stress enough the awesomeness of the cocktails at Bryant's.
All 3 have similar tap lists and can be hit or miss at times. The big difference is the vibe as all 3 are different. I prefer Burnheart's, personally. If you like cocktails, definitely follow Nate's advice. That place is pretty bad ass.
Check out beermenus.com around the time of your trip. Most of the bars discussed above keep an updated taplist on that site.
I second Lakefront. I am usually not one for brewery tours, but the guide there made it really fun and humorous. Generous amount of samples too.
Bottle shops: Discount Liquor http://www.discountliquorinc.com/ Beer only store: http://www.maltshoppetosa.com/ Hopefully you are staying downtown. Obviously the best area for hotels and restaurants and nightlife. I enjoy the MKE Brewing tour, which is close to downtown: http://mkebrewing.com/tours/ Also near downtown: http://www.cafebenelux.com/ Or visit the nearby suburb of Wauwatosa and enjoy two cousins of Cafe Benelux located next door to each other, Cafe Hollander and Cafe Bavaria: http://cafehollander.com/tosavillage/ http://www.cafebavaria.com/
If you're downtown and don't want to go to Bay View (where Sugar Maple, Burnhearts, and Roman's are), first...what the heck is wrong with you?! Second, go to Rumpus Room. They've always had a solid draft list when I've been in and seem to usually have Black Husky on, one of Wisconsin's best kept secrets (outside of this site of course)
You can't have a sentence that includes the words beer and Milwaukee without using the adjective "German" when talking about beer. There are some great German restaurants there that serve beer. If you are not from Wisconsin then you should take in at least one of these places. Also if you are driving stop in one of the gas stations and pick up Spotted Cow or one of the of the other New Glarus beers. Someone will thank you for it.
