It's no secret that Wisconsin loves its beer. Over 75 breweries call Wisconsin home, and that number continues to grow as small setups establish themselves brewing a particular Wisconsin favorite: the craft beer.
These small breweries are also stocked with plenty of talented and passionate people dedicated to promoting these quality brews, making Wisconsin craft beer a draw for locals and out-of-towners alike.
One such group of visitors has made a yearly tradition out of exploring Wisconsin's many unique craft breweries. Since 2001, the Great Brew Tour has road tripped from Minnesota to visit new stops and old favorites, returning to their home state to spread the word about the Wisconsin brewing scene's latest and greatest.
"We like finding stuff that we really like in Wisconsin and bringing it back to Minnesota and just promote the hell out of it," said Brew Tour member and co-founder Jesse Robertson. "It's in the stores, but a lot of times if you've never heard anything about it you don't want to drop $8 on a six-pack of something if you don't know if it's any good."
What started as a semi-mapped-out road trip between two friends in 2001 soon developed into an annual August tradition to seek out and learn more about great Wisconsin beer.
"We didn't really have a plan that first year, we were basically just driving around," said Robertson. "Now we try to mix it up a little bit because we've done it enough times that we have some favorite places that we always want to go to, but we always want to try out some new stuff, too. There are so many breweries all over the place now – a lot more than there were when we started."
Over the years the Great Brew Tour has made stops at Capital Brewery in Middleton, City Brewery in LaCrosse, New Glarus Brewery and Stevens Point Brewery, among others. While the main reason for visiting is the beer, Robertson says it's the behind-the-scenes aspects that interest him and his fellow Brew Tour members the most.
"We call ourselves the Great Brew Tour, but a lot of times it doesn't even really matter to us if we get a tour of the brewery," he explained. "A lot of times it's more enjoyable to just sit there with the brewmaster or walk around and visit with some of the people that work in there and just find out what they're working on, what beers are coming up, what ideas they've got for new things and what they've done in the past."
In their 10 years of touring Wisconsin's small breweries, the Brew Tour members have developed a number of connections with the brewmasters. While this should make booking their yearly itinerary easier, Robertson still hits the occasional speedbump working out a schedule with these industrious brewers, who are often busy with promotions of their own.
"It seems like now what's happening is breweries are sending their brewers out to do a lot of tastings, which wasn't happening before," said Robertson. "When we first started doing this, when we would ask to meet with a brewmaster, these guys would look at us like we were crazy, because nobody cared. Now, they're sending these guys out to promote the breweries all over the state."
Because of busy schedules on both ends, responsibilities at home and the ability to only fit so many breweries into one round, the Great Brew Tour hasn't been able to make a solid dent in Milwaukee's craft brewing scene – but that's something they're looking forward to tackling next time.
"I really want to get to Tyranena next year, so I think we're going to start in Madison next year and then hit Tyranena on the way to Milwaukee and then hopefully do Lakefront and Milwaukee Brewing and maybe Sprecher too, if we can squeeze that in," said Robertson. "We leave Minnesota on Tuesday night and we're back by Friday afternoon, so it's about how far can we get and how many things can we squeeze in in that amount of time."
Still, the Great Brew Tour makes the most of their time, spotlighting unique breweries with each new tour and adding their own little bit of "Minnesota Nice" to Wisconsin craft brewing.
Contrary to her natural state of being, Renee Lorenz is a total optimist when it comes to Milwaukee. Since beginning her career with OnMilwaukee.com, her occasional forays into the awesomeness that is the Brew City have turned into an overwhelming desire to discover anything and everything that's new, fun or just ... "different."
Expect her random musings to cover both the new and "new-to-her" aspects of Miltown goings-on, in addition to periodically straying completely off-topic, which usually manifests itself in the form of an obscure movie reference.
