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Eagle Park Brewing & Distilling, with locations in Muskego and on Hamilton Street in Milwaukee, is expanding its beer distribution footprint thanks to a new deal with Beechwood Sales & Service.
The partnership will add Racine, Kenosha and Walworth Counties to the brewery’s reach.
Eagle Park’s spirits are distributed statewide by Badger Liquor.
"Expanding our distribution to southeastern Wisconsin has been long overdue," says Eagle Park co-owner Jake Schinker. "With every announcement we have made about adding distribution territory over the past year, the consistent response was always 'What about Racine?' and 'Why not Kenosha?.'
"We see this addition as an expansion of our home market of Milwaukee and we couldn't be more excited!"
According to Schinker, the brewery’s beers should begin reaching retail shelves and draft lines in May, and Eagle Park is expanding its capacity and ramping up production to meet the new retail and annual summer boost in demand.
"For me, there are very few things that can top seeing someone new take that first sip of an Eagle Park beer and have it instantly put a smile on their face," Schinker says.
"This expansion means we can now offer that experience to more people than ever before."
Eagle Park brewed 1,800 barrels of beer in 2019 and boosted that to 6,000 last year. Schinker projects it will brew between 10,000 and 11,000 barrels at its two facilities in 2021.
While the older, smaller Hamilton Street brewery has an annual capacity of 1,800 barrels, the spacious new Muskego facility, which opened last year, can currently brew 9,600 barrels a year.
The impending arrival of new fermentation tanks will mean it can ultimately brew 17,000 barrels of beer.
Including other malt-based products like hard seltzers, Muskego’s output will be 30,000 barrels, Schinker says.
Last autumn, Eagle Park inked deals with Kay Distributing and Lee Beverage, which sent its beers to the Fox Valley in November and to 23 northern counties in March.
“This Wisconsin growth over the past year has also been quietly accompanied by growth outside the state as well,” says Schinker, with shipments of beer going to Minnesota, Oregon and Massachusetts.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
