Just in time for Dry January, a new non-alcoholic beer brand has landed at Milwaukee-area retail.
Naperville, Illinois-based Go Brewing – which has a range of NA brews including some IPAs, a double IPA, a pils, a sour and others – was launched last January by Joe Chura and has already won Gold and Silver Awards at the 2023 Best of Craft Beer Awards.
The beers – which are brewed in Go's own brewhouse (one of just a few NA breweries in the country and the first and only in Illinois) – are available now in southeastern Wisconsin at Discount Liquor, Woodman’s Piggly Wiggly, Mars Cheese Castle and other retailers, as well as at bars like Sir James Pub in Port Washington and Kam’s Thistle & Shamrock on Milwaukee’s northwest side.
Go Brewing also offers at its website a Go Dry January Thrival Kit, which is a mixed 24-pack of 12-ounce cans.
Chura is a former Ford automobile assembly line worker who became an entrepreneur with the 2011 launch – from his basement – of a digital marketing platform. Two years later he started a car dealership-focused online marketing business called Dealer Inspire, and both were acquired by Cars.com for $165 million in 2018.
After swearing off alcohol, Chura says he experienced a positive transformation that found his stress level fading and his health improving. That led him to start Go Brewing.
His entrepreneurial timing, once again, ain’t bad.
According to data from NielsenIQ, as of September, U.S. sales of NA beer were up 32 percent over a year earlier, and have averaged 31 percent growth in the last four years, and Dry January seems more popular than ever.
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.
