"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee is back! For the entire month of March, we're serving up fun articles on bars, clubs and beverages – including guides, the latest trends, bar reviews, the results of our Best of Bars poll and more. Follow along with the #DrinkOnMke hashtag too. Grab a designated driver and dive in!
Lager & Friends Beer Festival is back for a second round on Saturday, March 21 as more than 40 lagers made by 20 brewers from across America share their wares.
More than half the brewers taking part in the event, which runs from noon until 4 p.m. at Bavarian Bierhaus, don’t distribute in Wisconsin, so Lager & Friends offers a chance to taste some brews you otherwise couldn’t sample here.
Among those taking part are Austin’s Hops & Grain, St. Paul’s Bad Weather, Evanston’s Sketchbook, Chicago’s Maplewood, Denver’s Prost and others. Milwaukee participants include Gathering Place, Lakefront, Black Husky, Company Brewing and host Bavarian Bierhaus.
A complete list of breweries is here.
The festival is an example of how this classic beer style -- so long overlooked in the ever-escalating hops race -- is now coming back into vogue, with brewers and beer fans alike rediscovering its charms.
"I’ve found that classic European styles of beer tend to get overlooked with all the new creativity and experimentation in brewing," says Draft & Vessel's Eric Gutbrod, who was at last year's debut event at Turner Hall Ballroom.
"It's great to see more and more craft lagers being brewed. Lager & Friends is one of the very few events around the country that showcase the diversity of lagers. Plus, it's one of the few beer fests where you can actually attempt to sample everything offered!"
Tickets are just $35 and festival founder, Gathering Place's Joe Yeado says, "Lager & Friends is the least expensive beer festival in Milwaukee."
That ticket gets you unlimited beer sampling plus snacks, a 16-ounce can of the 2020 Lager & Friends souvenir beer -- a collaboration between Gathering Place, Lakefront Brewery, Black Husky Brewing and Company Brewing -- and a commemorative glass. A designated driver ticket is $10 and includes the glass and unlimited soft drinks.
The festival also hosts beer demos, too.
Buy tickets online here.
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.
