New Glarus Brewing Co. – maker of Spotted Cow, the popular beer shared by Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Seth Meyers on late night television – broke ground on Tuesday on a $55 million, 65,000 -square-foot brewing, distilling and hospitality addition to their 2007 Hilltop brewery at 2400 Hwy. 69 in New Glarus.
The project was designed by Katherine May – the daughter of the brewery’s founders Dan and Deb Carey – who is a licensed architect. The project has been in the design and planning stage for nearly two years.
The large expansion will include a a 10-hectoliter brew hall with coolship and the main brew hall will double with four additional copper kettles, which will facilitate growth.
New Glarus will also build a long-desired distillery – called Sugar River Distillery – using equipment, including a 10 hectoliter copper still, it purchased a number of years ago and installed at the Riverside facility.
"We will have a Heirloom 10hL Brewhall from the 1800s," May told OnMilwaukee. "This Heirloom Brewhall will exclusively brew beer for the still. That is to say, we distill our beer. It is then aged in barrels into a whiskey-like product.
"We have and will continue to run our own still. It is currently an R&D-like project. We do not expect it to be a large volume project. But, who knows what the future holds!"
Expanded parking space, including 183 spots for visitors, will allow it, in the words of a statement issued today, “to be open and safely accommodate weekend guests.”
May said her design aims to be sympathetic to the brewery’s existing look and with a goal of enhanced sustainability.
The newly constructed building will have four stories, with two of them below grade. It will be capped with a grass roof. It will be heated and cooled via a geothermal system that will use reclaimed production water that is treated on-site for cleaning.
Fifty geothermal wells for the system will be dug beneath the new parking lot.
The parking lot will have two electric car charging stations and its current customer drive will be converted into a bike path connecting to the Sugar River Trail.
“My hand prints are in the concrete at our original brewery and my dad hand-sketched the design of that brewhouse,” said May in a release Tuesday, “and now my son Teddy’s hand prints are in the concrete of our previous expansion, so it just really hits home for me how much history has already been created at this place and how this brewery reflects the involvement of our family over the years.”
Keller Inc. – like New Glarus, a Wisconsin employee-owned company. – has been selected as the general contractor on the project.
To accommodate the work, the Hilltop facility will close to the public sometime in December. New Glarus will reopen its original Riverside facility to the public for the first time since Hilltop opened.
"Riverside is still up and brewing," May told me. "It’s a more intimate space where we can make our specialty beers."
New Glarus Brewery was founded in 1993. It produces around 230,000 barrels annually and all of its beer is sold in Wisconsin.
“We remain astonished and appreciative at the amount of support we feel from Wisconsin,” said Deb Carey, “We do not plan to expand our distribution outside of our state. But we need to keep up with demand.
“When we originally built our Hilltop brewery in 2007 I never imagined we’d outgrow it in my lifetime, but here we are doing our 10th addition after already quadrupling our original square footage. This addition will ensure that current and future employee-owners will be able to accommodate guests and keep up with beer demand for generations to come.”
Construction is expected to begin in January 2025 with completion projected in late autumn 2026. Site, utilities and geothermal well prep work began earlier this month.
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.
