Wisconsin Trip
Chris and I took last Thursday and Friday off to tour five breweries in Wisconsin. We had a great time. The first day we went to Huber Brewing in Monroe, Tyranena in Lake Mills, and The Great Dane in Madison. The second day we went up to Steven’s Point and saw the Steven’s Point Brewery and Central Waters Brewing Co.
Huber Brewing is one of the oldest breweries in the country. It was truly an enormous and amazing place. Started in 1848, it has been in Monroe for over 150 years. They are one of the last regional breweries making light lager beers at very reasonable price. I have often wondered how they managed to stay in business. It was clear when we went there that their business is really turning around. Their own brands, such Huber Bock and Berghoff, are lagging, but the recent closure of several other regional size breweries, such as Minnesota Brewing, has increased their contract business.
Big news to me was that Hans Kessler, the great but stubborn German Brewmaster, has retired. The new Brewmaster, Kristopher Kalav, was really pushing the brewery into new directions. They have installed a state-of-the-art canning line, that lets them do all sorts of sizes of can packages (like 24 packs). I saw plenty of canned beer in the warehouse that was destined for Canada. The have installed some very nice upgrades to their bottling line and brewhouse in the last year. Most importantly, they have gone from brewing once a week(!) to brewing 3 to 4 times a week. A vast improvement. We had an extensive tour. I was amazed at the number of rooms that brewery has ‘abandoned’. It obviously used to produce much more beer. I was equally impressed by the lab and the amount of quality control that they put into their product. Thinking about it, I can’t remember ever having a bad bottle of Huber beer! They are done with returnable bottles, selling most of them off to the Steven’s Point Brewery. People just don’t bring the bottles back like they used too, and the brewery was really losing money on it. Hopefully Wisconsin’s oldest brewery will be around for quite a while longer.
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