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Milwaukee's
taste for lager makes brewpubs crawl,
but beer museum here isn't history yet...
A
new brewpub, Onopa Brewing, opened in Milwaukee on June 14, 2001.
Realize
that this is only the fifth brewpub to open in Wisconsin's largest
city-located in one of the state's richest counties. This, after 20-plus
years of American craft beer....
Why
on earth should a city identified nearly the world over as Beer City,
USA, a city built with beer barons' fortunes, be so slow to foster
the growth of brewpubs?
I
posed that question to Dave Cartwright, owner of Specialty Beverage
of Franklin, WI, one of the few beer distributors in the Midwest to
specialize in craft brews.
"As
much of a beer town as Milwaukee is supposed to be, it's got something
of an identity crisis," Cartwright said. Milwaukeeans must be somewhat
ambivalent about their identification as residents of Beer City, USA.
Why else would a benign emblem for the city's  Convention
and Visitors' Bureau, a circular icon dubbed "Genuine American," have
been the subject of controversy for its uncanny resemblance to a crown
cap of a Miller Genuine Draft beer bottle?
"Perhaps
it has been harder for brewpubs to get established because of the
strength of the big breweries that gave Milwaukee its reputation as
a brewing center," mused Cartwright.
A
more subtle-but still powerful--influence is that brewpubs make beer
that tastes "different." And "different" is a tough sell locally,
according to Cartwright.
"Customers are driven by marketing to try what they are told they
will like," says Cartwright. Could the paucity of brewpubs be as simple
as a matter of taste?
St.
Louis, another Midwestern river city with a megabrewer, has a better
record for brewpubs-per-capita than Milwaukee. Its first brewpub was
the St. Louis Taproom for Schlafly Beers, with five more brewpubs
opening in the decade that followed.
Obviously,
the issues of consumer loyalty, distribution and shelf space dominate
beer sales in these two brewing city-states, where most beer menus
are still recited, "Miller, Miller Lite, MGD," or, "Bud, Bud Light,
Michelob."
That
said, Milwaukee's brewpubs are far from ailing. Both the chain unit
of Rock Bottom and the independent Milwaukee Ale House report robust
sales. The exceptional longevity of the Water St. Brewery makes it
a landmark for the brewpub industry. Cartwright adds, "I used to live
in Portland, Oregon, which is a city that's ahead of the curve for
brewpubs, so I noticed the difference when I moved back to Wisconsin.
But even in Madison (the Wisconsin capital and home to the University
of Wisconsin), retailers both on and off premise seem a lot more receptive
to a new brand or a beer style that's a little unusual."
Beer
brands that a fishing buddy calls, "exotics" (as in, "Hand me an exotic
from the cooler") are the mainstay of business for Cartwright. He
began the Specialty Beverage distribution company in the fall of 1998,
when Pioneer Brewing Company bought the brands formerly brewed by
Wisconsin Brewing Co., and now represents more than a dozen domestic
breweries and some Belgian and Czech imports, too.
Specialty Beverage promotes craft brews in much the same way that
Spirit of Milwaukee, a local nonprofit, promotes Milwaukee. You could
call it, "evangelism." A spokesperson for the Spirit of Milwaukee,
says, "We give grants to organizations that promote Milwaukee, such
as the Lake Schooner project that showcases the history of sailing
on the Great Lakes."
When
I asked about promoting the brewing history of Milwaukee through the
fledgling Beer Museum, the spokesman responded, "The city's brewing
heritage is a rich and long one, and certainly a beer museum is something
that's an intriguing idea."
Evangelism
is the mode of operation for the Beer Museum these days. When I first
wrote about the Beer Museum in 1998, the plans were to have a site
downtown, with a working brewpub on the premises, plus an interactive
display of brewing techniques.
But
the Beer Museum board of directors must first solve this conundrum.
The Beer Museum has yet to secure the kind of funding that would help
develop a permanent site-or vice versa, to find the permanent, central
location that would aid in securing major funds. Board reorganizations
in the last year point to progress.
As
of spring 2001, a new board of directors, headed by Gary Luther (retired
Miller executive and former MBAA president), seeks permanent exhibit
space for the Beer Museum in Milwaukee.
Maybe
this year, the Spirit of Milwaukee will recognize that the city's
spirit owes much of its gusto to beer.
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