Craft is on tap
The explosion in craft breweries in nearby Milwaukee neighborhoods includes a number with alumni ties
By Tim Cigelske, Comm ’04, Grad ’18, and Christopher Stolarski
David Dupee, Law ’09, decided to take a risk.
After he graduated from Marquette Law School, he and two entrepreneurial friends decided not just to put down roots in Milwaukee, but to double down and open a business.
They started talking with Chef Guy Davies and brewing beer. Good City Brewing co-founder Andy Jones is a brewing industry veteran and graduate of the prestigious University of California–Davis Master Brewers Program.
After four pilot batches of an IPA recipe, it was time to make their move. They invested in a vacant 11,000-square-foot building on the city’s East Side and opened Good City Brewing.
They called their first beer Risk IPA. They followed up with adventurous beers like a red and spicy barley wine; a double IPA with pineapple, citrus and pine flavors; and a dark, smooth and creamy nitro milk stout.
“The idea was let’s take a chance on this thing, sign the bank guarantee and put our lives on the line,” Dupee says. “It was a risk on this business, but also on the city of Milwaukee.”
Pretty quickly Good City Brewing became a go-to venue for beer, food and entertainment.
Milwaukee’s craft breweries are cultivating the tastes of beer drinkers. Good City Brewing is just one with alumni ties. Others within a walkable or bikeable distance from campus include City Lights Brewing, founded by Robin Gohsman, Bus Ad ’75; Gathering Place Brewing, founded by Joe Yeado, Bus Ad ’07, Grad ’10; Milwaukee Brewing Co., founded by Jim McCabe, Eng ’87; and Broken Bat Brewing Company, co-founder by Tim Pauly, Bus Ad ’10.
On the west side of town, City Lights Brewing embodies the transformation of Milwaukee’s physical spaces and evolving economy.
In 2014, Robin Gohsman scoped out a building that was home to the Milwaukee Gas Light Co. more than a century ago. Located south of campus near Valley Fields, the building facilitated the coal gasification process that once lit Milwaukee’s street lamps. The long-ago abandoned building was filled with broken cinder blocks and birds nesting in the chimney. But in his mind’s eye, Robin saw a brewery.
He and his son, Jimmy, set to work repurposing the building’s original architectural elements. Reclaimed floorboards became handmade tables for the taproom. The original 1902 ceiling, which was discovered after a hole was poked in the aluminum drop ceiling, now spans visible overhead. A recovered brown bottle from defunct Obermann Beer Co. sits in the brewing space as a reminder of Milwaukee’s beer heritage. Even a crane from 1899 that was left in the building was used to position the new brewing tanks.
For the beer itself, City Lights Brewing relies on Jimmy, who got acquainted with Denver’s craft beer culture as a student at Regis University and completed the American Brewers Guild Intensive Brewing Science and Engineering program.
Just like the building, the beer is about the classics. They purposely don’t give the beers names — opting instead to call each beer by its style and let the beer speak for itself. They can and distribute classic styles of amber ale, pale ale and IPA and are expanding their lineup to include a coconut porter, Mexican lager and double IPA.
In 20 years Milwaukee Brewing Co. has matured along with the craft beer market. Jim McCabe opened the Ale House brew pub in 1997 with Marquette roommate Mike Bieser, Bus Ad ’85. Back then they often had to explain the unfamiliar flavors and serving temperature — “No, it’s not supposed to be ice cold.” — to a town used to Pabst Blue Ribbon.
“When someone said they would prefer a domestic beer,” McCabe says, “I would point to the brewery 30 feet away and say, ‘It doesn’t get more domestic than that.’”
Since then, palates have caught up to the complex flavors of craft beer, and the brewery’s signature Louie’s Demise ale has remained the same recipe that McCabe home-brewed in the 1990s. In May Milwaukee Brewing Co. won a gold award in the 2018 World Beer Cup for its gin barrel-aged O-Gii in the wood- and barrel-aged strong beer category.
The brewery grew as demand rose — and it keeps growing even today. McCabe recently scouted new properties to add to the company’s locations in the Third Ward and Walker’s Point. He found the right spot in the former Pabst complex about a quarter mile from campus.
McCabe used to take the Pabst brewery tour on Fridays with college friends, and loved the rich history of the building. He even worked at the plant as a young engineer in Pabst’s closing days.
Ultimately, the Pabst building made sense not only historically but also economically. Access to the freeway for distribution, continued development in the area and proximity to the new Milwaukee Bucks entertainment complex make the location the perfect fit. Milwaukee Brewing Co.’s new location will open soon.
Joe Yeado spent his junior year studying in Germany. He now speaks more German in his brewery’s taproom than he has in years. It’s no wonder his upstart Gathering Place Brewing in the burgeoning Riverwest neighborhood pays homage to Gemütlichkeit, the German sense of conviviality and comfort that have become Milwaukee’s adopted mottos.
From its name to its social mission to donate one percent of quarterly sales to local nonprofit organizations, everything about Gathering Place Brewing is rooted in building a sense of community. “Beer can be something that brings people together,” Yeado says. “I knew I wanted a taproom that could be an extension of the community’s living room.”
The beer, though, is what draws people in.
Yeado started brewing beer after graduation. “The first beer I ever made was an IPA. … It was not good,” he remembers. “But the more you do it the better you get. After a few batches, I started sharing it with my friends. At first I thought they were just flattering me because they were drinking for free in my kitchen.”
Yeado entered brewing competitions and used the judges’ feedback to refine his craft. While he and his wife, Kirstin (Noe), Arts ’07, were living in Washington, D.C., he entered a Samuel Adams home-brewing competition and took top honors, besting the field with a sour cherry Belgian-style Trippel ale.
Today a full-time veteran brewmaster handles the production of Gathering Place’s offerings, which include its series of increasingly bold IPAs aptly titled Friendly Debate, Spirited Debate and Heated Debate, respectively.
Meanwhile Yeado manages the business and hauls barrels of suds around town in “Gus,” his Subaru Outback. His sales skills, he says, he picked up as a tour guide and later admissions counselor at Marquette. “I don’t walk backward anymore like I did when I led tours,” he says, “but I’m still selling.”
Besides their Marquette connection, the common theme linking all of the breweries is their pride in the heritage and future of Milwaukee. It’s reflected in their brands.
Robin takes pride in opening a business where he grew up. For Yeado building community in Milwaukee is as important as brewing great beer. McCabe loves seeing his employees plant roots. “When one of our employees starts a family, buys their first house, sets their roots and shares a passion for our great city, I feel very proud of the last 20 years of efforts,” he says.
Pauly, the Broken Bat Brewery co-founder, has stayed connected in Milwaukee by speaking to economics classes at Marquette and hosting alumni game-watching parties at the brewery.
“Being a Marquette grad has been nothing short of a blessing,” said Pauly, who majored in economics at Marquette. “The connections I’ve made, the support I’ve received, and the friends I made and still have are lifelong gains that I owe to Marquette.”
Dupee points to how Good City Brewing — which employs more than 40 people — has helped revitalize a corner of Milwaukee’s East Side. “We’re very procity. We’re city residents, and we want to be an urban brewery and brand,” Dupee says.
Recently, it was announced that Good City will have a 24-tap taproom, restaurant and event space at the new Bucks arena, which hosts Marquette basketball games.
Dupee is proud of the banner that hangs in the taproom that boasts a first place award in the Brewing News National Imperial IPA Competition. Good City brought that honor home for its double IPA, a sequel beer to the Risk IPA. The name of that beer? The Reward. The risk paid off.
