Brenner Brewing Co. Email Newsletter

Gallery Night Beer Tasting, April 19, at the Too Much Metal Showroom (207 East Buffalo, Suite 318)

It's that time of year again... Spring Gallery Night! The biggest Gallery Night of the year. Come down to the Too Much Metal showroom (207 East Buffalo, Suite 318) to sample some beers and buy some of Fred Gillich's rad t-shirts and art prints. I'll be handing out samples from 6-9pm.

Here's Fred's description of his new body of silkscreened prints: Explore the planets in our solar system - Pluto included. My imagination was captured by Mars Curiosity and this poster series began on November 29th, 2012 with NASA's discovery of massive polar ice caps on Mercury. The Milky Way Poster show is dedicated to the scientists, dreamers and curious humans on this planet who choose to think FREELY.

Brenner Brewing is Officially a Go!!!

Well, it's official. Last week, I hit my minimum goal of $750,000 of investment capital!! What that means, is that while I'm still trying to find investors, I have enough money to move forward. In the next couple weeks, look for announcements of where the brewery will be located and more information about the brewing system I'm planning to order. There are LOTS of little details to finalize.

The big questions are always, "When will you open?" and "When can I buy your beer in stores?" That's still really tough to say. My goal is to open up a tasting room of sorts this fall and be in stores and bars by early spring 2014. No matter where the brewery ends up being, I'll need to do some construction in the space, and getting my state and federal permits could take as long as six months. I'll keep you all posted.

As always, I'll be doing beer tastings around the area all summer. In addition, I'll be serving beer at a number of beer festivals. So far I've booked the World of Beer Festival (JUN01), Firkin Fest (JUL20), and the Great Lakes Brew Fest (SEP14). If you have suggestions for other fests you think I should be at, shoot me an email. Thanks to you all for your support!

Mike Brenner Wins Best Brewer of 2012 in Milwaukee Magazine
Milwaukee Magazine had the following to say about Mike Brenner and Brenner Brewing in their annual Best of Milwaukee issue...
Brenner Brewing Co. is a work in progress, but don't be surprised if local artist-turned-brewer Mike Brenner adds another full-scale brewing operation to Milwaukee. Despite being featured in this space last year as "Biggest Arts Blowhard," he certainly has his supporters. Brenner raised more than $25,000 for his upstart brewery through kickstarter.com. And he's not just brewing average lagers in his basement. At Firkin Fest in July, Brenner's Bacon Bomb Rauchbier won the Milwaukee Magazine-sponsored Big Firkin Award. Quaff the hard-to-find beer at gallery nights and occasional tastings, and you can say you got in on the ground floor.

Bacon Bomb Wins Best Beer at Firkin Fest
Brenner Brewing participated in our first beer festival last month, Firkin Fest. We served the Moon Baby Amber, Jack and the Hop Stalk IPA, AffenKönig Hefehopenweizenbock, and my Bacon Bomb Rauchbier.

We were feverishly pouring samples to people excited to see what the new brewery in town was up to, when Easttown's Peter Adams announced that Brenner Brewing Company's Bacon Bomb Rauchbier had won the Big Firkin award. Needless to say, I was totally surprised. I'd never actually entered any of my beers into a competition before. All the momentum that's surrounding the brewery right now is so exciting. Thanks to everybody who came down to Firkin Fest, especially Leah, Dave, and Matt for volunteering to pour beers. I look forward to serving you all more award-winning beers soon!

What's an Art-Centered Brewery?
As most of you know, I was one of the co-founders and the longtime Executive Director of the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network (MARN). I also owned and ran Hotcakes Gallery for almost five years. Even before that though, in the early 90's, I made my "living" playing over 200 shows a year in a Milwaukee-based cover band, John the Conqueroo. Obviously, supporting local artists and musicians has always been at the heart of everything I've done, and I don't want the brewery to be any different.

If you click on the image to the right, you can see a very small part of my plan to integrate music and art into what the brewery is. I not only want to show the world that Milwaukee still does make the best beer on earth, but also has an incredible community of hard working artists and musicians that deserve international attention. As each of Brenner Brewing's "12oz Ambassadors" gets into the hands of someone outside Milwaukee and eventually outside of Wisconsin, we'll show the rest of the world what we're up to here... Amazing Beer, Amazing Art, Amazing Music, Amazing People.