Once upon a time, a tour of a brewery in the City of Milwaukee—Beer City, Brew Town, the Beer Capital of the World—felt like a perfunctory march through a widget factory, for which you were rewarded with a glass or two of industrial beer.
And then, suddenly, ostensibly out of the city’s ether, a tour of an improbably established brewery called Lakefront became the best bibulous experience you could have in Milwaukee. Before long, a tour of Lakefront Brewery became a cultural symbol of all of the ways that brewery changed the city, as well as the country’s beer industry.
Along with offering one of the most popular brewery tours in the United States (which delights you with glasses of beer throughout the tour), Lakefront Brewery became the first certified organic brewery, producing the country’s oldest certified organic beer (Organic E.S.B.), and the first government-certified, gluten-free beer (New Grist), and the first beer in the country made entirely from a single state’s indigenous ingredients—with all Wisconsin barley, wheat, hops and yeast strain (Wisconsinite). Adding to these achievements, Lakefront offers its beers to the city at its wildly popular beer hall…