R said that last night as we went to bed, and he’s right. This weekend really was our first little family vacation, and it was awesome. We took tons of pictures (surprised? i didn’t think so), but I haven’t had a chance to go through them all and get any uploaded yet. I promise I will post a full photographic recap of our brewery tour weekend as soon as I do though, so you can get a little glimpse into the extracurricular activities of these Wisconsin beer lovers.
In the meantime, here’s the low down on everywhere we went. It sounds like kind of a whirlwind excursion, but we actually did everything at our own pace, with no set schedule or agenda, so it felt very leisurely and relaxed. Exactly what the doctor ordered!
Friday: After taking roughly an hour just to get out of Milwaukee County on our way out of town (mind you, it’s only a distance of about 15 miles), and being thoroughly disgusted by the traffic and highway construction in our city, we were finally moving at highway speeds on our way westward. We arrived in Mt. Horeb around 7pm, checked into our little motel, and headed to the Grumpy Troll for dinner and a sampler. And just as last year, it did not disappoint. Oh yeah – as we were unloading our stuff in our room before dinner, D took her first nose-dive, right off one of the beds onto the motel room floor. Lovely. The good thing about kids, though? They’re apparently made of rubber, so fortunately she survived unscathed. Not even a scratch, just a little shaken up. Whew. Nothing a good beer sampler won’t cure. 😉
Saturday: We took D for a couple mile walk on the Military Ridge State Trail right after breakfast, which we were able to pick up just blocks from our motel. Then we packed up, checked out, and headed over to New Glarus. For those of you who have never been to the new New Glarus brewery, GO! It is out of this world fantastic. I never visited the old brewery, but their new facility is beautiful – it’s a little over a year old now, and they have the outdoor bar set up and the inside tasting room is complete. The tour is self-guided and free, and you can buy either a 3-taste sampling or as many full pints as you’d like. We sat outside on their patio and enjoyed a couple pints while enjoying the day. D had a blast playing in the grass and entertaining everyone at the tables around us, and they also had a bags game set up that a couple people were playing. We both agreed that we could have easily spent the entire day there, lounging around and drinking down their delicious brews. However, more places awaited. We stayed at New Glarus until mid-afternoon, stopped at a super old timey awesome bar in the little downtown area called Puempel’s Olde Tavern for a drink, then headed further west to the Mississippi River and Potosi. This is another really cool place. The town itself is nothing, so if you’re not going to the brewery then I don’t think I’d recommend a stop. But the brewery has a beer museum attached, so we checked that out too. The tour is $5, which also gets you a complimentary 12 oz. pour from the bar afterward, and it was very interesting. They have a ton of old beer memorabilia housed in a couple different levels, so it made for a really neat place. The bar is a nice arched stone, open room, and they have a beer garden patio outside as well. We had samplers and ate dinner there, and their food was tasty too. After our free beers from the tour, we hit the road to our rest stop for the night, Galena, IL. It was only about half an hour south of Potosi, so we were there in no time. We did get a glimpse of the might Mississip on our way out of Potosi, for the brewery doesn’t sit right on the river. We stayed at the Irish Cottage Boutique Hotel in Galena, and it was great – cute Irish theme, nice rooms, extremely comfy bed, Irish dancers in the pub downstairs Saturday night, and a complimentary hot breakfast in the same pub Sunday morning. We were spent by bedtime that night and a little sun-kissed from the hours at New Glarus (not D though, no sun on that fair little skin please), so thankfully D decided to be nice and sleep in until 8:00 Sunday morning. Thank you sweet Jesus, our prayers have been answered by room-darkening curtains.
Sunday: After that nice breakfast, we checked out and drove into downtown Galena for some sight-seeing and moseying. That is an awesome town. It’s very quaint and historic, and the main street downtown is beautiful. Full of shops, bars, restaurants, and an outstanding winery (in Galena, IL? who’da thunk it). And guess what else we found? Another brewery! So we spent a couple hours meandering through town, having a sampler, then doing a little wine tasting at the winery on our way out. Their wines reminded us a lot of Door Peninsula’s wines in Door County, which we love. So of course we got a couple bottles as our souvenir from Galena. Then it was off to Madison – wahoo! We headed right to the Great Dane downtown, and our friend G met up with us there. We had one of their giant 15 beer samplers, of course, and lunch, then went out to the east side to Ale Asylum. Neither of us had been there before, so we were excited to check it out. It rocks! We got one of their samplers, of course, and sat out on their patio to enjoy the gorgeous weather (finally!). I was very impressed there – their beer was excellent (i’d only had a couple of their brews before) and the place itself was really nice. So we chilled there for a few hours, bid G farewell, and started to make our way home. We’d originally planned on spending Sunday night somewhere, but decided it was unnecessary. We’d gotten all our stops in in those two days, so why not just sleep in our own beds that night and save the hotel fare? Okey dokey smokey. Just a short ways outside Madison we were in Lake Mills, and guess what’s in Lake Mills? Tyranena, duh. This was the last non-Milwaukee brewery on our list for the weekend (we decided to scratch Minhas and save it for another trip), so we popped in for a pit stop. I got a sampler since I couldn’t have one when we were there last year, and R got a couple pints. D again made friends with everyone and their dogs there, so she was in heaven. It was late evening by the time we finished up at Tyranena, and then we were homeward bound.
Monday: Yesterday was a rare vacation day at home, and it felt great. We started off with some nasty thunderstorms, so I thought it was going to be a hunker down kind of day, but the skies cleared by mid-morning and the sun came out blazing. I got the hammock out of its winter storage in the garage and spent an hour lying in that, then we walked over to Sprecher for a late afternoon tour to cap off the weekend. Nothing like a local brewery in your own backyard! It was a steamy walk, but I lathered up D with sunscreen, put her sun hat on her, and got the extended canopy on the stroller to try to give her more shade. Sprecher’s tour is fun too, if you’ve never been. It’s short, sweet, and to the point – their beer. $5 gets you a 10 minute tour (it’s not a big place), then you get 4 good-sized samples afterward. Yesterday they were in production bottling their delicious root beer, so the whole place smelled great. R grilled up some outstanding brats for dinner when we got home, and we called it a weekend. And a mighty successful one at that.
Oh, in case you’re wondering why we did all these brewery tours, R joined the WI Brewers Guild this year and got a ton of coupons for tours, pints, schwag, etc., at breweries around the state. Well, that, and we just like good beer. 🙂 And don’t worry, at no point were we too impaired for driving. That sounds kind of bad that we went and had samplers, drove to the next place with more samplers, drove to the next place with more samplers, and so on and so on around the state. But I assure you – there was plenty of time and food mixed in with every stop that no one was in danger of an incident at all. We’re not that stupid (i think).
So there you have it – the wonderful world of WI breweries. And there are so many more we want to visit! We think the next one will be a central/northern WI tour. I think we’ve found our annual spring mini-getaway theme.