Our 8th Anniversary Weekend- Day 1 Milwaukee

This year we decided to do a long weekend to celebrate our anniversary a do a few different activities. Saturday we got up and headed to Milwaukee for a few brewery tours and tasting and for dinner. First stop on the trip was Walmart to buy oil for the car, but then we were off to Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee.

Saw these gems at Walmart in Round Lake Beach, too bad they were mens.

 

We had tried to go Lakefront before but did not have reservations, this time we came prepared.

The brewery was an old building that serviced trolley cars in Milwaukee, the owners bought it from the city for $1 in the 80s.

The front of the brewery has the Three Stooges made out of mash tank lids.



These lights came from an old hotel they ripped down in Milwaukee, I loved how pretty they were.

 

More lights and a neon sign

First beer of the day, a dark coffee beer

 I had the Wheat Monkey and per our tour guide, only organic monkeys are used in this beer.

 

Our tour guide was Rachel and she was very fun and made the tour interesting and very fun! The tour lasted about an hour, but was very interactive and informative. We got to try a new Mystery beer they were working on which was very good. I even got to be Laverne and reenact the opening to Laverne and Shirley when she puts the glove on the beer bottles.

This beer mug was previously in County Stadium where the Brewers used to play.

 Bernie's old Chalet from County Stadium



Beer hall after the tour

We enjoyed pretzel bread and chips before heading over to the next brewery.

I used the extra wooden coin I got to buy a root beer, very good!

 

 Next stop Sprecher Brewery, we also tried to go here before but again forgot to make reservations. Back in October of 2011 we went to the Sprecher Restaurant in Lake Geneva and got to try some beer and soda there.  At this brewery not only did a tour but did a beer and cheese pairing. This was excellent and I highly recommend it.

Giant Rooty and I, of course I bought a mini one

 Their gift shop, this brewery used to be an elevator company

 They are also well known for their many flavored sodas

 Our tour guide James

 Bottling and labeling

We also got to try a new beer at Sprechers, but it was gross. Justin showing his opinion of it on his face.

 The special room for the beer and cheese pairing, you went through a giant barrel shaped door, super cool!

 Waiting for the pairing

 Our barrel table, there were about 7 or so tables total, some had 2 people and some had 4.

 Waiting for the pairing, can you see the gross sample is still there

 The menu explaining the beers and cheeses

 Jason was our guide through the beer and cheese pairing

Pairing #1 was a Chameleon beer, their sister brewery and habanero cheese (this was the only cheese I did not like)

 Cool old beer coasters lined the wall near our table

 Cheers!

 Justin inspecting the coco cheese

 

We only did not like two of the IPAs, the rest of the beers were excellent. The cheeses were amazing and we even got to sample the left over cheese and they gave us a few extra glasses of beer at the end. It was nice they had pretzels to munch on in between the samples. We met some nice people from Wisconsin and Lancaster, PA that used to live next to each other in PA.

 Afterwards we sample a few of the sodas- Low Cal Root Beer, Red Raspberry, Orange Dream, and Ginger Ale and had a pretzel.

Sign listing all the beers they had for sampling, this is for those who did the regular tour. They got to have 3 samples I believe.

After we were done at Sprecher we headed downtown to A.J. Bombers for dinner. We had seen them on a show on the Food Network and decided to give them a try.

 Inside the restaurant

 We only had to wait 5 minutes for a table

 See the rails on the celing, they sent little World War 2 esq bomb to your table filled with peanuts

 Our peanut shoot at our table

 Justin choosing what to eat

 They gave you a dry erase marker to check off what you wanted, great idea!

 Having an awesome day!

 I wrote this on the chalk board behind my seat at the booth

 My burger the Cornel Mustard, it had a clue theme in the menu. It also had a pretzel bun (see a pretzel theme here) and onion strings on it. So good!!  

 

 Onion strings to share

 Justin's burger was the Milwaukee burger, the one on the Food Network Versus show, he liked it!

 

Afterwards we stopped off at Mars Cheese Castle to get some mustard and pretzel buns before heading home. We had an awesome day in Milwaukee, the brewery tours far exceeded my expectation.  I would not think twice to go back to them or A.J. Bombers. Anyone have any other Milwaukee brewery suggestions (other than Miller) ?