NB MKE is 7 Dog Years old!

It was a Saturday in November and about 3,614 degrees warm at Northern Brewer Milwaukee...



On Saturday, November 13, 2010, Northern Brewer Milwaukee observed its one year anniversary! To celebrate, we fired up some kettles and mashed up 23 gallons of a Rotweizen, which was a sort of lightened dunkelweizen with some CaraRed in it.

Our recipe was this:
24 lbs Pale Wheat
5 lbs Munich Dark
4 lbs CaraRed
4.2 lbs Bohemian Pils
1.24 lbs Acidulated Malt
0.80 lbs Carafa I Special
2.5 oz Perle 7.8%AA 60min
1.0 oz Hersbrucker 3%AA 10min
White Labs 300 Hefeweizen yeast (given to us by St. Francis Brewery)

Here's what it looked like after a couple days and a skimming of yeast:


It's been one amazing year since Northern Brewer Milwaukee has opened and we hope you have enjoyed this past year as much as we have. We've met so many wonderful people along the way and many interesting and delightful conversations with those that share our love of fermented beverages.

We here, at NB MKE, have a habit of taking our tops off. Other beers we've fermented open in our store include:
-Irish Red Ale (5 gallons) in a bucket
-Patersbier (15 gallons) in our fish gutter
-Cascade Pale Ale (5 gallons) in our fish gutter
-Broken Spear (3 gallons) in a tea carafe

Our boys at BrewingTV (Check out Episode 4: Open Fermentation and Episode 6: Mark Stutrud/Topless Hefe Tasting Notes) followed suit with Dawson's Bleicherweiss 3.0: TOPLESS. And some of you did, too! If you have any stories about open fermentation, I'd love to hear about them. Send me your experiences: jeremy@northernbrewer.com or friend me on Facebook.

Looking back at the past year, Northern Brewer Milwaukee has had the privilege to be lovingly involved with the local homebrewing and winemaking community:

• Coordinated the Mid Winter Homebrew Competition for the Mid Winter Brew Fest with the Milwaukee Brewing Company.
• Sponsored the Homebrew Island at the Great Lakes Brew Fest while also hosting some of the judging for the Schooner Homebrew Challenge.
• Brought in nationally recognized speakers for our customers: Jamil Zainasheff, John Palmer, John Blichmann, Tim Vandergrift and Lucy Saunders to name a few.
• Organized an AHA Wort Rally with Lakefront Brewery (the second only of its kind).
• Worked with Kevin Cullen's Ale Through the Ages at Discovery World.
• Sponsored The Food & Froth Festival at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
• Taught a variety of classes on homebrewing and winemaking subjects.
• Participated in and hosted events for Learn To Homebrew Day, Mead Day, National Homebrew Day and other AHA endorsed events.

Thanks to all of you, dear members of NB's Civilian Brewing Division, for your enthusiasms; your encouragements; and, especially, your experiments.