By Tim

In 2008 I lived in Chicago. My friend Bill lived down the block and at least once a week one of us would text the other: 

“Beer?” 

It was understood that meant “want to go over to the neighborhood pub and hang out?” It was also understood by the bartender at that pub that he should open two Miller Lites the second he saw us walk through the door and likely have his trigger finger on two more. And then some.

This habit was beer as thing you hold and mindlessly sip on while you talk about life. This MORE than has its place and is possibly beer’s most important societal function. It was however before I experienced beer and brewery culture as a thing to discuss in and of itself. A hobby all its own. That’s what this post, and moreover this blog, is really about.

Beer as something to be legitimately enjoyed and fussed over the way people always have over wine wasn’t something I discovered until some years later. I had been developing a taste for things beyond the yellow for sometime when I met my first real brewery fandom in Central Waters.

I first started buying Central Waters at my neighborhood grocery store, after I had moved back to Milwaukee. It was one of the few places around me that reliably had a great selection of craft beers and I’d look forward to bopping in there on Friday afternoons to see what was new. I was introduced to Central Waters via their bourbon barrel aged beers, which I absolutely adore and cannot recommend highly enough. But I think it was when they released Illumination, their first and MY first double IPA, that I decided this was my new favorite brewery.

Wow. Cool, Tim. You like their beer. So what?

I’ll tell you: Since those first few four and six packs from the corner store, Central Waters has been a regular fixture in my personal and occasionally professional life and it’s a great illustration of why brewery culture is worth caring about.

My love of Central Waters led me to one of their beer dinners at a restaurant in Milwaukee. I hassled CW on Facebook to bring their new pumpkin beer (Headless Heron) and one of CW’s owners, Anello Mollica, did. That’s cool but I didn’t know at the time that years later I’d end up working for Great Northern Distilling in Plover, WI, which was just a few miles from CW’s headquarters in Amherst. As a result, I ended up hosting events with him just like that one more than once.

At the same time, one of my oldest friends became the high school football coach in Amherst and a regular at the brewery. (He still only drinks Honey Blonde.) That resulted in a bunch of visits to the brewery with our high school buddies and eventually a private tour from CW’s other owner Paul Graham. Those visits netted me all kinds of fancy barreled beers that I’d turn around and share with my brother who had also become a big Central Waters fan.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

And that’s not close to everything. My friend Jack occasionally works in Marshfield so he’ll take Central Water orders from me when he’s up there that we then share. My friend Aaron was my partner in REALLY getting into craft brewing and he and I would ditch work on Friday afternoons to go to Burnheart’s where Central Waters is a staple. They host MittenFest – also a CW event and where I had my first date after I got divorced. An early and memorable date for Brenda and I was at the Central Waters Brewery in Milwaukee. And possibly the craziest connection of all is Brenda, the girl I’m going to marry, grew up in Junction City. THE LITTLE TOWN WHERE CENTRAL WATERS WAS FOUNDED. Crazy, right?

All this isn’t just a love letter to a great brewery. I mean it is a little bit, but really this is kind of my thesis statement for everything else I plan to write here. Part of why Brenda and I do this is because we’re DINKs and super-fun but it’s also because brewery culture can actually be really important to building communities, memories, friendships and sometimes a whole lot more.

We hope you like the posts to come and like talking about brewery culture as much as we do. And go find yourself a Central Waters Cherry Stout if you can. It’s still my favorite beer.

Cheers.