Day 13 - Miller Time

Although today was planned as mainly a driving day, we were going straight by Milwaukee city, and a stop was definitely in order. When you think Milwaukee, two things come to mind, Harley Davidson, and breweries, specifically the Miller Brewing Company. Though my love for all things motorized extends to motorcycles, Lindy and I have both done a tour of Harley plants in the past, albeit in different states. So we decided to hit the Miller brewery tour instead.

Now, there are in fact several other breweries in Milwaukee. There were even more before prohibition. Miller though, is by far the largest in the area, and one of the few to survive the great depression serving sodas and malts.

The tour is free, another bonus. It isn’t, in my mind at least, the most organized tour. Rather than starting at the beginning of the process and working your way through, you start at the most convenient building, and hop around haphazardly until you make your way into the tasting area.

The first building the tour enters is a dark, not well lit, building where the bottles and cans are boxed in cases and prepared for shipping, umm, cool? I guess? From there you move on to the pre-shipping storage/depot. THIS was impressive. The building contained approximately 500,000 cases of the different Miller brands, all of which would be shipped by the end of the day, impressive. What’s even more impressive is that Chicago alone consumes 40% of the beer that is shipped from this brewery.

Moving on you enter what is one of the most impressive, and hottest, portions of the tour, the brew house. Here the process begins of mixing, stirring, filtering, and fermenting in 6 enormous tuns and kettles. The brewhouse, however is optional on the tour, due to 56 stairs to the upper floor and over 100* heat, apparently the kettles don’t need A/C, and neither do the workers.

They do have a plan for cooling you down, though. After exiting the brewhouse the tour goes deep into the hillside surrounding the brewery into hand-dug caves, which extend about 600ft into the hills. This is where Frederick Miller originally stored his beverages, in barrels, with ice lining the walls of the cave to maintain the temperature. Unfortunately, the poor lighting and number of people made it hard to get a good photo of this underground oasis.

Finally, and most importantly, the tour exits into the “Beer Garden” where you’re invited to sample some of Miller’s various brands. I’m sure Lindy was happy, but it sure wasn’t Bud Light…..

After that, it was hammer down to get to the windy city of Chicago, where we quickly setup camp, enjoyed dinner, and had our night cut short by a brief rainstorm.