If you brew it...they will come...a birthday odyssey northward for baseball, cheese AND BEER!

My 48th birthday has rolled around and I decided I wanted to head north to Wisconsin for the occasion and mark off a few Bucket-List items, a few of which includes beer, of course.  Thanks to my wife, Ashlee, and our friends, Danny and Brenda, for tagging along.

Our first stop in Wisconsin was the regionally famous Baumgartner's Restaurant in Monroe.  The mural above the bar depicted a war between beer and wine is epic and how they get those dollar bills up on the high ceiling is quite an art form.  With our huge cheese plate, I had the delicious Spotted Cow farmhouse ale from nearby New Glarus Brewing (WI) followed by a Madtown Nutbrown ale from Ale Asylum over in Madison (WI).

Our first stop of the night and my first bucket-list check mark was the beautiful Brewery Creek Inn in Mineral Point.  That's right.  You sleep above an actual working brewery!  Thanks to Ashlee for finding the travel article on beer-themed trip featuring this place several years ago.   I have held onto that information for a long time with the attention of checking it out for myself.  The inn was perfect and the town of Mineral Point is beautiful and listed in its entirety on the register of National Historic Places.  At dinner that night I had their London Porter, Kristal Weiss, Pale Ale, Lemon Shandy and their Golden Ale.

A converted stone warehouse built in 1854 is now the home
of a small microbrewery, restaurant and inn.

The next morning  I crossed another non-beer related bucket list item off as we dipped down into Iowa to visit the movie location of Field of Dreams.  It was a great and well worth the visit.  

We got back into Wisconsin in time for lunch and stopped at the historic Potosi Brewing Company in the tiny town of the same name.  They have lovingly restored this once-large national brewery that is well worth the stop.  They have a great brewpub, an extensive museum and beautiful grounds to wander about on.  With lunch I had a sampler flight that included the Pure Malt Cave Ale, the Hopsmith IPA (probably my favorite beer of the trip), the Fiddler Oatmeal Stout, the Snake Hollow IPA, the Rye IPA, the Tangerine IPA and a couple sips from Ashlee's flight including the Steamboat Shandy and the Czech Style Pilsner.  And the food was great too!!  Fried cheese curds!!!

Part of the collection at the Potosi Brewing Company Museum of Beer and Brewing.

Our cool places to stay continued tonight as we headed toward LaCrosse and stayed in the small town of Shelby at a restored one-room school house that is now a small two-bedroom inn.  What a great idea!  It was very cool and our friends, Derek and Laurie, who live nearby came over for an evening of pizza and beer.  We provided the pizza and they brought us some great local brews including a Java Lava stout, Me, Myself and IPA and Rubber Mills Pils, all from Pearl Street Brewing in LaCrosse and a Grateful Red IPA from Capital Brewing which is also located in LaCrosse.

The next morning we stopped  for a photo-op at The World's Largest Six-pack (Bucket List CHECK!)
in LaCrosse on our way back east toward Milwaukee.  Very cool start to my birthday!

Yes, it was my birthday and we had a couple-hours drive eastward toward Milwaukee for our last night in Wisconsin.  Since I wasn't driving and they sell real beer in gas station up here, I opted for a few "road brews" during our trip including #013 PyscHOPath double IPA from Wisconsin Brewing in Verona and the Scream IIPA (Thumbprint) double IPA from New Glarus Brewing.  High-gravity beers from a gas station?  What an amazing place!!

The list of amazingly, cool places we stayed on this trip continued and even increased as we pulled into The Brewhouse Inn and Suites (a recently-opened luxury hotel in the former Pabst Brewery opened in 1844) in downtown Milwaukee. As a beer-lover, Milwaukee, has always been on my bucket-list to visit, and then when I discovered this place a few months ago, it moved up the list exponentially!!  They, of course, have a great bar in the hotel and we graced it with our presence where I had a sip or two of a PBR (I kinda had too), a Lakefront IPA from here in Milwaukee (which I drank before but had to get that PBR taste out of my mouth!!) and Riverwest Stein lager also from Lakefront.

The detail in The Brewhouse Inn and Suites is amazing.  Right down to the check-in desk
made of  1,500 beer bottles that were drank by the workers restoring this amazing place.

The mezzanine of the hotel is the old brewery's floor complete with the giant, restored brew kettles.
This is the first hotel I have actually wanted to hang out in.

The stained-glass rendition of King Grambinus, the patron saint of beer and brewing,
that was commissioned by Frederick Pabst himself now graces one end of the hotel's mezzanine.

Our two-bedroom suite was amazing, right down to the French doors
that looked like full beer glasses.  I could so live here!!

Horny Goat Brewing?  Seriously?  And you think I would pass up visiting a place with a name like that?  Well, it was awesome.  Their food rocked (biggest soft pretzel we've ever seen) and their beer was actually really good.  I had the sampler flight shown above (the Slim Billy was a blonde ale, just FYI, the rest are pretty self-explanatory)  plus a few sips from Ashlee's flight including the Archer Apple brown ale and the HornyCopia Pumpkin Ale.

Before we left Milwaukee we had our picture with the Bronze Fonz (of course!) and lunch at a cool place called The Safehouse, a spy-themed restaurant where you even need a password to get into sometimes.  With lunch I had a Fixed Gear red ale from Lakefront Brewing.  We had a great time in Wisconsin and would love to come back and discover more of this great state and the beer they have to offer!

In addendum:

I won a couple of passes to this year's Nashville Film Festival and one of the perks was free beer!  They only had the recently InBev-purchased Goose Island products out of Chicago, but did I mention they were free??  I had the Summer Ale and the 312 Urban Pale Ale.  

4/13/15 - Before my trip up north,  I caught a showing of Furious 7 in IMAX.
  It was over the top as expected, but pretty enjoyable.  Nice tribute to the late Paul Walker at the end.
 Before the show, I stopped by The Hop Stop in East Nashville for dinner (awesome pimento cheese sliders)
 and had a half pint of Boomslang Belgian IPA from Wiseacre Brewing (Memphis) which was pretty good,
 and a 10 oz. pour of the Stone (CA) 18th Anniversary IPA which was excellent.

4/30/15 - After the trip up north, I went and saw Avengers: Age of Ultron in IMAX with Wayne and beforehand had another stop at the Hop...Stop where I had the Aprihop American IPA to celebrate the triumphant return of Dogfish Head (Delaware) back to our distribution area!!  I also had the Dirtwolf double IPA from Victory Brewing (PA).