Midwest Brew Tour

I'll give another thumbs up for New Glarus (New Glarus, WI), Ale Asylum Ale Ayslum (Madison), Capital Brewery (Middleton WI), and the Great Dane (Madison). However, I don't believe Lake Louie (Arena, WI) has been mentioned, and they are definitely worth a stop.

You should totally hit Milwaukee on your tour and check out (as mentioned many times above) the Lakefront Brewery. You should also hit Sprecher while you're up there. Sprecher has an awesome beer and cheese pairing thing that we did when we were there.

Also, again, Boulevard is a great tour. They finished a new state of the art brewing system a couple of years ago. At the time, it was supposedly the most advanced brewery in the world.

In Chicago, hit up Two Bros. Also, Half Acre is like 4 blocks from my apartment. I haven't been yet, but plan on checking it out in the next couple of weeks. I'll let you know.

Pappers said:

Two new breweries that opened in Chicago in the last year - Metropolitan (who specialize in lagers) and Half Acre. I've had beer from both and they are excellent. Metropolitan is a husband/wife operation and Half Acre is run by a bunch of young guys - would be interesting additions to your tour!

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definitely hit up half acre, i live nearby and have already been three times since they opened last week. they give tours on fridays at 5pm, but are supposed to start doing tours on saturdays soon. even if you don't get there on one of those days, you can always stop by and say hi. their storefront is open and you can get free samples of all their beers and sodas and buy 6-packs, bombers and growlers to go. plus, they will let you wonder around the brewery even when there isn't a tour. last time i was there there were a couple of guys working that took the time to stop and chat and tell me everything that was going on with the brewery.

im goign to reiterate Sprecher just north of downtown Milwaukee...do it!

u got ur itinerary yet?

I agree with others:
Skip Granite City in the Twin Cities:

Go instead to Summit in St. Paul, (good beer, (3x 10 oz samples too!), free tour, and fun medium sized craft brewery).

Most importantly, GO TO SURLY in Minneapolis, (Brooklyn Center to be exact). The owner of the company is your tourguide, and he's full of stories. The beer is to die for. You get 5 tokens at the start of the tour, each good for a 4 ounce pour. I'm pretty sure that's a legal thing, as they don't really care how much beer you drink. They love their beer, and love their brewery, and Omar loves to show you around and talk about his brewery.

Edit, Surly Tours are EXTREMELY tough to get into. They do one tour, every Friday night, (unless they don't feel like it), and reservations open 3-4 weeks before the tour date, (usually 3 weeks, usually on a thursday night). You can reserve as many slots as you want, but the reservations fill up usually within about 3 hours. www.surlybrewing.com . Good luck!

Since it looks like you want to stop at Two Brothers Brewing, be aware that they only do tours on Saturdays at 1 and 230.
Also follow the directions from the website, it is a little hard to find the first time even for those of us who live around here.
Here is their website:
http://www.twobrosbrew.com/

Cheers