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Pilot Project Brewing of Chicago has acquired Milwaukee Brewing Co.’s barely 4-year-old downtown brewery.

Louie has not met his demise.

Eagle Park Brewing announced last week that it had acquired Milwaukee Brewing Co., putting some of Wisconsin’s classic craft beers, like Louie’s Demise, under the same roof of some of its best new ones.

The news followed official word that Pilot Project Brewing of Chicago had acquired Milwaukee Brewing’s barely 4-year-old downtown brewery. I had an illuminating conversation with one of Pilot Project’s co-founders that dug deep into the story of a fascinating unicorn in the brewing industry.

Let’s tug at these separate threads of the next phase for 25-year-old Milwaukee Brewing.

We’ll start with the two known quantities.

Eagle Park is probably the biggest success story in the Wisconsin brewing industry in recent years. Just five years in, it’s built a small beer empire, including a huge brewery in Muskego, a southwest burb of Milwaukee; a smaller brewery and taproom on Cream City’s east side; and now the third-oldest craft brewery in the city.

Eagle Park co-founders Max and Jack Borgardt and Jake Schinker make very good beer. The brewery’s signature beers are hazy IPAs in nearly endless iterations — a breadwinning specialty in these hop-forward times. Also in its portfolio as a contemporary beverage company is a host of hard seltzers, including a neon green one called Ekto Kooler, and smoothie beers. (Not to mention a distillery and a nascent wild/sour beer program.)

But head brewer Jack Borgardt and his team are arguably just as adept at the old-world-inspired lagers and ales. If such beers are your bag and you haven’t tried Fishing for Fishies pilsner or Hef hefeweizen, do not delay. This is good news for fans of Milwaukee Brewing’s beers, the best of which are cut from this classic cloth.

More good news is that aside from making good beer, Eagle Park is also very good at selling it. Fueled by its just-opened brewery, it added statewide distribution in 2020 and made nearly 7,000 barrels of beer (and hard seltzers) last year, according to figures reported to the state Department of Revenue. It’s on a similar pace for 2022, logging 3,660 barrels through July.

In announcing the purchase of MKE, Eagle Park said it estimated its new brand to make up about 6,500 of the 14,000 barrels it expects to produce in 2023. MKE made about 10,000 barrels last year, though state production reports are mum on how much of that was contract brewing of products for other companies.

Milwaukee Brewing had been in decline for years — a decline that its previous owners did not recognize before building the brewery they opened in 2018 and sold (surely at a loss) this year.

While MKE has never had essential status in Madison, it is a respected brand in Brew City, in no small part because it has one of the nation’s great brewing centers right there in its name.

“When a brand carries the name of its home city, it carries a certain responsibility to the city and its fans, and that’s even more true in a storied beer city like Milwaukee,” Schinker said in the company’s announcement. “We’re proud to take the Milwaukee Brewing legacy forward and ensure the future of the brewery as a point of pride for our city.”

Eagle Park plans a refresh for MKE’s branding and packaging, including a shift to all cans, and is looking for a permanent location in the city for both production of MKE beers and a taproom distinct from Eagle Park’s. Eventually, new MKE beers will be added to the existing portfolio, including Louie’s Demise amber ale, O-Gii imperial witbier, MKE IPA and Outboard cream ale.

Some of these beers are already being produced by Eagle Park, but it’ll get a boost next spring when a new brewhouse is installed in its Muskego brewery, Max Borgardt told Dan Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine. You read that right: Eagle Park has already upgraded its not-even-3-year-old brewery. Between that, the MKE purchase (terms were not disclosed) and the 20,000-square-foot brewery itself, I’m sure plenty of Wisconsin brewers are envious of Eagle Park’s access to capital.

I’m glad these beers aren’t going away, and I’m confident they are in good hands. This kind of arrangement is what fans of Ale Asylum should be hoping for. The shuttered Madison brewery and its portfolio are headed to auction in mid-October.

I ran through the high points of Milwaukee Brewing’s closure in a column last month but glossed over the new owner of its 4-year-old, top-of-the-line brewery because they weren’t yet confirming the purchase.

Now I can say it: Pilot Project is fascinating. And Milwaukee didn’t just land one new brewery with this facility, it might have landed 10.

Co-founders Dan Abel and Jordan Radke are Twin Cities natives and UW-Madison alumni who became homebrewers and briefly considered opening a brewery of their own.

In a twist on every brewery’s origin story, though, they didn’t. They discovered how much brick, mortar and stainless steel it takes to open an actual brewery and quickly dropped the idea.

For Abel, though, that “no way” was an epiphany, a problem he felt he could solve.

He’d had a successful career in the music industry, including a stint developing artists for YouTube in the mid-2010s that led him to believe that lowering barriers to entry — like the one he and Radke had just stared down — is a boon to creative output.

And so instead of opening a brewery, they moved to Chicago and founded Pilot Project, an incubator for breweries and other alcoholic beverage brands.

Abel is fond of comparing Pilot Project to a recording studio, or perhaps a label. A musician does not need to hire their own sound engineers and producers, or acquire and run the equipment needed to make a great record; they may or may not have a marketing plan, album art, tour bus and so on.

Pilot Project can provide a talented brewer with a suite of services, from recipe development to branding guidance to a distribution plan — and, of course, the brewhouse to bring it to reality. “Let’s lower the barriers,” Abel said. “Let’s let actual creatives have their place in this industry.”

From nearly 500 applicants since Pilot Project opened in 2019, it has selected about a dozen brands to develop. Luna Bay Booch Co. is a woman-owned hard kombucha brand that went big quickly and is now sold in Trader Joe’s stores across the country. Brother Chimp Brewing dialed in its recipes at Pilot Project before opening its brewpub in North Aurora, Illinois.

Abel describes Pilot Project as “purpose-driven,” and points to diversity of ideas and ownership as one of the good things that happens when barriers fall. Pilot Project partner Funkytown Brewery is one of the nation’s precious few Black-owned breweries, while Azadi Brewing focuses on the flavors of India, the homeland of one of its owners.

With Pilot Project’s 3,500-barrel brewery in Chicago maxed out, Abel and Radke envisioned a big production brewery that could bring its clients to large-scale production without requiring them to “graduate” from the incubator to more traditional contract brewers.

“We needed a larger spot so that once we’ve incubated and proven this brand, we don’t just kick you to the streets,” Abel said. “Ultimately, we should be able to carry your story forward if that’s what you want.”

Last year, he began scouting the nation’s great beer cities for a new location. Denver, San Diego and Portland, Oregon, were all considered before Abel heard about Milwaukee Brewing being for sale. Soon it became clear to these seasoned Wisconsin beer drinkers: Chicago would be the brains of the operation, and Milwaukee the muscle.

“We love the prospect of going back to a place that we felt comfortable and confident in,” Abel said. “And we love the idea of being able to logistically go in between both locations and essentially call both spots home.”

Abel and his team did kick the tires on the Ale Asylum brewery, but the timing didn’t work out.

“We definitely considered it. By the time that we were looking seriously, Ale Asylum was already committed,” Abel said, referring to a deal that ended up falling through for good earlier this summer. “But Milwaukee gave us way more flexibility, and the storyline to us was that much more meaningful — even though I drink no shortage of Ale Asylum in college.”

Pilot Project’s new Milwaukee brewery has a capacity of some 75,000 barrels a year immediately — Abel expected to begin brewing as soon as this week — and he said it could be scaled up to 200,000 barrels in its existing footprint.

With Milwaukee relieving its production bottleneck, Pilot Project can resume onboarding new breweries, and Abel believes bringing in as many as 10 of them a year is possible. Since they’ll be produced in Wisconsin, it’ll be easy to distribute here, for those that are so inclined — though many may be smaller producers who choose to focus on Chicago or other home markets.

Still, the huge taproom attached to the erstwhile Milwaukee Brewing will be a good stop, showcasing many of the brands produced there or at Pilot Project Chicago.

And Pilot Project isn’t done expanding. Abel plans to essentially clone the Chicago operation in other creative centers like Miami, Los Angeles and London — “lead generators” whose ideas could eventually end up fermenting in tanks on the edge of downtown Milwaukee.

Abel can’t wait to continue his journey in brewing. And he’s sure glad he didn’t go the conventional route.

“That’s the fun about breaking molds: Once you break one, well, you might as well break all of them,” he said. “When you get to build a platform that other people get to be creative on, how are you not just constantly enticed by all the cool things that people could come up with and do every single day?”

Got a beer you’d like the Beer Baron or Draft Queen to pop the cap on? Contact Chris Drosner at chrisdrosner@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @WIbeerbaron. Contact Katie Herrera at cellaredkatie@gmail.com or on Twitter @CellaredKatie.

“That's the fun about breaking molds: Once you break one, well, you might as well break all of them."

Dan Abel, co-founder of Pilot Project Brewing of Chicago

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