Every year, Joe Yeado makes a beer that brings him right back to his home brewing roots. It’s the recipe that won him a Sam Adams competition, pushing him to consider his own brewery. He set out to create a space for both beer and community.

This summer marks the fifth anniversary for Gathering Place Brewing, 811 E. Vienna Ave. in the Riverwest neighborhood. An anniversary party is scheduled for Aug. 27, along with other limited-release beers, food trucks and live music. There will also be beer garden events June 25 and July 16 (which is also the date for Riverwest Food Truck Rally). 

Next up he’s expanding with a second location of Gathering Place planned to open this summer at the new Flour + Feed Marketplace, 2150 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. in Bay View. Two pop-up beer garden events with food trucks, a makers market and live music are planned at that marketplace June 17, 18 and 19 and July 8, 9 and 10.

Additionally, Gathering Place Brewing Company brings back the fourth annual Lager & Friends Festival, featuring lagers from around the country, from noon to 4 p.m. June 4 at Old Heidelberg Park, 700 W. Lexington Blvd., Glendale. 

Yeado and his wife, Kirstin, live with their family in Bay View. 

More:Bay View will get a food hall and market called Flour and Feed in the new Kinetik building

I started home brewing about 15 years ago, entering beers into competitions and winning awards. I entered a home brew competition put on by Sam Adams, the judges were the brewing team from Boston. I was one of the winners. That’s when my wife and I thought maybe this hobby could be something more. I shifted from learning to make beer to learning the business. … That was 2013, and in 2014 I did the competition again and was again a winner. We moved back to Milwaukee in 2016, opened the brewery in 2017. 

We focus a lot on lagers. That is in part informed by time I spent living in Germany. We also make Belgian style beers. We make double IPAs and coffee stouts … 

It is hard to believe this summer will be five years. We distribute our beers to about 140 bars and restaurants in the Madison and Milwaukee area and to about 80 liquor and grocery stores, including Outpost, Woodman’s, Sendik's and Festival Foods. One thing that is unique is we self distribute. I’m literally driving around with it in the back of a Subaru. 

We are just a little bit off the beaten path in Riverwest, off Capitol Drive and one block off Humboldt. We don’t have the benefit of being on a busy commercial street, so we have grown very much by word of mouth. 

Gathering Place was very intentional. My wife and I both come from the nonprofit world. … To me food is culture and beer is food. Cuisines around the world reflect their culture, and beer changes around the world to reflect that. We want to use beer as a way to bring people together.

We enjoy them because they are full flavored. We use all malt, they tend to be lower in alcohol. They tend to be 4 to 5% alcohol, whereas most IPAs tend to be 6 to 7.

For us it is about beer being paired with food, people and occasions. The goal is to spend time with people, not drink to excess. That’s where we find that lagers are wonderful beers for those occasions with family and friends. It is almost a counter culture to the counter culture that is craft beer.

There are some beers that have stayed since the beginning, including our flagship kolsch style, which is light and crisp. The treffpunkt, it is the German word that means "gathering place," and that is our flagship word. It perfectly describes what we are going for: lots of flavor, lower alcohol, and pairs well with everything. 

There are a number of beers that are seasonal that we come out with at the same time every year. One is the Limb Shaker, a Belgian style trippel we make with Door County cherries. The only reason we make it just once a year is we use fresh cherries harvested in August. The cherries are put in the beer and sit for about six weeks.

That beer sells out quickly every fall. That is also the recipe that won my first Sam Adams competition in 2013, so that beer launched the brewery. It is always a fun day when we release that beer. 

We work with the same farm in Door County every year for our cherries, Barnard Family Farms in Carlsville. They sell at the (South  Shore) farmers market in Bay View. When we do release that beer, we have kegs of prior years on tap so you can get a flight and see how it has changed over time. 

The brewers here in Milwaukee are a tight-knit group. While we are all technically competitors, we help each other when we can. If people are missing an ingredient, they reach out. Someone will have it. We have taken advantage of help from others. We have helped others. Everyone needs a hand at some point.

An example of that here in the Riverwest neighborhood, about five years ago we started the Riverwest Brewery Syndicate. We’d do a bus tour to take people to all four breweries. Now there are five, at the time it was us, Black Husky, Company Brewing and Lakefront Brewery. This ran every Saturday. … For the past two years we haven’t had any events, but we are in the planning stage for more.

At any one point we have about 14 different styles available in the taproom. In a given year we’ll make over 40 different beers. Some of those are beers we make a lot of because they are year-round lineups. That’s a new beer every week or every other week.

That project (at Feed + Flour) should be open later this summer, it is something we are very excited about. The marketplace we will share with four or five other food vendors. We are all local, usually family-run businesses. The location has such a great patio, and it feeds right into Zillman Park. 

Fork. Spoon. Life. explores the everyday relationship that local notables (within the food community and without) have with food. To suggest future personalities to profile, email psullivan@gannett.com.