Milwaukee on Google Maps Street View

Milwaukee has been added to Google Maps Street View. It's pretty cool. Here's a view of my building:

New Milwaukee brewery: Buffalo Water Brewing Co.

I may be late to the game, but according to Suds, Wine & Spirits, a new brewery has opened in Milwaukee called Buffalo Water Brewing Company. Their website says both Buffalo Water Beer Company and Brewing Company, so who knows?

From the pictures on their website, it appears they are using Milwaukee Brewing Company's brewing equipment at their new stand-alone brewery at 613 South 2nd St (Jim McCabe owns the Milwaukee Ale House and Milwaukee Brewing Company). The Suds website says BWBC leases space at the 2nd Street brewery and is a separate company from the Ale House, although their relationship with them is obviously a close one. They plan on eventually brewing their beer via contract at multiple locations around country.

Their website says that Buffalo Water Beer Company is located at the intersection of Water Street and Buffalo Street in the heart of Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward district, which is also where the new and popular Water Buffalo Restaurant and Bar is located (and just down the block from the Ale House).

The Buffalo Water Brewing Company's flagship (and only) beer, Bison Blonde is now on tap at the Milwaukee Ale House and Just Arts Saloon (also on 2nd Street). The brewery has two more beers in the works: a witte and a nutty ale.

The blonde beer was specifically formulated to be paired with Buffalo wings and other hot and spicy foods. Bison Blonde is brewed in accordance with Reinheitsgebot and has 4.4% ABV.

Update: I tasted this beer last weekend at the Midwinter Brew Fest. It's OK. I think the beer might be more about marketing right now instead of taste. Pretty soon all the young teens will be saying they "slammed a Blonde" this weekend, which is one of Buffalo Water Beer Company's slogans.

I want to be a pirate

I saw this boat sitting in the shallow waters near Bradford Beach off of Lincoln Memorial Drive. I even got out of my car and took a picture on my cell phone (although this isn't my cell phone picture).

I thought there was a law that said if you found an abandoned boat at sea, you could claim it as your own. But the article below implies that isn't true in the Great Lakes.

Here's the article about the boat and what it's doing there:

Dream boat came to rest on the rocks

Prince hits his 50th home run - youngest player ever

Prince Fielder became the youngest major league player ever to hit 50 home runs in a season, connecting twice in the Milwaukee Brewers' 9-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday night.

The win pulled the Brewers to within two games of the NL Central-leading Chicago Cubs, who lost at Florida 4-2 Tuesday night. With five games remaining for each team, the Cubs' magic number remained stuck at four.

Fielder joined his father Cecil as the only father-son tandem to hit 50 home runs in a season. The elder Fielder hit 51 with the Detroit Tigers in 1990.

I purchased my potential playoff tickets today - 4 tickets for the Division Series Home Game 1, if needed, of course.

The Brewers still face an uphill climb to unseat the Cubs in the final week of the season, but at least they're making it interesting.

Prince Fielder becomes a 100-100 player

The Brewers Blog on JSonline reported that Prince Fielder scored his 100th run of the season tonight, becoming only the fifth player in Milwaukee Brewers franchise history to collect 100 runs and 100 RBI's in the same season.

The other Brewers to accomplish that feat were Robin Yount (1982 and 1989), Cecil Cooper (1982, 1983), John Jaha (1996), and Jeromy Burnitz (2001).

The Brewers won tonight but the Cubs also won by scoring 3 runs in the bottom of the 9th. Give me a break.

I signed up for the Brewers play-off ticket lottery, just in case. Unfortunately, 102,000 other people also signed up for the right to purchase single-game tickets to a playoff game, if there is one.

Milwaukee has dirty taps: Bad beer in Brew City

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a good article in today's paper and online about unclean beer tap lines in bars and restaurants in Milwaukee. Please Milwaukee bars and restaurants - clean your beer lines! Especially you, Judges Irish Pub!

I clean my Haier Kegorator beer lines between each keg. That's probably too long because things can get smelly and sticky, especially when you're drinking good, unpasteurized beer. And if we don't have a lot of visitors at the time it can take us a month to finish a keg.

Illinois apparently has a law that says bars have to clean their beer lines once per week. I support that.

Wisconsin doesn't have that law. Instead, the health codes state that the lines be cleaned "at a frequency specified by the manufacturer" or "a frequency necessary to preclude accumulation of soil or mold." Yuck.

The Beer State should definitely have higher standards than the Fib state, come on!

Russ Klisch, president of Milwaukee-based awesome Lakefront Brewery, said he has been talking with other brewers about initiating a tap cleaning certification program to ensure the work is being done properly.

I'm for it. Let's get it done ASAP.

The article said that Hooligans Super Bar had clean tap lines. That makes me happy. I bet Roman's Pub does too because Roman really cares about good beer. (I would recommend Roman's to anybody, by the way).

I hope the new Sugar Maple bar opening soon in Bay View (that will have 50 beers on tap) will clean their lines regularly, because I plan to go there often.

Milwaukee Marsupial Bridge wins design award

My favorite bridge beneath another bridge is the Milwaukee Marsupial Bridge that's suspended from the underbelly of the Holton Street Viaduct.


It links the Brady Street neighborhood with the Beer Line B neighborhood north of downtown Milwaukee and the condo district along Commerce Street.


I used to live about 2 blocks from the south end of the bridge on Cass Street, near Water Street and across from Trocadero. The other end passes right by Lakefront Brewery on Commerce Street.


It's a wide bridge that's easy to bike across and seems lightly used, but it's a neat way to see the Milwaukee River and get access to Water Street. The bridge is made out of steel with wooden planks that make a clickity-clack noise when you ride your bike over it.


JSOnline is reporting that the bridge won a design award:

SATURDAY, Sept. 8, 2007, 10:13 a.m.
By Whitney Gould

'Marsupial' bridge wins design award

Milwaukee's "marsupial" bridge beneath the Holton St. viaduct, along with an adjacent bus shelter and plaza, has won a national design award.

The $10,000 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence is one of six presented nationwide from the Bruner Foundation, based in Pittsford, N.Y., to recognize "outstanding examples of urban placemaking."

The foundation cited the Crossroads Project, designed by La Dallman Architects and engineered by Bloom Consultants, for "providing a new model for the use of leftover space," raising the quality of infrastructure design and improving pedestrian connections along the Milwaukee River.

The pedestrian bridge is tucked beneath the viaduct, linking the Brady St. neighborhood with the booming condo district along Commerce St. An artful bus shelter at the corner of Brady and Van Buren streets and an urban plaza with benches are part of the project. The award will be presented Tuesday on the plaza, just off Water St. Cecilia Gilbert, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works, said the $10,000 would probably be used to complete a connection from the bridge to Commerce St.

Gettelman $1000

From JS Online today.

The Museum of Beer & Brewing in Milwaukee has organized a tapping tonight of the the first Gettelman $1000 Beer brewed since 1971 - a single keg produced according to a recipe squirreled away for years in family files.

The beer was called Gettelman $1000 because they offered $1000 to anyone who could prove Gettelman $1000 Beer contained any substitute for pure malt and hops. No one claimed the money for the 80 years the beer was produced.

The tapping takes place at 7pm tonight at the Miller Inn at 3931 W State Street in Milwaukee. It's open to the public and costs $15. Nancy Gettelman will speak about her book and Fred Gettelman, a great-grandson of the family's brewing patriarch, will show company memorabilia.

The A. Gettelman Brewing Company was sold to Miller in 1961 and Miller still makes a Gettelman brand, Milwaukee's Best.