Is Craft Beer Dying in Milwaukee?

QuinnDombrowski (CC-BY-SA)

Milwaukee’s microbrewery scene has made a macro-level impact on the city, shaping weekend plans for residents, fostering unique partnerships with local businesses and re-earning its old distinction as “Beer City.”

That longtime tradition in Milwaukee, with large-scale operations like Pabst, Schlitz, Miller and Blatz, has been buttressed by an increasing number of craft breweries throughout the past several decades. The trend reached its peak in the mid-2010s, as a surge of new craft breweries emerged, joining stalwarts like Sprecher Brewing Co., Lakefront Brewery and Milwaukee Brewing Company.

Milwaukee Brewing has since closed, passing off its recipes and branding to Eagle Park, which continues to produce its brews. Sprecher, meanwhile, has expanded beyond beer, and now generates most of its revenue through a line of craft sodas. And while many of the newcomers are still in business, recent closures have left locals wondering if the golden era of craft brewing is circling the drain.

The latest announcement came in early December from Enlightened Brewing Company, which will close Jan. 5. It follows MobCraft Beer and Company Brewing, which both shuttered earlier in 2024. A cidery, Lost Valley Cider Co., also closed its doors. Larger operations are scaling back as well, with Molson Coors planning to close breweries in Milwaukee and Chippewa Falls.

“There are going to be more closures that are happening,” said Tim Eichinger of Black Husky Brewing. “I wish I could put a more positive spin on it, but I think it’s going to be very difficult.”

Eichinger and his wife, Toni Eichinger, launched Black Husky in 2010 and relocated the brewery to its Riverwest location in 2016. “We saw a market down here in Milwaukee that was the biggest market in the state,” he said. “And you had basically three or four breweries.”

Within a couple of years, that total grew to more than 40 across the metro area. Now, the saturation is proving too much for the industry.

“I’ve been saying this for years,” Eichinger said. “We can’t sustain this. It’s unfortunate, and I don’t want to see anybody go out, but it’s just kind of the reality of supply and demand.”

Ron Hockersmith, owner of Amorphic Beer, pointed out several additional factors weighing down craft brewing, including shifting consumer habits, distribution models and COVID-19—though not in the way you might expect.

The pandemic, he said, didn’t just close taprooms, it transformed breweries for good. Beginning in 2020, “almost every brewery started packaging their beer in cans to survive,” Hockersmith told Urban Milwaukee in an email.

After the shift, many beers that were previously taproom-only became readily available in cans for distribution. And this continues today, causing many would-be customers to skip the taproom altogether. “I used to travel to Chicago to wait in line to get beers that today are at nearly every grocery store in the area,” Hockersmith said.

Vennture Brew Co., a combined coffee shop and brewery, was among those that purchased a canning line during the pandemic, packaging its beers to-go. “We actually did very well during COVID for beer sales,” said co-owner Simon McConico. 

But consumer habits have since shifted. While it’s difficult to pinpoint a single driving factor, McConico noted that the change is partly due to drinkers who came of age during pandemic-era restrictions, as well as those who have since moved away from alcohol.

“I think the way that people get introduced to alcohol, many times, is through college or through parties,” he said. “Now, there’s a whole generational section of people who’ve never had that experience.”

Third parties such as distributors also play a role in connecting consumers with craft beer, though the results can vary. Hockersmith said he’s observed a “prevalence of aggressive tactics” from area distributors, some of which obtain “exclusive agreements to block other distributors and independently distributed breweries from some venues, festivals, and street parties.” This practice can result in the same beers appearing repeatedly, which, while beneficial to some, does little to attract new audiences.

Meanwhile, some customer groups remain largely untapped. BIPOC and Gen-Z populations tend to consume less craft beer, leaving them underrepresented in the market, according to Hockersmith.

“Unless the city of Milwaukee breweries can attract these new demographics and/or draw in residents from the surrounding area, they are likely to struggle,” he said.

To their credit, many local breweries have worked to attract in-person visits and diversify their customer base by hosting pop-ups, parties and other special events, which Eichinger described as make-or-break. “You really are relying on the experience that you’re giving people along with the product. For us, that has been a key.”

It also provides a sense of purpose beyond making and selling beer, Eichinger said. “Yes, it helps make you part of the community. But on my end, it also makes my job more rewarding because of the things that we’re able to do to help the community and make a difference in the world.”

Hockersmith agreed. Amorphic frequently offers up its taproom — often free-of-charge — for local fundraisers, artists, farmers markets and more.

“I’d like to think that we’ve done a decent job at having a positive impact on the community — through craft beer and in general … despite not showing up until three years ago,” he said. “To be honest, being a part of the local community is a big reason for our success as it helps our beers get discovered by a wider audience than the traditional craft beer demographic.”

Hockersmith is forthcoming about being part of the so-called problem of oversaturation in Milwaukee, having opened Amorphic just three years ago. The reason for that, he said, was the time needed to make “a clean exit” from his previous role in the corporate world.

Despite that, he echoed Eichinger’s assessment that Milwaukee is at-capacity when it comes to craft breweries, noting that “there are too many taprooms for the current number of craft beer consumers that spend significant time in the city proper.”

“At some point, that was going to happen,” McConico added. “The question was ‘when,’ not ‘if.'”

In response, some breweries have moved or opened secondary locations. “Suburban taprooms are generally busier these days,” Hockersmith said.

But their departures could have unintended consequences.

“Breweries are ultimately way more than the beer they make,” Supermoon Beer owner Rob Brennan wrote in a social media post following the news of Enlightened’s imminent closure. “They’re reflections of the people who work there, the patrons they serve, the initiatives they support, the values they stand by. They’re pillars of community usually built on idealistic energy that brewers and (some) owners supercharge back out into the world at great personal, logistical and fiscal expense.”

When breweries leave Milwaukee, these non-beer contributions disappear with them.

Hockersmith also touched on a number of issues that may be less evident to customers. Some breweries, for example, have reacted to mounting challenges by expanding their distribution footprint — which comes with “extremely low margins” — or opting for lower-cost ingredients in an attempt to compete with larger, regional craft breweries. The latter comes at the expense of quality, and is only effective if a brewery has the volume to support it.

“When everybody is competing for the same business, it gets very, very difficult to to compete, and people will sell beer cheaper, they’ll make beer cheaper — they’ll do anything to stay open,” Eichinger said.

And bigger isn’t always better — especially in Milwaukee. While smaller breweries benefit from close relationships with their patrons, expanding beyond the neighborhood comfort zone can be risky, and forces growing operations to compete with established giants such as Lakefront Brewery, New Glarus Brewing Co. and Sierra Nevada.

“It’s just a difficult space to play in,” McConico said, noting that he was advised to “go bigger” when opening Vennture, but ultimately decided against it. “They’re correct in that if you’re doing distribution, you have to be bigger than what we are. But there were a lot of people who were going that same size at the time, and I think that’s now coming back to hurt them.”

While Milwaukee is seemingly bearing the brunt of closures, the broader trend is affecting businesses nationwide. Beer production fell more than 5% in 2023, according to Brewers Association data.

Amid a complex web of factors affecting the industry, McConico said it ultimately comes down to the consumer.

“Continuing to buy into the community that’s being created at these places is very helpful to the producers,” he said. “If you want things to stick around, you’ve got to support them. And I think that goes for all aspects of food and beverage, which are all in interesting spots right now.”

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