Photo courtesy of Broken Bat Brewing Co.
Broken Bat Brewing founders and lifelong friends Tim Pauly and Dan McElwee “go back to the first-grade reading carpet” at St. Sebastian’s grade school, says Pauly. In 2013, the friends, both avid Milwaukee Brewers fans, were drinking some of McElwee’s home brew and came up with the idea of starting a baseball-themed brewery.
“It was an idea we’ve been chasing for a long time,” Pauly says. “It took a few years to get up and running, but it was a passion of Dan’s to brew, combined with my love of baseball and a desire to be in the entrepreneurial world.”
The pair opened Broken Bat Brewing at 231 E. Buffalo St. (now home of Wizard Works Brewing) in 2017. They had planned to move into a larger 14,000 square foot location—which includes an indoor wiffleball field—at 135 E. Pittsburg Ave. in April, but that plan was altered by the pandemic shutdown. Their new tap room opened on June 18. Tables are socially distanced, and staff is required to wear gloves and masks. Pauly says they do several clean-downs throughout the day.
The tap room has 16 beers on tap and an additional four in cans. To date, Pauly says they’ve made 51 varieties. Two of their original beers are still on tap: Straight Chedd, an apricot pale ale, and Climb the Wall, a farmhouse ale brewed with sweet orange peel with additional orange purée during fermentation.
Photo courtesy of Broken Bat Brewing Co.
Inside the brewery at Broken Bat
Fruited Milkshake IPAs
The eight mainstays include Beach Ball, a pineapple milkshake IPA. “Fruited milkshake IPAs are super-hot right now,” Pauly remarks. “Milkshake is a slang term in the beer world for adding lactose, and what that does is creates a creamier, thicker mouth feel. It keeps sugars from fermenting out of the beer and retains the flavor from fruit.”
Photo courtesy of Broken Bat Brewing Co.
Another favorite is Darryl, a strawberry kettle sour named in honor of slugger Darryl Strawberry. Juuuust a Wit Outside is a Belgian Witbier that bursts with citrus flavor from blood oranges and clementines. To stay connected with their customer base during the shutdown, they crowd-sourced the label and name and held a can design contest. Local graphic designer Nick Berg was the winner. Broken Bat Brewing’s Safe at Home IPA was made in collaboration with Pilot Project Brewing, a brewery incubator out of Chicago.
Rotational varieties include Brewettes Blonde, a blonde ale that pays homage to the women who held it down while professional baseball was postponed during World War II. “We had just watched A League of Their Own,” Pauly says. “I did some digging and found that Milwaukee had a women’s team in 1943 and 1944, called the Brewettes Blondes. We try to tell a little bit of a story so people can connect to the marketing as much as the beer.”
Their lighter styles include the flagship Golden Sombrero, an American pilsner. “There’s a huge demographic in the drinking world that grew up on Miller Lite and Bud Light,” Pauly says. “The pilsners, lagers and ambers are not as trendy as IPAs, but there’s definitely a market for it, and we’ll keep making it.”
Broken Bat Brewing is making barrels of an imperial stout called Black Is Beautiful. It’s part of a national initiative started by minority-owned Weathered Souls Brewing, in San Antonio. “They came up with a beer recipe and a beer name, and they sent it out to anybody who was interested,” Pauly explains. “The idea was to brew it, and proceeds from that beer go to local organizations fighting for change and social justice. We grew up in very diverse neighborhoods in Milwaukee, and social justice is something we care very deeply about.”
Pauly says they’ll host a Black Is Beautiful ticketed release event toward the end of July, with proceeds from all beer sales that day going to the Milwaukee Freedom Fund. The event will also showcase beer brewed by Pauly’s friend, Lamont Dee, who is working on opening the city’s first black-owned brewery, Big Hero. (Watch for more information about Big Hero in a future Eat/Drink column.)
For more information, visit brokenbatbrewery.com.
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