The Lowlands Grand Cafes, which include Café Centraal, Café Bavaria, Benelux and Café Hollander, are known for seamlessly blending influences from the lowlands of Europe with local food and beverage favorites. Recently, Lowlands decided to bring their popular Lowlands Brewing Collaborative with Belgian brewers closer to home with the Lowlands Local Series brewing collaborative. This partnership launched the first week of July and includes Good City Brewing, Third Space Brewing, Raised Grain Brewing Co., The Fermentorium and Black Husky Brewing—breweries all within a five-mile radius of a Lowlands café.
Ileana Rivera, beverage director for the Lowlands Group, noted that Lowlands Local Series builds upon previous collaborations with Wisconsin brewers such as Central Waters Brewing Company and Door County Brewing Co. “The idea behind Lowlands Locals is that we’re really keeping it local—hyper-local to an extent—breweries within a five-mile radius of one of our locations,” she said. “Milwaukee in general has been doing some really awesome, innovative things within the past two years, and we’ve seen lots of breweries pop up. We wanted to showcase that.”
Some local breweries had already approached Lowlands with the possibility of collaborating, thus planting the seed for Lowlands Local Series. “Over the past couple of months, we’ve been going to different breweries, checking them out and building relationships,” Rivera said. “These guys were the first five where we visited their breweries and really felt a connection.”
The varieties in the Lowlands Local Series launch are Good City Brewing’s Good City Sehr Gut Helles, a 4.8% brew that blends German and East Side influences into a bright, crisp lager; Third Space Brewing’s Happy Place, which builds on their signature Midwest Pale Ale with floral, citra hops; Raised Grain Brewing Company’s Oranje Juicy Double IPA, which packs a 7.8% alcohol content and is touted as “biermosa but without the O.J.”; The Fermentorium’s Blushing Aura English Mild Ale, a non-aged bier with added rooibos, hibiscus, currants, rose hips, elderberries and cranberries; and Black Husky Brewing’s Triple Dog Elite, an 8.2 % brew that offers an American twist on a Belgian staple, rounds out the Lowlands Local Series launch.
The flavors were also crafted with approachability in mind. “They taste like you could have more than one,” Rivera said. All five beers in the launch are available at all the Lowlands café locations within the Milwaukee area, except for Café Bavaria, because Lowlands wants to keep that location exclusively European.
The five launch biers will be available through mid-September, and Lowlands will collaborate with local brewers to make batches for the autumn months. “We’re making sure we’re covering a gamut of offerings. Even though we mostly pride ourselves on Belgian bier, we find that a lot of Belgian biers are way different than American IPAs,” Rivera said. “We want to keep it open and fluid, so these brewers felt they could create something special for us.”
For more information, visit lowlandsgroup.com.
