There is still time to cast your vote for your favorite Wisconsin craft brewer or, absent that, a state brewery you’ve never before heard of.
The Wisconsin Department of Tourism’s Wisconsin Brewdown allows beer drinkers everywhere to vote for one of 20 top state breweries as determined by consumer nominations to the Travel Wisconsin Facebook page. Everyone is allowed one vote per person per day through Friday, July 24. The winner will be announced July 28.
“This is a fun and friendly competition designed to encourage people to support their favorite breweries and learn about others they might visit in the future,” says Tourism Department Secretary Sara Meaney. “It’s all part of our mission to find new ways to support Wisconsin tourism.”
The 20 candidate breweries were culled from more than 1,000 comments and nominations made to the department’s Facebook page June 22–26. Voting took place starting July 2, with 23,000 votes cast as of July 14. There are no breweries from Milwaukee, Madison or Green Bay among the nominees, and New Glarus Brewing Co., the state’s largest and most successful craft brewer, also is conspicuous in its absence, Meaney says.
Bragging Rights
“The participating breweries may have encouraged friends and family to vote for them,” says Meaney, adding that the department held a similar competition for state fish fries in the spring. “There is no huge prize for the winner, just bragging rights. It’s a great opportunity for little brewers to help themselves.”
Voters can choose from the well-known Central Waters Brewing Co. in Amherst or Potosi Brewery in Potosi to the more obscure Adventure Club Brewing Co. in Bayfield or Pigeon River Brewing Co. in Marion. The website also lists the voter standings and, on July 15, Stubborn Brothers Brewing Co. in Shawano was stubbornly holding onto its narrow lead.
Taste for Brewing
“We have been avid home brewers for almost nine years, but our doors have only been open for a month,” says Aaron Gilling who, with older brother Erik owns the enterprise. “People in Shawano have a lot of hometown pride and we are honored that they are showing us their support.”
The brothers got their taste for brewing when they were students at Marquette University. They also earned health care industry degrees and, when they are not brewing or helping out on the family dairy farm, Erik is a practicing dentist and Aaron a physical therapist. Aaron’s wife Amanda, a brewer in her own right who studied brewing at the prestigious University of California-Davis, is an occupational therapist.
Amanda, in fact, was the one who coined the brewery’s name. “Erik and I argued incessantly about what we wanted to call the brewery,” Aaron says. “I wanted to call it Restless Heart Brewing and he wanted to call it something like Twisted River. Amanda said, ‘Boy, you two are a pair of stubborn brothers,’ and the name stuck.”
The brewery’s website lists a variety of beers “brewed with a farm-to-table mentality.” The selection includes Hoppy Farms IPA, Heartless Rye Farmhouse Ale and others. The brewery’s bestselling beer, Aaron Gilling says, is Shawano Club Pilsner, brewed using a 106-year-old area recipe. But that’s not really where the brothers’ hearts lie.
“We want to focus on barrel-aged and sour beers,” he says of the pair’s seven-barrel brewhouse operation. “We currently have 120 bourbon barrels filled with aging beer aging and we want to be known for doing cool and unique things.”
The brothers are counting on local support to help make this happen. “Shawano is like a mini-Cedarburg, with a lot of retirees from big cities who are excited we produce such great beer,” Aaron Gilling says. “People up here were hungry for great beer and we have a lot of diehard fans.”
You can become just such a fan by casting your Wisconsin Brewdown vote for Stubborn Brothers Brewery by 5 p.m. on Friday, July 24. Any of the other 19 finalists would appreciate your vote as well.
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