USA, WI: City Lights Brewing Co. aiming at November opening

City Lights Brewing Co. in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley is planning to open in November, and will launch with four core beers to be sold in cans, brewmaster and owner Jimmy Gohsman tells the Milwaukee Business Journal.

Work toward a fall opening for the brewery and taproom at 2200 W. Mt. Vernon Ave. along the Menomonee River is “well underway,” Gohsman said.

The all-new brewery had eyed a summer opening, but complications at the building, and with the “structural integrity of the floor” in the brewery building in particular, caused a two-month delay.

“We’re putting roughly $1 million of brewing equipment (into the space),” he said. “We wanted to make sure everything was sound.”

Among the pieces of equipment scheduled to arrive this fall is a canning line. The brewery will regularly be selling beer in cans, not bottles.

“Cans are more environmentally friendly and more economical,” said Gohsman. “Bottom line is it’s better for the beer. Beer’s enemies are light and oxygen. If packaged correctly, cans eliminate the potential for light and oxygen spoilage.”

Gohsman said the core four brews of City Lights beer that will be canned are an amber ale, a brown ale, an IPA and a session IPA. Cans and kegs of these four beers will be sold around town upon the brewery’s opening, and seasonal and specialty brews will be available only at the taproom.

City Lights Brewing Co. is the relaunched company that in 2014 brewed beer as 4 Brothers Blended Beer Co. See Sean Ryan’s 2015 story on the purchase of the City Lights property.

07 August, 2016