Last call for Brenner Brewing is this weekend

Brenner Brewing will close for business on Sunday.

Mike Brenner opened the production brewery in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood at 706 S. 5th St. in 2014. He had permission to sell beer in June of that year and then opened a taproom on Aug. 4, 2014.

Last call for the brewery, best known for its Butterfly Farts citrus ale and City Fox pale ale, will be from 4 to 10 p.m. Wednesday; 4 to 11 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday; and 11 a.m. until the owner — that’s him — says so on Sunday.

Brenner doesn’t know what’s coming next for the space, but “someone is buying all the assets,” according to his investors. Speculation is that Brenner Brewing will be replaced by another brewery.

When he opened, Brenner had big goals for a production brewery, the first in Milwaukee in 17 years. Now, there are 20 breweries and brewpubs in the city, including three on S. 5th St.

His business plan was the result of going back to school for his MBA and years of study at the Siebel Institute in Chicago and in Germany.

It was a departure from his previous life as a founder of the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network and then owner of an art gallery. In Milwaukee, however, he was also known as the guy who aggressively opposed the Bronze Fonz statue on the RiverWalk.

He started with the brewery, but when the space next door “kind of fell into our lap,” he became one of four principals of the Pitch Project, a community for up to 20 artists to create and exhibit their work.

Each beer bottle label became an exhibition for art. Della Wells’ art graced bottles of Witchcraft. Now the Wells painting is on the wall, not far from

Brenner’s tongue-in-cheek portrait as “employee of the month.”

In the beginning, things were great, he said. The brewery taproom was crowded. He made $85,000 in tour reservations. There were four or five bartenders working. He had full- and part-time assistants in the brew house, a full-time sales person in Madison and a part-time one there as well.

But there were hurdles. He had cost overruns in the building phase. The government shutdown delayed licensing. The City of Milwaukee dug up the street in front to refinish it.

“It’s a million different things,” Brenner said in front of the taproom bar, the one he and friends made by hand. “One thing is not enough sales from local bars,” he said. Even though there are “hundreds of millions of dollars in a market like this, there’s no room for a guy like me.”

He also “grossly underestimated the cost of running an art center,” specifically the estimates he was given for the cost of utilities and maintenance.

Brenner thought he was making it work. He started community events such as tailgate-like potlucks during Green Bay Packers games. A skilled musician, he sometimes performed at the end of the night. He hosted rehearsal dinners and a couple of weddings. He and his wife exchanged vows there.

He recalled a moment when he was driving home and thought, “I was so happy with my life and what I’ve created here.”

In June, he was served with an eviction notice for the Pitch Project and the brewery. The artists moved out two weeks later.

With no “Hail Mary” pass in his back pocket and the brewery assets sold to someone unknown to him, Brenner is shutting the door on the brewery, but not on brewing.

He plans to brew his recipes at Octopi Brewing in Waunakee and continue to work with MobCraft up the street. He’ll sell his beer at events, and he’ll concentrate on the sales and marketing of it all. He also has some good news in the offing. Brenner and his wife are expecting a daughter in May.

“Running a business is just a constant struggle,” he said. “I’m OK with moving on to the next phase of Brenner.”