Lakefront Brewery toasts as it celebrates its 30th anniversary
Business embodies city’s bottoms-up ethos
At the start, Russ Klisch wrote his business plan out by hand — including finding a location as “small as possible to lose the least amount of money.”
Russ, his brother Jim, and high school buddy Carson Praefke opened Lakefront Brewery at 818A E. Chambers St., a space so small it shared an address. They gave tours, but they were brief and everyone just ended up in the kitchen for samples.
“We didn’t really have anything to show off,” Jim said.
Still, those early days were exciting. “It was all being a pioneer, flying by the seat of your pants and doing something unique and educating people,” Jim said.
By the time Lakefront moved to its current location at 1872 N. Commerce St., the ownership team was down to the two brothers, who employed eight or nine employees. From there, Russ said, Lakefront “continued to nickeland-dime ourselves to success.”
This Sunday, the brewery celebrates its 30-year anniversary. It boasts 67 full-time workers and 60 part-timers, and is expected to produce 46,000 barrels of beer in 2017. Sales continue to climb, and Lakefront’s beer can be found in 30 states, along with Canada, China, South Korea, Uruguay, Ukraine and Finland — the Finns seems to favor East Side Dark.
Lakefront is also a quintessentially
Milwaukee operation.
Good beer? Check. Cheese curds? Check. Friday fish fry in a beer hall with a polka band? Check, check and check.
The lights illuminating the walls of the taproom were reclaimed from the old Plankinton Hotel. Russ likes to tell the story of how he beat a group of Chicago buyers in the auction for the lights because they would end up back in Milwaukee.
Even the brewery’s Cream City brick building says Milwaukee. When Lakefront moved its taproom and production facility out of the old bakery in Riverwest in 1998, it took over the former Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Co.’s coal-fired power plant. Just outside, the Milwaukee River glides past.
In the early days, the brothers gave the brewery tours. Russ gave his “like a science teacher;” Jim’s were joke-filled and more popular, and that style stuck. Today, the tours — they’re more involved now — begin at the giant beer mug salvaged from County
Stadium. (That’s Bernie’s Chalet tucked in a corner.) They’re led by teachers, actors or comics with a strong interest in beer, and they can be side-splittingly funny. Tourists flock to them.
“What a fun, engaged staff. What an amazing location. What kick-ass, intriguing beers,” said Julia Herz, craft beer program director for the national Brewers Association, which promotes small and independent brewers.
Developing a style
Lakefront wasn’t Milwaukee’s first craft brewery, but it was close behind Sprecher Brewing, founded in 1985, and Water Street Brewery, which opened in 1987, the same year as Lakefront. Metro Milwaukee now has 32 breweries, with more on the way.
As told tongue-in-cheek on Lakefront’s website, Russ and Jim vigorously competed with each other over who made the best home brew, but the truth is more mundane.
Their first beers were “drinkable,” said Russ, his chemistry degree from the University of WisconsinEau Claire a not-so-secret weapon against his brother, who then was with the Milwaukee Police Department.
The beers they made were more contemporary versions of the Europeanstyle imports they liked to drink.
“I think we brewed the first ale in the state of Wisconsin since Prohibition,” Russ said about Cream City Pale Ale. In a world where ghost peppers and coconut are unapologetic beer ingredients, “to think now that that (pale ale) was revolutionary is kind of revolutionary.”
Friends liked the beers, and they won awards at the Wisconsin State Fair. Russ thought investors would come knocking.
“That guy or lady never showed up,” he said. In 2002, Jim quit and sold his share to Russ. He still acts as an ambassador for the brewery. Russ calls him the “outside guy” and describes himself as the “inside guy,” keeping his hands in where he needs to.
“Either you want to be 10% owner of a 100,000barrel brewery or 100% owner of a 10,000-barrel brewery,” he said.
Proving ground
Tom Ciula, who writes a respected beer email as Grynder, remembers meeting Russ at a beer judging.
“For some reason, I thought Russ would meekly throw out his favorite and sit back and let the rest of us debate,” he said. “Nope. Russ said the Weizenbock was the best made beer on the table, and he said it in a way such that the final decision was made.”
“He had this penetrating stare and hand motions as he argued his point,” Ciula said. “The Weizenbock was crowned best of show, and from then, on we became good friends.”
Over the past three decades, Lakefront has been a proving ground for brewers-in-training. Erik Dorfner at Westallion; Nate Bahr at Bavarian Bierhaus; Colin Ford at Denver’s Prost Brewing; and Matt Hofmann at St. Francis Brewing all had their first brewery jobs at Lakefront. Russ recites the names from memory.
Third Space brewmaster Kevin Wright remembers getting help from Russ when he opened his own brewery last year. Russ lent him the study materials for a boilers exam so he could get certified, as required by the city of Milwaukee.
“Russ took it a couple years before,” Wright said. He could have had someone else take the test, but he told Wright he worried about what would happen if that employee left. So he did it himself.
Until six years ago, Russ was still running the bottling line for the brewery. And he never did find an outside investor “who was worthwhile.” He is one of the few sole owners among the nation’s top 100 breweries.
Still, he is a quiet-spoken man whose desk is in an office shared by employees.
“My employees are my board of directors,” he said. “They’re in tune to what we have, what we do.”
Russ and Jim Klisch will both lead the celebration of Lakefront’s 30th anniversary Sunday at a party at the brewery from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.