Bottle, fest or brewpub, state’s beers on top
No joking: New Glarus Brewing Co. makes some of the best beers in the country.
Consider the visitors using hand trucks to load boxes of the beer into their cars at the brewery’s hilltop brewery in New Glarus.
Or the countless best-of lists its beers have made, including Men’s Journal’s recent article listing the 101 Best Beers in America. New Glarus’ Dancing Man Wheat, a hefeweizen, made the list, which included the best two beers from every state and Washington, D.C.
Door Kriek, a fruit lambic from Funk Factory Geuzeria in Madison, also made the list.
Madison is also home to one of the best beer festivals in the country, according to the readers of USA Today’s 10Best.
The Great Taste of the Midwest, held every August in Madison’s Olin Park, was third on the list. The festival draws thousands of visitors to sample from more than
150 breweries offering up more than 1,000 beers.
Green Bay has its own reason to boast about its brewing scene: The city’s Titletown Brewing Co. was voted the best brewpub in the country by 10Best.
Founded in 1996, Titletown opened a new brewery and tap room in an 1898 railroad depot in 2014. The new brewery features a rooftop beer garden and a menu of Wisconsin classics including fried cheese curds and brats.
This might help explain those sud-cess stories: Wisconsin’s beer taxes are the 48thlowest in the country, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation.
According to the analysis, Wisconsin’s $0.06 excise tax per gallon of beer is tied with Missouri’s and higher only than Wyoming’s at $0.02. Tennessee topped the list for the most expensive taxes, at $1.29 per gallon.