"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com is back for another round! The whole month of February, we're serving up intoxicatingly fun bars and club articles -- including guides, unique features, drink recipes and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!
The votes are in and the winners have been selected for OnMilwaukee's Best: Bars & Clubs, 2009. The results of this readers' poll, including an editors' pick, are available in this series of articles that run all month long in the Bars and Clubs section of OnMilwaukee.com.
It used to be simple.
If you owned a bar in Milwaukee, you could carry one or even a couple of the major local brews -- Miller, Pabst, Schlitz and Blatz -- and be sure that almost nobody would complain.
Today, though, bars have to put a lot of thought into their beer list. Miller may reign supreme, but discerning drinkers like options. Pabst and Schlitz have made a comeback. Customers might want to try a Bass Ale or a Beamish Irish Stout. They may ask for a round of Spotted Cow or Stella Artois.
Whether its an upscale pub with an on-premise brewmaster or a corner bar with a vintage Pabst sign outside, Milwaukee bars try to cultivate impressive beer lists. In the opinion of OnMilwaukee.com readers, the best list in town belongs to The Bomb Shelter, a cozy Walkers Point place located in the shadow of the Allen-Bradley Clock at 1517 S. 2nd St.
The Bomb Shelter's beer list is always evolving, but at last update it stood at 187 beers -- from Abita Purple Haze Raspberry Wheat to Young's Double Chocolate Stout and everything between. You want to follow your Samuel Adams with a Sapporo? This is the place. You want to go from Red Stripe to Rhinelander? You can do it. How about a Fat Squirrel Nut Brown Ale, followed by a Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier?
If it comes in a boot, beer stein, glass or goblet, Bomb Shelter has got you covered.
OnMilwaukee.com editors' choice: Sugar Maple
Runners-up:
2.Cafe Hollander and Sugar Maple (tie)
3.Nomad World Pub
4.Fat Abbey Biercafe
5.Von Trier
6.Palm Tavern
7.Cafe Centraal
8.Benno's
9.Romans' Pub
10.Hi-Hat
11.Palomino
12.Lulu
13.Blackbird
