Mike Brenner says he reached his goal of raising $750,000 to fund the opening of Brenner Brewing Company.

So what's next?

"I still have a ton of work to do. There's still a lot of money to raise. $750,000 was really just the minimum to get the brewery going. I still need another half million dollars to do it right," says Brenner.

In the meantime, Brenner plans to put a down payment on the brewing system.

"It takes about five months to have a new brewing system manufactured," he says. "So many breweries have opened in the U.S. in the last few years, so there's almost no used equipment available. You have to buy new."

After that, he plans to focus on finding a location.

"I've looked at a couple dozen buildings around Milwaukee over the past six months, and I've narrowed it down to three. Now I just have to decide which one will be the best fit. I'm primarily looking in the Fifth Ward and Bay View," he says.

Brenner is the former owner of Hotcakes Gallery, former OnMilwaukee.com graphic designer and former executive director of the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network (MARN). He plans to incorporate his passion for art in his brewery in multiple ways, like featuring the work of local artists on the bottles.

Brenner graduated from the executive MBA program at UW-Milwaukee, where he developed his business plan for the brewery, and became a brewmaster with a diploma from the Siebel Institute in Chicago, which allowed him to study at the Doemens Akademie in Munich, Germany.

"Realistically, it'll be five or six months before I'm ready to open the brewery," says Brenner.