Less than two years after moving into a much larger brewing facility on Hamilton Street, Eagle Park Brewing Company has announced that it will open a second facility at S64 W15680 Commerce Center Parkway in Muskego and will expand to include both a distillery and a cidery.
The East Side location will continue to operate.
The brewery, founded in January 2017 in the Lincoln Warehouse in Bay View by the Borgardt brothers – Jackson, Cass and Max – and Jake Schinker, was recently named the second best new brewery in the country by USA Today.
According to Schinker, the new, 20,500-square foot, $3 million location – located near where its founders were raised – will boast nearly 10 times the cubic footage of the brewery’s Brady Street area location. That will allow for a 300-person taproom and full restaurant, a private event room with its own bar, a 100-seat mezzanine and a to-go beer counter.
The space will also house a 20-barrel brewhouse, with equipment manufactured by Oconomowoc-based Quality Tank Solutions (QTS), a cidery and a distillery that can produce up to 3,000 cases of product annually.
"Adding spirits and cider to our offerings is something we've always wanted to do but it has taken until now to do it correctly," says Schinker. "It is our hope that by expanding our offerings we will be accessible to more than just beer drinkers providing a truly unique experience.
Eagle Park has hired former Breckenridge Distillery head distiller Jordan Stielow to run the distillery.
"This new location will expand upon every aspect of our business and allow us to grow for years to come," says Schinker.
The new facility was designed by Dan Beyer Architects.
Schinker says the goal is to open the facility later this year or early in 2020.
"With such a tight timeline," he says, "it's hard to say exactly."
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
