Great Lakes Distillery, Milwaukee

So, the hubs and I have been on a bit of a distillery bender lately.  I just find it so cool that there are so many people so passionate about making their own spirits!  And it's amazing to see the heart and soul that each distillery shows in their product, their atmosphere, even their employees.  Every distillery we've visited, I've walked away thinking, "Wouldn't it be amazing if everyone loved their job THAT much?".

In the midst of a quick 24 hours in Milwaukee, we took a quick lunch break from the museum we were exploring with the kids to head over to Great Lakes Distillery for a tour.  Kids are allowed to join you on the tour, free of charge.  Ours grabbed a quick kiddie cocktail (with house-made grenadine!) from the tasting room bar before we headed on the tour.  Adults are encouraged to grab a drink on the way too, but since we had just had our *actual* lunch and I knew the kids would leave me juggling their half-finished sodas, my hubby and I held out for the tasting part of the tour.

Great Lakes is serious about their craft.  It's small batch, with a lot of attention to detail put into each run that they do.  Their tour takes you into the lower level of the building, where you can see that all their production is basically done in one big room.  They've got their still, storage for ingredients, space for bottling and packaging, a storage cage for kegs to age, and a tasting bar area.

It was really interesting to hear our tour guide talk about their process, especially because we could compare and contrast it what we learned when we visited Koval Distillery.  Some things were similar, and some were quite different.  While Koval focuses on whiskeys, Great Lakes, while they do make whiskey, has a number of other spirits that they make, including vodkas and (the one I was most excited about) absinthe.

Honestly, I was so caught up in what the tour guide was telling us that between that and kid-management, I forgot to take photos during that part of the tour.  But if you visit their website, you can actually get a virtual look around the distillery!

I learned a lot of interesting tidbits on the tour, but for some reason, the ones about tax laws stood out in my head.  We were told that around a third of the price you pay for spirits is tax...can you believe that?  It's almost enough to drive me moonshinin'!  And the cage where they store the kegs plays a role in that, because the distillery doesn't get taxed on them until the moment they exit the cage, even if they are staying in that room.  That just fascinated me.  Maybe it's because I'm always extra money-aware on vacations, who knows.  The kids were very into learning about prohibition and the history part of the business.