OZAUKEE COUNTY — Ozaukee County brewers have gone where no others in the state have gone before — they have teamed up to create a collaborative beer.
One Town Over rhubarb wheat ale will be available later this month.
In no other of the state’s 72 counties have craft breweries worked on such a venture, according to Matthew Hofmann, owner and brewer at Sahale Ale Works in Grafton.
The six breweries are The Fermentorium Brewery, Foxtown Brewing, Inventors Brewpub, Rebellion Brewing, Sahale Ale Works and Water Street Brewery.
The name of the collaborative beer is in recognition that all of the breweries “are pretty much one town over from each other,” said Foxtown Brewery’s Kyle Smith.
Hofmann added that it is for comradery and to help raise the profile of the brewers in the county.
The venture started in mid-April, when brewers from each of the businesses met to decide on a beer recipe and start working out the logistics of making this brew, according to a press release.
“Every brewery has contributed to the recipe in various ways,” the press release said.
The beer will be brewed at Inventors Brewpub new facility in Port Washington on Thursday, June 27 with all breweries having at least one representative in attendance.
And it wasn’t just local breweries participating in the recipes. Witte’s Vegetable Farm in Cedarburg grew and supplied the rhubarb. The beer will be lightly sweetened with honey from Ozaukee County resident Perry Kallas’s company, Kallas Honey Farm.
‘The beer will be fermented with a special thiolized yeast strain that noticeably boosts the fruit character of the beer via compounds produced by the yeast,” according to the press release.
“We have a great brewing culture and history in Ozaukee,” Hofmann said. ‘We may get overshadowed by the plethora of breweries around Milwaukee, but hopefully people in the surrounding area see that there is great beer worth going a little up the road to seek out. That is one mission of this beer, along with nurturing comradery with the other breweries in the county.’
All six breweries will carry the beer in draft-only format due to the limited production run. The targeted release date for the beer will be mid-July, but there is no coordinated release date at this time.