A Peek at New Tap Room

Be sure to make time this holiday weekend to check out the beautiful Door County Brewing Company Tap Room at 2434 County F in Baileys Harbor, which has its grand opening from 11 am to 10 pm Saturday, May 24.

A ribbon cutting with Baileys Harbor Town Chair Don Sitte and soft opening for invited guests was held on May 17, and those in attendance got a sneak peek at what promises to become a major Door County destination.

Builder Rick Borkovetz has created a warm and inviting interior with burnt and machined wood that gives a burnished glow to the room.

It’s just one more milestone for a young craft brewery that has seen a lot of activity before it even officially turns one-year-old next month.

“We’ve hit so many different milestones,” said brewmaster Danny McMahon. “Obviously, the first time we sold beer, that was big. When we decided to branch out to Green Bay, that was big. Now we’re in Milwaukee and Madison through distributors, so that was big. Now we’re pretty much distributed through the whole state. It’s still kind of surreal.”

While McMahon will continue to work with Sand Creek Brewing in Black River Falls to do the large batch brewing, the McMahons had a seven-barrel brewing system installed in the Baileys Harbor building that will result in some special Tap Room-only releases.

“We’d love to be able to have a new beer out every month. We’ll see what we can do the new system. A lot of big ideas,” McMahon said. “We’re going to be able to do a lot of small batches. That will give us a chance to experiment before we decide to commit to a 40-barrel batch. The tap room is going to be really cool for that.”

McMahon and his brother Ben, who serves as Tap Room manager, have been traveling the state with special batches, hitting festivals and tasting events.

“We’re hearing lots of good stuff. A lot of things we do for festivals and events, they’re not German beers. Not that there’s anything wrong with German beers, but in Wisconsin there are plenty of them,” said McMahon. “We don’t do IPAs, yet. A lot of people like the fact that we’re doing different stuff. We’ve done a lot of small batch sour stuff. We always get a lot of good feedback.”

Look for him to continue that trend at the Door County Beer Festival in Baileys Harbor on June 14.

“I’ve got a saison with a little bit of brettanomyces (wild yeast), so there will be a bit of funk. And we hopped the crap out of it. So we’ll have it here for the festival,” McMahon said.

The brewery just released two delicious farmhouse ales – Pastoral and Biere de Siegel, which is brewed with rye.

“Saison is probably my go-to style,” McMahon said. “We had rough drafts of these at last year’s beer festival. We’ve brewed a lot of saisons in the last year. These are the two we finally settled on for a large format release. These have been worked and reworked. We’re extremely proud of them.”

McMahon said the next seasonal release in the fall will probably be a stout. “We’re about 85 percent to 90 percent certain of a stout in the fall. It won’t be a stout we’ve done yet,” he said. “We’ll probably have it on tap in the summer so we can get some feedback. Then we’re planning something new for the winter. With our new system we’ll be able to issue some one-off stuff. Once the season dies down, we’re going to really start doing some fun stuff. We’re going to put some wine barrels in there. We’ll make sure to have announcements out there when we have something fun.”