Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Crusin’ Rating: B-
Booze Rating: C-
This week, we are up in Eau Claire for a spur-of-the-moment review at a brewery we’ve spotted on the shelves for years and had always heard good things about - so when we recently stopped by Leneinkugel’s to bid a farewell to the brewery, this week’s review was an easy choice for a spot to stop when making our way back home. Enter The Brewing Projekt! This is a brewery that has had a heck of a time in its past with issues surrounding the federal licensing and finding a location but eventually opened in 2015 - so while it may not be an old-school brewery, it’s definitely a craft brewery that looks to be holding up, stubbornly as the owners would say, to whatever the industry throws at it.
The Brewing Projeckt is housed in a massive industrial style brick building right along the Eau Claire River and a riverside walking path that was great to let Barlow get out to stretch his legs before joining us at the Frenchie friendly taproom. This is a working brewery with stacks of cans behind the bar, and tons of brewing equipment in various stages of activation - fermentation tanks, a forklift, and a canning line. An entire wall to your left- as you walk- in is made up of about a thousand cans on pallets. Concrete floors throughout, orange metal chairs, and a smattering of church pews serve as furniture - which we hadn’t seen put to use in a brewery since Topsy Turvey in Lake Geneva.
Overall, this was a functional space and it was clear they are churning out large numbers of beer. We snagged a table near a staircase that we thought would keep Barlow from running amok, but it turns out this staircase led up to a separate event space on the third floor that was hosting some sort of reunion. Needless to say, Barlow got to say “hello” to a lot of folks. While I couldn’t fully check out the event space, it seemed as though there were plenty of windows and a balcony that overlooked the outdoor terrace space (covered in snow on our visit). There were a few orange garage doors that opened up onto that terrace across from where we took our seat. We could spot bistro lights and a few fire pits beneath the snow before it got dark out.
Now, through no fault of the brewery - it really seemed like order in food options were limited. What I had in my head was a space with beer that we could go to as a little family and order in some local fair to enjoy before the long trek back to Madison. In an instance wherein I perhaps put my expectations too high, no one really had a local spot to suggest to us in Eau Claire that delivered - even through a third party app - outside of national chains. A small quibble, but was just bummed us out a little that we didn’t get to try anything unique to Eau Claire for food while at the brewery - definitely on us and our expectations though - not on the brewery.
That aside, after finishing our subs, slightly crestfallen, we went up to a V-shaped bar - flanked on one side by a cooler with beers to go, and on the other a water jug, and, thankfully, a water bowl for dogs. There are two TV’s above the bar that detail the brews available and we were shocked to learn that there were a whopping 20 beers on tap, easily more than what we saw at Leinie’s, to put it in perspective. They also had cocktails and wine, for those of you that don’t like beer or were craving a Bloody Mary after a long day like Hannah was (she was secretly hoping for some Trumies, but no luck). Hannah suggested skipping the bloody and sticking with beer as there wasn’t a whole lot of flavor there.
I snagged a flight of four beers, trying to get a good sampling, and we each tried a pint after the fact of a beer that caught our interest - a habit that sometimes we do:
1) to try something we like that we may have missed in the flight,
2) double-check tasting notes with a larger sample,
3) to double up on something we either really enjoyed or intrigued us; or
4) to confirm that something really wasn’t hitting the mark and give it a second chance.
Gunpowder (6.14% ABV) - Their only flagship beer, this IPA made with Citra and Centennial Hops, Green Tea, and Orange caught my eye as tea is something I usually see more on the cocktail side of things rather than beer. This beer poured golden with medium clarity and featured minute white bubbles in the head. With a juicy aroma of mango, passion fruit, and orange, this beer made my mouth water just from the smell. Tasting brought high amounts of orange juice, a little bit of resin, and some tannic presence at the end. I thought this was a pleasant enough drink and it did make me think if the tea addition was curbing some of the hop bitterness to make it slightly more easy-drinking. Hannah detected no tannins there and said it was okay, but not her favorite.
Winter Spirit (4.5% ABV) - This pilot series fruited cream ale with Cranberry, Orange, and Cinnamon poured a milky-cranberry red and had no clarity. Hannah noted that there was a distinct aroma of cranberry juice cocktail when smelling and definite cinnamon. The red fruit and spice here remind me a little of Glühwein. With mixed flavors of tropical punch, cranberry, orange, mulling spices, and sporting a thick mouthfeel this wine was overly sweet with just not enough of that cranberry tartness to bring any balance. I’d say this was a Glühwein smoothie beer.
Planet Burst (7.3% ABV) - This sour ale with strawberry, grape, and watermelon poured garnet red with medium-high clarity and little to no head retention. With aromas of off-the-shelf grapefruit juice and artificial strawberry and a lot of artificial tasting fruit juice. While this was a burst of flavor, neither of us detected any sourness at all which was a let-down. I’d skip this one.
Peppermint Mocha Cow Cow (5.8% ABV) - Rarely do we see peppermint used in beer so we had to snag this chocolate milk stout featuring peppermint, milk, sugar, coffee and chocolate. Predictably, there was a mixture of low coffee, some milk chocolate and mint in the aroma. Pouring absolutely dark brown, this beer went from light milk-cream notes to mint which gave the impression almost of a grasshopper then moved to roasted coffee and dart chocolate but ended minty again. Perhaps a little heavy on the mint, this beer tasted as if you melted an Andes Candy in a coffee.
We finished out the review, with me picking a barrel-aged stout and Hannah trying another sour. Unfortunately though, and again, this may be on us, but we had heard good things about The Brewing Projekt so perhaps we ended up going in with unrealistically high expectations. The beers did not meet those expectations. The Brewing Projekt States:
The Brewing Projekt’s mission is to create damn good beer. Not beer that EVERYONE will like; rather beer that many will love. Boring just isn’t our style. If that’s what you want… Go somewhere else.
While we know their philosophy states that the beer isn’t going to be for everyone and we respect that, I wasn’t necessarily looking for boring beer when I went. I was looking for some tasty beer that lived up to the hype and neither of us really found that to be the case. The beers here seemed to be unnecessarily complicated with way too many flavors and ingredients that, on the whole, ended up making them taste artificial and overly sweet for the most part. No, the beer doesn’t have to be boring, but you can have exciting beer without added four or five things to it, in our opinion.
The space was nice, for a working brewery, and it was clean, the staff was friendly. But between the lack of food options and our let-down from the beer, I don’t know if we will be back any time soon and we can’t recommend a trip all the way from the Madison or Milwaukee area just for them. If you’d like to give it a shot while you’re up there, definitely let us know what you think. Maybe our hopes were just too high for this one. Better luck next time!
Until then, keep on crusin’, don’t stop boozin’!
To learn more about Brewing Projekt please visit their website at: https://www.thebrewingprojekt.com/our-beer or on Facebook: @TheBrewingProjekt or on Instagram: @TheBrewingProjekt
Comments