Play

Stopping by Miller Valley and taking a tour of the Miller Brewery is a fun way to pass a Saturday afternoon in Milwaukee. Start in the gift shop of the Visitor’s Center, and then enter the theatre with a movie that presents a significant part of Milwaukee’s history.

New media throughout the tour is cutting edge, like later in the tour when Herman Miller pops out of the cave painting with a hologram effect. Sometimes we felt, their presentation material was a little cheesy, like the tour introduction of the “Miller High Life Girl In The Moon”. I see what they are trying to do, but in my opinion, it didn’t really deliver their message well. Video’s were used rather extensively throughout the guided tour, leaving a commercialized feeling, but overall the presentations were well done.

You definitely learn about the Miller brands. They try to have a brand for every beer lover and take every opportunity to impress upon you what their many brands are. The list is extensive, here are just a few:

• Coors
• Miller
• Leinenkugels
• Blue Moon
• Keystone
• Molson
• Carling
• Foster’s
• Grolsch
• Peroni
• Sharp’s
• Amstel Light
• Astika
• Aguila
• Hamm’s
• Mickey’s
• Milwaukee’s Best

After the movie, a guide will take you to several places of importance along the beer making process like the brewhouse, packaging and the warehouse. 

Discover what massive beer distribution looks like with a chance to see a million cases of beer as you walk through the warehouse. Did you know that 40% of their production goes to Chicago? The rest is transported throughout the Midwest. Who says Milwaukee is America’s Beer City? I guess that depends on production vs. consumption.

The caves were my favorite. You go down about a dozen steps, and enter the cave where, here again, you get a cool feeling of historic déjà vu as Herman Miller tells you how they used to cut massive blocks of ice out of Lake Michigan and haul it to the caves to keep the beer cold all year round. 

Then head off to the tasting room, where you are served a 6-8oz glass of Miller, Miller High Life and then a third rotating beer of their choice. Their choice today was Third Shift, an Amber Lager, that no one, even the Amber beer lover in our group, could even drink. It had a strong unpleasant after taste that one just couldn’t get past. Our suggestion- do as other tours do and allow visitors to choose their own beer. Like wine lovers, beer drinkers have distinctive tastes. Miller circumvents the earlier focus of their varied brands by not allowing their guests to educate their pallets, as wineries and even Leinenkugels do so well, Miller misses an important opportunity.