Milwaukee's first self-service beer bar is coming to 3rd Street Market Hall

Milwaukee's first self-service taproom, called The City Fountain, is coming to the 3rd Street Market Hall, serving local craft brews in an indoor beer garden setting.

Customers can pour their own beer, from a taste to a full pint, from 24 taps lining a wall where the former Photoverse Selfie Museum was on the first floor of the market hall.

"It made a lot of sense to do a beer wall and beer garden within that space, and benefit our vendors by bringing in clientele, mainly the craft beer clientele," said 3rd Street Market Hall General Manager Eric Kaye.

They plan to have all Wisconsin breweries on the tap lines, with some well known brands, but focusing on limited edition taps which will rotate regularly.

"There will be a reason to stop back quite often to check out new beers in rotation," Kaye said. "We're working with those familiar breweries in Wisconsin, but bringing in some of their limited releases, things they only do small batches of, so we can bring them downtown here for our guests."

One unique offering they will have is an exclusive Woodford Reserve barrel-aged beer from Eagle Park. The bourbon barrel used for the aging will come from a bourbon and tequila bar that will also be coming to 3rd Street Market Hall in the coming months.

"We've been very busy here and had great crowds and want to take a little pressure off the main bar and diversify our other bars, and have more attractions including craft beer and high-end tequila and bourbon," Kaye said.

He could not give more details about the tequila and bourbon bar at this time.

On top of expanding drink choices, The City Fountain will provide more seating in the food hall, with about 20 additional picnic tables.

Operators at 3rd Street Market Hall got the idea for a self-service taproom after visiting food halls in Denver and Minneapolis that have successful self-serve tap stations. Kaye and the owner of 3rd Street Market Hall thought the idea would replicate well here.

The way it works is before customers pour, they "open a tab" by pairing their credit card with a radio-frequency identification card (RFID). The customer then scans that card to unlock a tap of the beer they want, and the machine pours the beer. The machine keeps track of the ounces of beer poured and charges it to the customer's card.

The space will have hundreds of pint glasses available to change out a dirty glass.

Kaye said customers mostly can serve themselves, but they will have "beer ambassadors" to answer questions and help pour beer correctly.

The first phase of the project, which will include a large beer-garden-like seating area and a section of stadium seating around a 15-foot projector screen, plans to be done by the end of July.

A second phase would include outdoor seating.