Milwaukee's 1840 Brewing wins gold at Great American Beer Festival

Milwaukee’s 1840 Brewing Co. won high honors at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver in September, winning gold in the fruited wood- and barrel-aged sour category for their beer I Don't Want to Wait.

The kriek-inspired beer was more than three years in the making, with the base beer entering a barrel, one they call "The Mothership" for its large size, in December 2019.

"We just knew it was a super special beer," 1840 owner and brewer Kyle Vetter said. "We knew it was incredibly balanced, full flavored, and the ruby red color is incredible.

"Sometimes you make a good beer and it just hits," he said.

Vetter said he had won awards in the past with other breweries at the Great American Beer Festival, considered the top beer competition in the country, but he had never won with 1840, which opened in 2017.

"It's incredible, just to get a medal at all, and for the first to be gold is really cool," he said.

The batch of Door County cherries used in I Don't Want to Wait actually earned 1840 Brewing two gold medals this year.

After the cherries were soaked in the batch of I Don't Want to Wait, Vetter and his team used them in another beer, Mariah Karaoke. That beer won gold in the Belgian-style fruit beer category at July's U.S. Open Beer Championship, another top tier brewing competition.

"It's really neat to win two golds in the same summer," Vetter said. "And, they're sister beers."

The base of I Don't Want to Wait started out as a spelt saison that was in The Mothership oak barrel for about three years. Throughout that time they added yeast and bacteria. It was then moved to a stainless steel tank where they added Door County Montmorency cherries.

"It's hard to duplicate," Vetter said.

The beer was released on Valentine's Day and is now sold out, aside from two bottles that the staff has kept on hand to celebrate their win.

He said now that they know enough about the beer they can remake something very close, if not exactly the same, plus they could brew it in two years, cutting a year off the process.

"We're definitely going to do our best and remake it. It was already on our radar before the win," Vetter said. "It's a beer that me and my team are really proud of."

1840 was the only Wisconsin brewery to win an award at the Great American Beer Festival this year.

"I got a ton of colleagues reaching out and congratulating us. It's more prominent that we're the only ones in Wisconsin," he said.

Vetter said the win was all thanks to his team, from the brewing side of the business to the "beertenders."

"I'm just super lucky to have a great crew working for us," he said. "This win belongs to everybody on our team."

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