Hi Folks,
I've got a lot of news for you today, and for once in a very long time, none of it DIRECTLY involves Wisconsin or U.S. politics.
As of Friday, we finally opened our new Tap Room in Madison, Wisconsin, which we call our "Home Away From Home," on 2927 East Washington Avenue.
This project started last July when the Town of Minocqua, a town that shares our name, tried to shut us down by selectively enforcing archaic zoning regulations.
The underlying reason for the town's unprecedented animus towards us was purely political. Minocqua is in a bright red area of Northern Wisconsin, and our Super PAC--what I call "Dark Money Meant For Good"--has become a progressive force by raising and spending over $1.5 million on measures to protect Wisconsin's Democracy, and by extension, America's Democracy, in this all-important swing state.
As we've grown and become more political, the Minocqua Brewing Company has increasingly become a target for Trump's Republican Party in Wisconsin. The party, working through the town, county, and the conservative local newspaper, hasn't given me a moment's peace over the last three years.
I decided that in order to protect the long-term viability of the brewery, I needed to build another tap room in my beer's best-selling market--Madison, Wisconsin. Madison (and surrounding Dane County) is THE progressive powerhouse that keeps Wisconsin ever-so-slightly blue with wonderfully high voter turnout rates.
We're officially opening opening our doors yesterday after having been been given a great write by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal.
If opening our new tap room wasn't enough good news for the week, we did something else last Wednesday that will really help stabilize and grow the Minocqua Brewing Company. We launched a partnership with a nationwide online-only beer distributor that enables us to ship beer to 44 states.
Given our loud and proud progressive activism, we've been boycotted by traditional beer distributors in Wisconsin and shunned by distributors in Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois because they've simply never seen such a politically active brand before.
This move allows us to control our own destiny by bypassing the many beer gatekeepers in every state and shipping directly to those of you who read my emails and follow us on social media.
If you'd like to buy our beer in Wisconsin or in any state other than MS, AK, AL, UT, AK, or HI, simply click on this link.
It's a brave new world for #progressivebeer.
(Don't worry, this is not a picture of me in a weird religious ceremony. It was taken long ago when I was an aspiring opera singer in NYC-- in an OFF OFF OFF Broadway production where I was cast as a chef experiencing a religious fever dream.)
Last but not least, here's a truly shameless plug for any classical music lovers living near Madison, Wisconsin.
I've been deeply immersed in classical music ever since my voice-teaching mother put me in the chorus of her studio's performance of Amahl and the Night visitors at the age of 7 (or maybe even earlier--who can remember?)
I built a little stage in the new Madison tap room as a guilty pleasure that will allow me to sing again from time to time, and will be starting what one of my friends coined "Beer Church" on Sunday afternoons semi-regularly.
While the name of this "salon series" suggests some sort of religious connection, the reality is that I want to listen to more live classical music in an intimate setting and also want to give classical musicians a space to play and honor this vanishing art form.
If you'd like to listen to me sing some really cheesy love songs in the pop-opera vein of Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban, come over to the new place today. The show starts at 2 pm.
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Thanks for reading and thanks for supporting the Minocqua Brewing Company. I'll have more news for you next week about our Super PAC's many irons in the fire, including the anti-private school voucher lawsuit and our efforts to put billboards up around the state that link Trump's attempted presidential coup to our state's many Republican politicians who helped him try to pull it off.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC