Sketch of the future Lone Girl Brewing Company on Main Street in Waunakee.
The Lone Girl in the only Waunakee in the world
Construction is well under way on a two-story building in downtown Waunakee that will become home to the Lone Girl Brewing Company.
The project, proposed by Kevin Abercrombie of Waunakee and Paul Kozlowski of Chicago, will be part of the Village Crossing development in the 100 block of Main Street, former site of the Koltes Lumber Yard — a business that began in the 1880s.
Abercrombie also owns Matilda, a Chicago restaurant not far from Wrigley Field. He moved with his family to Waunakee about four years ago and continues to commute to Chicago to run Matilda. Kozlowski, a Chicago architect, specializes in designing restaurants.
The brewpub, approved by the city, will be about 6,000 square feet with some rooftop seating overlooking Main Street. Abercrombie expects to start interior construction by fall, with a January 2016 opening in mind. A final finance plan for the $2 million brewpub is still in the works, however.
“We’ll have our brewing facility and all the tanks right along Main Street,” says Abercrombie. “It’s important for people to look through windows and see what is going on inside.”
The 10-barrel brew house will have eight to 10 of its own beers on tap, which will be served alongside other craft brews.
Abercrombie has been working with local homebrewer John Russell on developing recipes for the new brewpub. Russell recently won “Best of Show” in the 2015 Grumpy Troll Challenge with his sweet stout. The food menu will stress local ingredients.
The name “Lone Girl” comes from the fact that although between them, Abercrombie and Kozlowski have seven children, only one of them is a girl.
What if they gave a vertical tasting and nobody came?
A special vertical tasting of one of the most amazing beers in the world went nearly unnoticed last week in Madison. Brasserie V was to offer four different production years of Aventinus, a beer considered by many as a benchmark in German wheat-based doppelbocks. Aventinus maintains perfect to near-perfect scores on rating sites like Ratebeer (100) and BeerAdvocate (96). It’s often cited by local brewers like Rob LoBreglio and Pat Keller of the Grant Dane and Kirby Nelson of Wisconsin Brewing Company as being influential in their own brewing. I found it surprising that in a community that prides itself on its love of all things beer, I was the only person to sign up for the event. It was ultimately postponed; Brasserie V says it’s planning to reschedule sometime in July. I still turned up and thoroughly lost myself in a $15 bottle of 2008 Aventinus Weizenbock. My advice: Take advantage of this second chance.
Beers to watch for
Mausoleum, a black IPA featuring Mosaic hops, is being released by House of Brews. Look for bomber bottles by the end of June.
Back 9 Nugget, a new single-hop IPA from One Barrel Brewing, will be on tap, along with seven other hoppy brews, June 25-26 at the nanobrewery’s “Celebration of IPAs.” It’s made with Wisconsin-grown nugget hops from the Wisconsin Hop Exchange.
Inaugural Red should be hitting local shelves in bottles any day. The beer was produced by UW-Madison students at Wisconsin Brewing Company in Verona.
