Lakefront Brewery
Milwaukee’s first microbrewery to achieve Regional Craft Brewery status
Lakefront Brewery, Inc. is a brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. The brewery is based in the Beerline B neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Founded in 1987 by brothers Russ and Jim Klisch, several of its brands are named after Milwaukee neighborhoods, such as Riverwest Stein Beer and East Side Dark. The brewery was the first in the U.S. to bottle fruit beer since prohibition was repealed, starting in 1992 with the seasonal Lakefront Cherry Lager. The brewery often uses Wisconsin-grown ingredients, including Door County cherries.
In 1996, Lakefront became the first certified organic brewery in the country and produced the first organic beer to be bottled in the U.S. - their Organic E.S.B. (extra special bitter). The ale is brewed using 100% organic malt and hops. President, owner and founder Russ Klisch started a partnership with Wisconsin farmers to grow organic hops in his home state.
In May 2007, The Wisconsin Department of Tourism announced that Lakefront Brewery had become the first brewery in the state and the first business in the City of Milwaukee to receive the Travel Green Wisconsin certification.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6478727. Authority coordinates are 43.055, -87.905. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1992, 1996 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lakefront Brewery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.