“So You Think You Could Be . . .†is an occasional series that gives LaCrosse Tribune reporters a new and interesting job for a day. Some jobs will be dirty. Some will be fun. And others will be just plain weird.
That’s why Joan Kent found herself inside City Brewery, which is hardly a quaint little startup. City Brewery used to be a Heileman plant, cranking out Old Style when that beer was the best seller in Chicago (take that, Miller and Bud).
The story begins:
I would have done more work during my day at City Brewery, but nothing weighed less than 50 pounds.
Everything inside the old brick walls is big. Tubs with capacities like 1,970 barrels. Pipes that seem to run for miles in a maze among the several buildings. Freight cars full of grain. Tanker trucks full of corn syrup.
The brewery is a weird mixture of tradition and modern manufacturing.
The tasting part, however, required only light lifting.