Ever since leaving his job as a firefighter and EMT six years ago, Nick Guthery had designs on opening his own craft brewery.
That plan is now in motion, as the well-traveled brewer has plans to open Tree Line Brewing Co. in the Enderis Park neighborhood on Milwaukee’s West Side in a former bank building at 7100 W. Center St., on the Wauwatosa border.
Guthery, who currently works as head brewer at Broken Bat Brewing Co. in Walker’s Point, recently purchased the building and has already begun work on the interior. He hopes to be brewing and serving beer there by late summer or early fall.
“The main appeal of this location is opening something near the neighborhood where I grew up,” Guthery said this week as he and his wife, Erin, were busy removing the purple-patterned carpeting and scraping glue off the terrazzo tile flooring that had been hidden underneath it in the main area of the space.
Guthery grew up in the adjacent Cooper Park neighborhood. He, Erin and their young daughter currently reside in Golden Valley, another nearby Northwest Side neighborhood.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Five-Plus Years Into a Career Shift
Guthery purchased the nearly 7,000-square-foot building, which has an assessed value of $558,600, in mid-March. The building was constructed in the 1950s as a financial institution and still has the original bank vaults. It most recently housed RISE Youth & Family Services.
After graduating from Milwaukee School of Languages in 2013, Guthery moved to Madison and became a firefighter and EMT. In February 2020, Guthery had what he called a “reckoning moment.”
“It was a very stressful job. I was stressed out all the time,” Guthery said. “We were looking at starting a family, so I sat down one day and really thought it through. At the same time, I had been home brewing for two to three years and had a huge passion for it and the craft brewing industry.”
Talk turned to a career shift.
“I was like, let’s give it a shot,” Guthery said. “And if anybody knows me, I’m full gas. There’s no brake once I have an idea in mind.”
He started out as a bartender at Karben4 Brewing in Madison, where he also helped with packaging. He was temporarily laid off when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and later returned to Karben4, helping with events before transitioning back into the brewhouse and eventually becoming a brewer.
After Erin landed a job that required Milwaukee residency in December 2020, Guthery commuted to Madison for a while before becoming a brewer at Third Space Brewing, where he’d spend the next two years. Guthery then worked as a third-shift brewer at Lakefront Brewery. “Then we found out we were going to have our first child and I didn’t really want to leave my wife at home with an infant while I worked third shift,” he said.
That prompted a return to Third Space for a little less than a year before Guthery landed as the head brewer at Broken Bat, where he plans to continue to work until Tree Line is up and running. Broken Bat owner Tim Pauly has spoken glowingly of Guthery’s work in improving Broken Bat’s beer.
Goal: Serve the Neighborhood
It’s tough out there for breweries right now. The industry is contracting, in part to changing consumer habits, rising material costs and declining alcohol consumption among young adults, according to the Brewers Association, an industry trade group.
But Guthery isn’t deterred and is confident that Tree Line will be a successful. “The biggest thing that gets people excited is the smaller neighborhood aspect,” Guthery said. “Nothing against the bigger places, but I don’t want to be another big craft brewery.”
He noted that nearby Vennture Brew Co., about 18 blocks away, has found success as a smaller operation. Lion’s Tail Brewing, the Neenah brewery with a Wauwatosa taproom about 15 blocks away, has emerged as a popular community hub as well.
“I want to be small and local and focus on the neighborhood I’m in,” Guthery said.
To that end, he and his father knocked on more than 150 doors in the surrounding area to let the neighbors know about the plans for Tree Line.
Tree Line will be situated along a stretch of Center Street that features little commercial activity, unlike a bustling stretch of North Avenue in Wauwatosa four blocks to the south that is home to a Gathering Place Brewing taproom and several bars and restaurants. “Obviously, there’s competition along North Avenue, but I have an 18-space parking lot,” Guthery said.
Something for Everyone
Tree Line Brewing plans to have a rotating menu of beers that will be poured from a planned eight-tap setup. Guthery said customers can expect a light lager, pale ale, IPA, double IPA, hazy IPA and white ale and what he described as a couple more “obscure” types of beer. The drink menu will also include craft cocktails and non-alcoholic options.
“I’ll always be trying to have something for everybody who walks in the door,” Guthery said.
Guthery said he plans to make Tree Line’s brews affordable to patrons. He believes his smaller size and low overhead will allow Tree Line to price beers at $5-$7. “The economy is tough right now. People are don’t have just extra money,” Guthery said.
Food options will likely be limited to food trucks a day or two each week at the start, but Guthery is considering a longer-term option of creating a commercial kitchen that would be run by an outside operator, similar to the setup at Central Waters Brewing Co. in Downtown’s Brewery District.
The Tree Line taproom, which will have a capacity of 60 to 70 people and feature an 18-seast bar and a small stage for live music, will be open until 9 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 7 p.m. on Sunday. Plans for the brewery’s outdoor space, designed by his father, a retired landscaper, include native plantings and a 600-square-foot permeable patio designed to divert as much as 10,000 gallons of water annually from storm drains.
A focus on sustainability is also behind Tree Line’s decision to package beer in 12-ounce returnable glass bottles – a throwback to practices of decades ago. “Customers can bring back the bottles and we’ll wash, sanitize and reuse them and we’ll give them something like a dollar off the purchase of their next six-pack,” Guthery said. “Nothing against cans, but if you wrap a label around a can, it will get rejected at a recycling center and end up in a landfill.”
Wauwatosa firm Galbraith Carnahan Architects, who worked with Lion’s Tail, has been hired to design the interior buildout at Tree Line.
Guthery will serve as full-time brewer and handle some bartending duties, along with four part-time employees to start.
Guthery chose Tree Line for the name because of the appreciation he gained for the outdoors from frequent childhood trips to national parks. “Rocky Mountain National Park (in Colorado) is my favorite,” he said. “We would do a lot of high elevation hikes and when you’d hit that tree line, you knew you were going to be able to see for miles.”
