Copper State Brewing Co.

There is still so much exploration to be done for my husband and I in the city of Green Bay, but we have always been explorers of breweries first and foremost when we land in a fresh place. Now that we are able to do that again on the back of Wisconsin’s reopening, we found ourselves at Copper State Brewing downtown by the river. We saw the menu online and immediately felt a kinship to the place.

We’ve been to a lot of brewpubs with burgers and pizzas on the menu, and those places have historically been among our favorites in each town that we have lived in since we left college. The call of a good beer and a good slice of pizza is hard for us to resist, even amidst COVID-19 concerns. So we got in the car, we drove, and we arrived.

The actual building itself enchanted me right away. The outdoor seating area is beautifully encased with the logo hanging up from the iron supports with greenery all around. If the possibility of rain weren’t in the cards, I would have pushed to sit outside. Instead, we went into the building with exposed brick walls that called back to an old history.

According to our waitress, the previous tenants were none other than Hinterland Brewing, so Copper State inherited the equipment when they moved in. Before that, the building used to be a meat processing plant. There are still places in the bar area where you can see the bars that once held meathooks. I love the distressed look of these old buildings, and it made me very comfortable as we sat next to an unlit fireplace and decided on beer flights.

I was too interested in my drinks to take a picture of their arrangement, but I can tell you that I have yet to have a bad beer from this particular brewery before we had even visited their brick and mortar location. Every time we got one of their brews in our pick six from the local grocer, we hummed with delight and nodded, saying ‘it's a good one’. I did that again through a four beer flight.

From their amber Good N Ruddy to their One Cent Wheat, I knew that I could grab a six pack of any of them for future events and know that my friends would be happy to crack the tab. My personal favorite however was the One Cent Wheat that went down cleanly and without any complicated back flavors to make you think while you’re enjoying an ice cold beer. Sometimes, all you want is comfort in a glass. One Cent Wheat was that to me that evening.

Let’s not forget the food though. We weren’t entirely sure what we wanted to order upon arrival since their burgers and pizzas alike spoke to us. The choice of appetizer is usually easy for us at a brew pub, but even here we struggled. We landed on a platter of loaded beer cheese fries to get us started while we waited on a pizza. When that platter of fries arrived, I knew immediately that this would be a place that I’d bring every visitor until the end of our tenure in the great state of Wisconsin.

It’s a hard thing to get a perfectly crispy, beautiful french fry. There are tons of techniques to do it, but Copper State did it here. I knew just by looking at the basket that I was going to eat some of the best fries I had in the city, and I was not wrong. Even with lactaid in my system, I skipped around some of the toppings to have mostly the pure, unadulterated fries while I left the toppings and cheeses for my husband. They had me right then and there.

If that hadn’t been enough to make me a loyal customer, the pizza that we ordered would have finished the job. They have a pizza on their menu called the Thailandia-- topped with curry peanut sauce, roasted garlic, carrots, snap peas, chicken, and sweet chili (among other things). Among the six offerings, it stood out on the menu as the most unusual. We asked our waitress for her opinion as we fought to decide which pizza to get, and with her help, we landed on this.

I can only describe it as a chicken pad thai on a pizza crust. Their crunchy, hand stretched crust held up to the flavors and toppings well, and it did not get in the way of the more unusual flavors one would encounter on a pizza. The actual size of the pizza itself was a welcome sight for us as well. Many of the breweries we have visited with comparable price points served pizzas at least a third smaller than this one. We left with more than half the pizza to take home for the next day.

I didn’t notice when we entered the building, but Copper State has a sign in their entryway showing the names and locations of the local food vendors which supply them. I took a picture of it on our way out the door after my husband mentioned it during dinner. Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland is the last place i can think of that wears a badge of honor for similarly supporting their local producers and growers, and I would put Copper State right up there with them in terms of food and beer quality.

We’ll be visiting many more times the day after a paycheck, I know that much.

Give their facebook page a visit to check them out @copperstatebrewing. You're likely to find them on most social media platforms under the same handle.

If you are in the Green Bay area and still feel uncomfortable visiting restaurants during COVID-19, they do offer an online ordering option for pick up, which I highly suggest. Its worth the effort to pick up. Visit their website at copperstate.beer