GREEN BAY, Wis. — With the 2025 NFL Draft approaching quickly, Jennifer Radloff of Badger State Brewing is doing her best to prepare for the massive event.
“We’re expecting the unexpected because we’ve been told so many things. We’ve gotten a lot of feedback of what other drafts recently had experienced,” said Radloff.
To help commemorate the draft, nine local breweries collaborated to come up with a special brew called 8th Round Downtown. The pale ale will be featured at the city’s two-day Draft City Music Festival in Leicht Park on April 23 and 26.
“The city kind of cued us to it. We should go for something that’s light, that’s going to be generally accepted. Not something divisive like an IPA, because you either love it or hate it, but not super light, because you can get a domestic if you want,” explained Radloff.
Badger State Brewing handled the production of the beer after taking recipe suggestions from the other eight local breweries.
“Normally, you’re going to have a little knocking of the heads. You expect that when you’re trying to iron stuff out with nine breweries, but it actually went pretty smooth,” said Radloff.
The original recipe beer will be exclusive to the festival and the breweries who helped shape it.
“We brewed about 260 cases because the idea is it’s going to be can only for the music fest. And then we did a really limited edition, there’s about 16 half barrels, that will be allocated to the breweries that participated,” said Radloff.
Local businesses should see a noticeable boom during the draft. Discover Green Bay estimated a $20 million dollar economic impact just to the Brown County area alone.
“It’s really been fun to see businesses in the area be creative and embrace the draft coming. The collaboration beer is certainly one of those and it helps us feature our craft brewers,” said Brad Toll, Discover Green Bay president and CEO.
Toll estimated the statewide impact of the draft to reach over $90 million.
“We know there will be a lot of spending, gas stations, restaurants. We have people staying in surrounding areas up toward Wausau, Marinette, Milwaukee,” said Toll.
Badger State Brewing, just blocks from Lambeau Field, estimated between 5,000-10,000 potential customers will walk by their location each day of the draft.
“It really is like three of your busiest game days in a row,” said Radloff. “We’re doing live music every day for the draft. Our parking lot is going to be a fun experience for everybody. We’re going to have seven local Wisconsin food trucks set up outside.”
Badger State Brewing also planned another draft collaboration, this one with 3 Sheeps Brewing of Sheboygan. It’s a West-Coast Pilsner and will be called Mr. Irrelevant, the term given for the last player selected in the draft. By that time, the area may need a bit of a break from all of the action.
The nine local breweries that have all chipped in are Ahnapee Brewery, Badger State Brewing, Cocoon Brewing, Copper State Brewing, Hinterland Brewery, Noble Roots Brewing, Stillmank Brewing, Titletown Brewing and Zambaldi Beer.
