What you need to know about Door County's newest craft brewery, Sway Brewing and Blending

BAILEYS HARBOR - When it comes to Door County's newest craft brewery, Sway Brewing and Blending, the hop doesn't fall too far from the plant.

Matt Sampson, the brewery's founder and head brewer, not only ferments and serves beer from the location that was the original home of Door County Brewing but he honed his brewing skills at Hacienda Beer Co. Both share taproom and brewing space just down the road.

Broadly speaking, Sampson said he'll brew a wide range of easy-drinking beers that pair well with Door County activities.

"Something (visitors) can relax and enjoy without bogging them down or wrecking their palate," he said.

Specifically, expect a good rotation of lagers and plenty of oak-aged saison ales.

A saison and saison-isque beer fermented in a large wood tank are on tap for the brewery's opening weekend, which starts Friday. A pale beer that blends two yeast strains and a witbier round out Sway Brewing's initial lineup.

Sampson named his brewing operation Sway because it fits the easy-going ethos of enjoying Door County. He added Blending to the name because he'll be taking beer fermented and aged in different wine barrels and, well, blending them together.

With a population hovering around 1,000 folks, this Door County town nestled on the Lake Michigan shore is now home to three craft breweries. If you apply that ratio of breweries to population to a city the size of Green Bay, there would more than 300 craft breweries in Titletown.

OK, technically two of the Baileys Harbor brewing operations are joint ventures by the McMahon family. They opened Door County Brewing in 2012, then spun off Hacienda Beer Company in 2018.

In a way, the second brewery led to the third.

From a chemistry doctorate to a master class in brewing and blending

Sampson got into homebrewing in San Diego while earning a doctorate in chemistry at University of California San Diego. After graduate school, Sampson and his wife, Brooke Rawlins, moved to the Chicago area for work. Around 2016, Rawlins opened a business in Fish Creek. Sampson said he was burned out with doing lab work, so they decided to move to Door County.

Though still interested in brewing beer, Sampson focused more on shooting freelance photography. His work caught the eye of the McMahons, who wanted to use some of his aerial photos of Door County on bottle labels for their series of seasonal saison releases.

This was just before launching Hacienda Beer.

"They explained the Hacienda concept to me," Sampson said. "It was the kind of brewery I was thinking of starting at that time."

That night, Sampson sent the McMahons an email, pitching a job for him at the brewery. He was hired as a brand manager for the new brewery. With a chemistry degree and some home-brewing experience, he worked his way into brewing operations.

"I learned under some talented brewers," he said.

Among them were Danny McMahon; Kyle Gregorash, who went on to co-found Young Blood Beer Co. in Madison; and Brendan Williamson, who's the head brewer at Central Waters Milwaukee Pilot Brewery and Taproom.

Sampson led Hacienda's award-winning wild barrel program that blended beer from multiple barrels. Eventually, Sampson was promoted to manage production for the boutique brewery. He still works at Hacienda while launching Sway Brewing as its own entity.

He rents time on Hacienda's equipment to make wort. Sampson transports the wort a few blocks to Sway Brewing's beer cellar.

What used to be Door County Brewing's taproom is now Heirloom Cafe and Provisions. The cellar below the cafe was Door County Brewing's brewhouse, then the barrel fermentation room for Hacienda Beer.

Sampson rents most of the cellar space. For now, he uses wine barrels, an open-top, stainless-steel tank fermenter to capture wild yeast during fermentation and three foeders to complete the brewing process.

You'll see plenty of foeder-fermented beers in Sway Brewing's lineup. A foeder (pronounced food-er) is a wood fermentation tank that's about three times larger than a typical oak wine barrel.

Two horizontal stainless-steel fermentation tanks are on the way for lagering.

First round of brews

Sway beers will be sold draft and in cans from the beer cellar Fridays through Sundays.

Guests can enjoy pours of beer in the beer garden. There's no indoor seating at this time.

Sampson hopes to sell snacks eventually, but folks are welcome to carry in food or order delivery.

Most of the beer will be sold on-site with a tiny amount of distribution in Door County, Sampson said.

Four beers (about seven barrels of each) are on tap and canned for the first weekend. Sampson said he could have as many as six on tap but plans to have one line dedicated to a non-beer option. At the moment, it's a cold-brewed oat milk latte from Isely Coffee Roasters in Ephraim.

It's too early to know if any of the initial beers will fill Sway Brewing's tanks again. But they fit Sampson's goal to brew sessionable beers (low alcohol by volume) with complex flavors. Each beer was brewed with Wisconsin-grown hops and grains from Sugar Creek Malt Co. in Indiana that Sampson said "makes cool, unique" malts.

Here's the lineup:

• Cracks in the Sidewalk: Foeder-fermented table beer, 4% ABV, with tasting notes of light, underripe mango, tangerine and a subtle funk.

• A Lovely Place to Be: Foeder-fermented spelt saison, 5.1% ABV, with tasting notes of banana popsicle, lemon, clove and pineapple. Sampson said the malt bill adds a creamy texture.

• A Very Happy Start: Hoppy pale beer, 5.5% ABV, with tasting notes of orange rind and tropical fruit. Sampson said he hesitated calling this a pale ale because it's a blend of Old World and new pale ale styles with a mix of English ale and brettanomyces yeast strains, then dry hopped for the tropical citrus finish.

• Up Past the Treetops: Witbier with coriander and chamomile (from Rishi Tea in Milwaukee), 5% ABV, with tasting notes of root beer spices, chamomile, black pepper and ginger. Open fermented in stainless steel with a Lithuanian yeast that Sampson said creates a little drier beer.

Sampson has more beer on the way. Two collaboration lagers will be released in the next few weeks.

First up is Everything and Nothing, a dry-hopped Pilsner collab with Williamson at Central Waters in Milwaukee. That will be followed by Is That Cameron, a lager collab with Gregorash at Young Blood Beer in Madison.

Closer to home, a yet-to-be-named beer made with locally foraged yarrow is fermenting in a foeder. Sampson said he and the Cold Climate Farms owners gathered the yarrow from their farm field in southern Door County. In this beer, the yarrow is being used in place of the hops.

Contact Daniel Higgins at dphiggin@gannett.com. Follow @HigginsEats on Twitter and Instagram and like on Facebook.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Door County, Baileys Harbor add Sway Brewing to craft brewery scene