A couple three Saturdays ago, my wife had had enough of working out of the house and not being able to get out and go somewhere. I wasn't too enamored with taking a day trip somewhere, but that's sort of what it turned out to be as we drove up to Guttenburg, IA, then made our way back down through Dubuque. My wife - who needs three square meals a day - was getting hungry by the time we made it to Dubuque and we decided to stop for a late lunch. We had been to a brewpub in Dubuque - 7 Hills Brewing Company - once before on a brewpub/microbrewery weekend tour of NE Iowa a little over a year before. We decided to stop in and get something to eat.
Keith Gutierrez was a PRN occupational therapist who loved craft beer. Working around the Dubuque area, he was getting weary of finding part-time gigs as a PRN. He always had it in the back of his head that he would love to run a brewpub at some point. However, he had no experience brewing beers, nor running a restaurant.
Gutierrez saw a need for a brewpub in Dubuque and local developers were turning buildings in the historic Millwork District in downtown Dubuque into residential and commercial spaces including restaurants, shops and gyms. He thought that he could put a brewpub in one of the spaces that was being renovated, but he needed to assemble a team of experts that could help him in making his dream come true. And he turned to social media to figure out who those people could be.
It turned out that there were very knowledgeable people locally who could help steer Gutierrez in the right direction. One of those people was Sean Carter, the brewmaster at Galena Brewing Company over in Galena, IL. Carter was a graduate of the World Brewing Academy curriculum at Chicago's Siebel Institute of Technology and had garnered several medals at the Great American Beer Festival while working at Galena Brewing Company. His wife, Megan, was the front of house manager at Galena Brewing for a couple years before she went to work as a restaurant/catering manager at Eagle Ridge Resort outside of Galena. The Carter's were intrigued with the prospect of helping start a new brewpub that they signed on with Gutierrez.
Gutierrez wanted to have food offerings that were a step above just regular bar fare. He enlisted the help of Tim Conlin, a graduate of the (now closed) Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Minneapolis, to come up with a selection of foods that people could either have for appetizers or for full meals. Gutierrez's team came together in early 2016 to plot their course to opening up the new brewpub.
The group initially thought they'd be able to open by the end of 2016, but unforeseen obstacles and some hiccups got in the way of some of those plans initially. After getting the OK from the City of Dubuque to start work on the building in the summer of 2016, more snags developed and hurdles had to be jumped. Brewing tanks were delivered in early 2017 and Gutierrez hoped to have the business open by the spring. But more delays set back the opening day for a few months more. It was in late August of 2017 when the brewpub opened, the name "7 Hills" coming from the number of hills found in Dubuque.
Gutierrez and his team were together for one year before Sean Carter decided to get out of the brewmaster business and open up an outfitters business in Galena. Megan Carter followed her husband in their new endeavor in late 2018 leaving her restaurant manager post at 7 Hills Brewing Company. Sean Carter was replaced as brewmaster by 7 Hills associate head brewer Brian Zeimet in the summer of 2018. Zeimet was at the helm of the brewery at 7 Hills for a couple years before he left earlier this summer. His replacement, Adam Rubach, came over from Galena Brewing Company. Rubach also had a part-time gig as an associate brewer at Titletown Brewing Company up in Green Bay, WI.
7 Hills Brewing Company is located in the heart of the Millwork District at the corner of Washington and E. 11th Street in downtown Dubuque. (see map) We were able to find parking just across the street on Washington. From the outside, the building is pretty nondescript. A small sign hangs above the main door into the brewpub and there's outside seating on what was probably a shipping dock at some point in the building's previous life.
As I said, we had been in there once before when we had taken a weekend journey up to Decorah to try some of the brewpubs/microbreweries there, then made our way down to Dubuque stopping at a couple three breweries along the way. We sat at the bar in the spacious German-style beer hall at 7 Hills on our first visit. Wooden supports held up large wooden beams that crossed over the main dining/bar area in the brewpub. Exposed brick walls gave the large room a sort of retro-warehouse vibe.
They also feature live music from time to time at 7 Hills Brewing. A small stage is set up opposite the bar area as the brewpub hosts small bands or 1-2 person musical performances from time to time. Karaoke and trivia nights also are part of the entertainment at 7 Hills.
We were greeted by a young lady who took us to one of the long tables in the beer hall. Social distancing practices were in place and we were at the far end of one table leaving room for others to sit at the other end of the table if needed. But it was the middle of the afternoon and there weren't a lot of people in there having food at that time.
The hostess dropped off a couple food menus for us, and it wasn't long before a 20-something guy by the name of Elijah came over to drop off a couple of beer and craft cocktail menus for us to look over. He said he would be our server that day, but he needed to take care of a couple things before he could take our drink selections. That gave me some time to look over what they had at 7 Hills.
The beer menu that day was pretty extensive. They keep 7 beers on tap year-round and a number of seasonal beers pop up from time to time. I had their 7 Headed Monster American Pale Ale on our first visit over a year ago and I thought it was pretty good. But they had two other beers - both hazy pale ales - that I was interested in. One was the Triple Hoptics that had a much lower IBU than the Cerebral Haze. When he came back, I asked Elijah if I could try a sample of both. My wife was not that much in the mood for beer, so she ended up getting a Strawberry Fields, a fruity-tasting margarita. The Triple Hoptics was much too fruity for my taste while the Cerebral Haze had a wonderful smooth taste with a bit of bitter hoppiness to it. The Cerebral Haze is offered as a seasonal beer in conjunction with the Potosi Brewing Company just up the Mississippi River a ways in Potosi, WI.
For food, 7 Hills offers your typical appetizers - wings, tortilla chips with artichoke dip, onion rings, and nachos - as well as a selection of salads, burgers, sandwiches and pizza. A family at a table near us were having pizza and it looked very good. They also have smoked barbecue meats such as brisket, chicken and baby back ribs available, too. They also had a couple of seafood dishes such as a blackened salmon platter served with garlic mashed potatoes, and a shrimp linguine served in a garlic butter sauce.
I told my wife that if I got something like a sandwich or a full meal, I wouldn't probably have dinner that evening. She didn't like the sound of that as she knew that she would probably be eating alone later that evening if that happened. She said, "I just need something, not a lot. Just something to tide me over until later."
My neighbor had been to 7 Hills before and he got the chicken wings. He raved about how good they were and my wife suggested getting those. She asked Elijah how many wings came in a pound, as it was advertised on the menu. He said, "I think it's 8 or 9, depending upon how big the wings are today." Well, there were 7 wings in a pound that day. We got them with the mild Buffalo sauce - there were other options such as a sweet barbecue sauce, a barbecue sauce made with stout beer, a sweet chile sauce, and a peanut butter curry sauce. We got a side of both ranch and blue cheese dressing with them.
And they were very good. The wings had a nice crispy outer shell to them covering the tender meat morsels. They weren't small, but they weren't too big, either. The mild sauce had a bit of a kick that I enjoyed and it was tolerable enough for my wife who doesn't do spicy all that well.
We also got an order of the red ale beer-battered onion rings. These alternated from very good to sort of disappointing. I don't know how they could serve onion rings where some were cooked perfectly and others were completely overdone. The ones that did survive the overcooking were very good. The ones that didn't were too crispy and had sort of a burnt taste. But the beer-batter was also pretty thick and between the wings and the onion rings I was pretty full. I told my wife that even though we ordered a couple appetizers that I didn't know if I would have dinner that evening. The onion rings sat like a brick in my gut.
7 Hills Brewing Company is a nice place with a notch-above-bar-food menu. Their beers are good, they have a full bar with specialty cocktails, and it's situated in a historic building in downtown Dubuque. It's a large open spot that is akin to German beerhalls with long community-style tables and it has a nice comfortable feeling to the place. I thought their chicken wings were very good, but was somewhat disappointed in the onion rings as they were alternately very tasty to almost inedible. But what I did eat, it filled me up to the point where I don't believe I did have dinner that evening. I would like to go back at some point, however, and have either a burger or a sandwich, or we may even try one of their pizzas that looked pretty good.
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