After having closed its West Bend taproom on June 14, 1840 Brewing has announced that its Bay View brewery and taproom will also close.
The final service at Bay View, 342 E. Ward St., will be on Sunday June 29.
While the West Bend taproom was shuttered after just a year, the Bay View location has been open since 2017.
"You may already be aware of the difficult health battle our family is facing at home," owners Kyle and Stephanie Vetter posted on social media.
"Unfortunately, the combination of running a small brewing business in a challenging market and fighting pancreatic cancer has become too much."
Last November, the Vetters announced that Stephanie was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer.
"It has been an amazing honor to serve you over the last (almost) 8 years," they continued in their post. "We are so grateful for the connections, friendships, collaborations, and memories we have made together. We will cherish them forever.
"We have made the incredibly difficult – yet simultaneously easy – decision to close up shop with our heads held high. We are insanely proud of the liquid we produced with the incredible team of people we were lucky enough to make it with. But it is time for every waking minute to be spent together at home, continuing our fight against cancer and making more family memories.
"It has truly been an honor to be a part of this community. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for supporting our family, and the families of our employees, with such passion since we opened our doors in 2017."
The post concluded with a P.S. that added, "Stay tuned for info on our final beer release, what’s next for the 1840 brand, and *likely* some sappy posts as we wind things down."
Over the years, the brewery has done numerous collaborations and also worked with beer gardens like last year's The Exchange, which supported Bay View Community Center, and a Washington County Parks traveling beer garden.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
