Two brewery taprooms, a distillery tasting room, a wine bar, a 1924 beer hall and a country bar, most of them within a mile along National and Greenfield avenues.
In 2024 Milwaukee Magazine followed two friends, one a retired West Allis teacher, who had visited 42 of the city's bars by mid-August, under the headline of a dive bar wonderland. Alongside the corner taverns, the bars in West Allis include two brewery taprooms, a distillery tasting room and a wine bar, plus a 1924 beer hall and a country bar with a music hall upstairs.
Five of them sit within about a mile of each other near National and Greenfield avenues.
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Brewery taprooms on National and Greenfield
West Allis has two breweries, OPE! Brewing on West National Avenue and Perspective Brewing on West Greenfield Avenue, about half a mile apart.
OPE! Brewing Co.
OPE! pours from 20 taps out of a beer roster the brewery says runs more than 60 deep, from traditional styles to sours and seltzers. For non-drinkers it stocks Two Brothers soda, hop water and NA beer.
There is no kitchen: a rotating list of food trucks parks outside, often tacos or hibachi, per its listing, and outside food is allowed for a small fee if you clear it first. Outside are three volleyball courts, five bag lanes, an outdoor bar, pergolas and four fire pits, and volleyball leagues run six days a week.
Tuesday is trivia night, the TVs carry the Packers, Brewers and Bucks, and leashed dogs are welcome inside and out. OPE! opens at 4 p.m. Monday to Thursday and 11 a.m. Friday to Sunday, and it fills crowlers rather than growlers.
Perspective Brewing Co.
Perspective, at 7508 West Greenfield Avenue, brews beer and seltzers and shows soccer matches on weekends, according to its listing. Its Google listing has it opening at 3 p.m. on weekdays and noon on weekends, and its own website shows longer weekend hours, so check before a weekend morning visit.
Of the two, Perspective is nearer the fairgrounds, about half a mile southeast of State Fair Park, while OPE! is about a mile away.
Spirits and wine
The distillery's page lists hours of 3 to 10 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday and 3 p.m. to midnight on Friday and Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday, while its Google listing shows Saturday as closed, so call ahead on a Saturday. It sits a few doors from Kegel's Inn, which makes the two an easy pairing.
About a mile south on Lincoln Avenue, Corvina Wine Company is a wine bar where sommeliers Frank and Joe LaSusa pour, and Frank holds a WSET Diploma. It pours flights and wine by the glass, sells bottles to take home and serves cheese, charcuterie and flatbreads, from 3 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday.
The building has family history: the LaSusas' great-grandfather Francesco opened a grocery store there after arriving in the early 1900s, and it ran until the late 1970s.
A Bavarian beer hall from 1924
Kegel's keeps restaurant hours rather than bar hours: 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Its fish fry runs on Fridays, and a 2026 Milwaukee-area fish fry guide lists Wednesdays too, which puts it on the short list for a Friday dinner in West Allis.
Just past the Milwaukee city line, Kegel's also counts among the German restaurants in the Milwaukee area.
Country music and martinis
On West Orchard Street, Shotzy's Country Rock Bar runs a bar and grill on the main floor and a mid-sized hall with a sound system for live music upstairs. It is closed Sunday and Monday and stays open until 2 a.m. the rest of the week, per its Google listing.
Being part cocktail bar and part supper club puts Henry Flach's on the list of Milwaukee supper clubs too.
Bars near State Fair Park
During the fair, Perspective is the nearest taproom, about half a mile from the grounds. On the fairgrounds themselves, Bud Pavilion is an open-air music venue, and reviewers on its listing mention bands with no cover charge.
General fair parking ran $18 to $22 a day in 2026 and the grounds are cashless, worth knowing before a night at the Wisconsin State Fair.
The tavern city
Milwaukee Magazine's 2024 story linked West Allis's large number of bars to the city's manufacturing history. The pair it followed rated each bar thumbs up or down, praised the $4.25 mini-pitchers at Tap City and wrote about Camp Karma at Becher and 70th, where a sign asks you not to step on the owner's dog.
Those are reporting from 2024, not a current list, so treat them as a starting point and check a bar's hours before you go. For a bigger city crawl, Milwaukee bars run from cocktail rooms to corner taps about 4.5 miles northeast.
Getting around and staying over
Ride-share makes sense for a night across several stops, since the taprooms and Henry Flach's sit about 1.6 miles apart. The Home2 Suites on South 70th Street is about 0.4 miles from OPE! and 0.7 miles from Kegel's, which puts the National Avenue bars within reach of one of the hotels in West Allis.
From the National Avenue taprooms the farmers market is under half a mile away, one of the West Allis outings worth pairing with a Saturday afternoon drink.
Frequently asked questions
Published September 21, 2026
