You Forgot a Couple

I was at Woodman's last night looking for unpasteurized beer to cook with and I realized that it's been ages since I've written about beer. There are lots of flavors out that have escaped mention here and I've got reviews of brews just lying around waiting to be typed up. But I do have some words about beer today.

So I missed the Great Taste of the Midwest and all the great beers to be found there. Luckily my counterpart at Dane101, Doug, was able to attend and he documented the whole thing here. Also at Dane101, editor Jesse Russell collected various impressions and recollections of the event and put them all in one place for easy reading.

The folks at Isthmus too got into the act with Robin Shepard's piece. Shepard even got the cover this week with "Beer Here!", a look at the area's breweries and brewpubs. Unfortunately the article is about as bland as a Budweiser but it does a yeoman's job of listing area breweries with an accompanying factoid or two. The assertion that Madison is a haven for quaffers is quite correct, though. We have a country ton of locally brewed beers to enjoy here in Madison. I am reminded of this every time I visit friends in Chicago who only have one brewery - Goose Island - in which to invest a little hometown pride. (And, in a bid for wider distribution, it sold part of itself to Anheuser-Busch.)

Being a beer lover myself, I appreciated Shepard's article and it being the cover story. However, there were a couple omissions. Berghoff-Huber was omitted. While Huber may not be a microbrewer's microbrewery, it's a regional that makes pretty good beer. I like to think of them as the Leinenkugel's of the southern half of Wisconsin. Huber and Huber Bock played a big role in my college days while Berghoff and Augsberger (I believe they owned the name at the time) were steps up from the usual swill when I couldn't afford Garten Brau, a.k.a. – Capital.

In the sidebar piece "Brewers without breweries", four companies whose beer is contract brewed by another brewery are mentioned – Cross Plains, Fauerbach, Hausmann, and Furthermore. How did Blucreek get left out? It's a small company here in Madison that has Sand Creek Brewing, I believe, up in Black River Falls brew their stuff. They have a fine AltBier and I like their Herbal Ale as well.

Whether these were omitted because of the author's tastes or perhaps constraints on space, I don't know. But they deserve to be a part of any look at the local brewing scene.