Nobody trusts anybody now, and we're all very thirsty: Snowstorm '21 - Oat Starkbier by August Schell Brewing

Back in November I made a trek up north and stopped in at a small-town liquor store which proudly proclaimed that it had a fine selection of craft beers. Maybe the finest in all of Barron County. This seemed ideal for my purposes which were simply to find some kind of boreal beer to help keep the soreness in my legs at bay after a long and strenuous (for an office drone) hike. I don't know if those IPAs on the shelves were meant for Twin Cities/Chicago tourists and were novelties for the locals or if the folks up north are into those beers. For my part, I rolled my eyes at all the hazy juicy thingies. Just not interested.

And so Schell's latest Snowstorm was a very welcome sight. I don't see much Schell's beer down here in Madison these days so it was a bit like running into an old friend. "Snowstorm" is the name of their winter seasonal but the actual style of the beer varies from year to year. Oats seem to be the watchword of the brewery these days as last year's Snowstorm was an oat stout while this year's is an oat Starkbier. In fact, if you pull a Scooby Doo maneuver and peel the label off of a 2021 can, you'll see that it's an oat stout 2020 can underneath. 

Everyone knows what oats are but what is a Starkbier?

I think it's a now-defunct German beer tax category but I am not sure if the term was ever used outside of levying taxes on brewers. It means "strong beer" but, again, I am unclear on just how strong it had to be to be classified as such. Was it equivalent to a bock? Doppelbock?

…

So, after some internet sleuthing it seems that my memory served me well. Starkbier was indeed a tax category for German bier. My cursory search didn't yield firm results on just how strong it had to be, however. By "strong" here we're talking the OG, i.e. – the amount of malty sugar goodness in the liquid in its pre-beer state. Still, exactly which styles fell under this umbrella remains a mystery. A couple sources here include all bocks while another over there limits it to doppelbocks.

I suppose it's moot as the tax category is long gone and Schell instead uses the term to invoke all the good things that come to mind when you see a German beer word. You know, like the image of some blond guys in Lederhosen gathered around a copper kettle in an orderly manner using precise techniques honed over the centuries in pursuit of brewing perfection within the constrictions of the Purity Law. Or perhaps it's more along the lines of comely blonde women clad in dirndls carrying numerous steins of beer as their generous bosoms threaten to spill out of their costumes.

My can says that Snowstorm has an A.B.V. of 6.1% so we have an oat bock on our hands. Interesting. I don't know that I've ever had one before.

Beer lore tells us that the genesis of the bock goes back several hundred years to Einbeck, Germany. Initially a big, malty ale, it eventually made its way south where Bavarian brewers gave it the lager treatment. This same body of lore purports that the style's name comes from the way Bavarians pronounced the bier's hometown. Instead of a short -e, they said it like "ah" – "ein Bock". "Bock" being the word for billy goat, someone back in the day decided that goats would be standard on the labels of such beers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if any or all of the above is merely a tall tale that's been passed down through the ages. But it sounds good.

Oddly enough, the marketing team at a brewery that has a German name, brews many German styles, and has (or had) the motto "German craft beer" decided to remove the goat from their bock's label. Harumph.

Things started off very well – I mean, just look at it. The beer was a clear, deep amber upon which sat a big, light tan crown of firm foam. I spied a fair number of bubbles inside. Quite pretty. As expected, there were sweet scents – caramel and little honey. There was also the anticipated roasty grain smell. But what I really enjoyed was the hop aroma which was grassy. Those hops gave a really fresh, green aroma. Simply wonderful.

All those bubbles provided a good fizziness that was set against a rich maltiness that provided, as on the nose, caramel, honey, and roasted grain flavors. The oats did their job as a luscious smoothness lurked beneath the bubbles. The malty sweetness faded fast as I swallowed leaving my tongue to wallow in the dryness of some hops that were peppery and grassy. My sips each ended on rather dry note.

Despite a panoply of grains, the beer wasn't as sweet as I thought it would be. I think the fizz and the hops kept those flavors from getting out of hand. In addition, the malt flavor wasn't just sweetness that needed to be tamed. There was, after all, that earthy honey taste as well as the roasted grain flavor so it was a really nice mix on the malt side of things. Dryness prevailed on the finish as the hops provided a bracing contrast to the grains.

While sipping this stuff, I was reminded of one of my favorite winter brews, Winter Skål, from Capital. Oat Starkbier is akin to a bigger, oatier version of that fine beer. I really enjoyed this brew and how the fizz and hops took the grains head-on to produce a crisp contrast.

The final couple months of 2021 were good for bocks that marched to the beat of a different drummer. In addition to this oat-laden version, Wisconsin Brewing Company gave us a wild rice one while Vintage Brewing blessed us again this year with their rye weizenbock, Tippy Toboggan. Perhaps next year someone will use a heritage barley or something out of left field like quinoa.

Junk food pairing: For the true Minnesota experience, bust open a bag of Uffda! Seasoned Salt Lefse Chips to go with your Snowstorm.

The Corona Diaries Vol 37: Evidence of Autumn

(mid-September 2021)

There is a tree across the street that began changing color in late August. At first it was just a handful of leaves scattered here and there. But a few more turned every day and, before I knew it, the scene out front was clothed in green and yellow - evidence of autumn.

It mocks us every time we look out of our picture window, serving as a reminder that cooler temperatures are on the way along with leaves to rake. Not far behind that will be snow in need of shoveling, icy sidewalks to traverse, and ever increasing heating bills.

While I like winter, I sometimes wish we could fast forward through fall. It's a time of endings. Birds migrate away, the trees lose their withered leaves, plants die, and so on. It'd be nice to get through that phase more quickly and just arrive at winter with all of its lovely snow, the cups of hot cocoa, and the Frau's nightly jeremiads issued from the folds of her electric blanket about how cold she is.

But polar vortices are still a few months away and I intend to enjoy the autumn as much as I am able. This will involve taking in the colorful foliage, fresh apples, pumpkin dishes, not sweating immediately upon exiting the shower, et al. Right now I am trying to schedule one last lawn mowing for the year. Can I make it until October? Since we lost 2 out of our 3 trees, my lawn doesn't get anywhere as leafy as before and the first mow of spring mulches the previous autumn's leaves, getting rid of the evidence of my laziness.

As the seasons change, so do my eating habits. In addition to foods that are freshly harvested, cooler weather means heartier fare. I have started by grabbing a bag of the fall seasonal coffee from my favorite coffee roaster.

The folks at Just Coffee Co-op roast the beans longer which brings out the, well, roastier flavors. The darker roasts of cold weather coffees have smokier aromas and more dark chocolate flavors. A slab of Pan de Muerto and a cup of this stuff will start your day right on a chilly autumn morning.

I've also begun to drink seasonal beers. Yesterday I bought a six pack of some pumpkin beer from Milwaukee's Lakefront Brewery.

Most pumpkin beers are sweet and cloying and strive to mimic pumpkin pie. What I like about this brew is that it's less sweet and more earthy tasting with a nice ginger zing. It's a beer that just happens to have the same spices in it that pumpkin pie does and is not some misguided neo-alchemical attempt to convert the dessert into liquid form.

I hope to use up a bag of charcoal before the weather makes grilling impossible (or impractical, at least) but have also been contemplating slightly heavier, more filling types of foods. Being of Eastern European stock, cooler weather gives me the urge to cook buckwheat groats. I don't have any memories of being served kasha while I was growing up but it's possible that I was. I found a recipe for groats with Brussels sprouts and, since my Frau loves the sprouts, I am going to whip up a batch. Or give serious thought to it, at the bare minimum.

I also would like to make some bigos - Polish hunter's stew. In the past I have made a quick, down & dirty version of it but perhaps I'll try something a little more traditional with more treats from the forest like venison and perhaps dried fruit. Stay tuned.

********

One day last week when I was working from home, I heard a bird call coming in through a window. It was a loud, stuttering cry that sounded vaguely familiar yet I just could not place it no matter how hard I racked my brain. Wandering over to the window, I looked out at the nearby trees but saw nothing out of the ordinary. A scan of the canopies revealed the usual suspects: crows and sparrows and finches who were going about their daily routines of eating, pooping on my car, and chasing one another. I returned to my work.

Almost as soon as I sat down, I heard the call again. Back to the window I went to peruse the scene. Giving up on the trees, I looked elsewhere. It was then that I saw it. There was a lone Sandhill crane on the corner across the street! I grabbed my camera and ran downstairs.

My luck was in that day because, when I got downstairs, the crane had crossed the street and was in our front yard.

The gods must have been really happy with me because it came right up to our picture window to peck at some of the bird seed that had fallen from the feeder there. (The cats love having a feeder right in front of window.) I think that's millet growing there on the left from fallen seeds.

There were gentle thumps as it pecked at the cover to the window well that had a lot of feed on it because birds are incredibly messy eaters. Even messier than cats!

Had I not been so excited at having a crane in the yard and instead been thinking clearly, I would have gone out the back door and come around to get some photographs without a window in the way. Our cat Piper was snoozing in her cat house directly beneath the picture window and I chided her sotto voce for sleeping instead of checking out the avian visitor.

I wondered where our other cat, Grabby, was as she loves watching the animals outside while perched in various windows around the house. Sleeping, I figured. She's 13 and generally hits the rack after breakfast. (She promptly rises at 3:30 and petitions us for chow even though she knows full well that dinner isn't served until 5.) I went over to our front door to get a better view of the crane as it had started walking down the block and found Grabby keeping a close eye on the proceedings.

Sadly, I had to call into a meeting for work and so ended my bird watching. However, I was able to hear its resounding call from the window next to my desk for a while before it finally left the area.

While I am on the subject of avian friends, I finally managed to get a decent photograph of a blue jay.

Blue jays are pretty but they're jerks who chase other birds off of our feeder even though there's plenty of tasty seeds to go around.

********

Several entries ago, I told of how my Frau and I drove out to the town of Marshall to pay a visit to the new incarnation of our favorite Mexican restaurant. And, afterwards, we decided that we would have dinner there the last Tuesday of every month.

On our most recent visit, we found that there were bags of pears scattered around the joint with notes attached to them that read "FREE! GRATIS!" Apparently, the restaurant was given a free case of pears, presumably by their produce vendor, and was giving them away to customers.

We took a bag. I mean, who doesn't like free produce? At home we pondered just what to do with them until the internet provided the answer: clafoutis.

The Frau made it. You fan the pear slices out at the bottom of a pie dish and then add a custard. It was wonderful! She enjoyed it so much, she made a special trip to the grocery store a couple days later so she could whip up a cherry clafoutis.

********

My latest excursion to the cinema was to see the Swedish film About Endlessness by Roy Andersson. He is reported to have said that this is his last movie. I seem to recall that his 2014 film, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, played at the film festival here several years ago. And his You, the Living is on my To Watch list. But this was the first time I'd ever seen one of his films.

It's a series of vignettes that uses a mix of very droll humor and absurdity to illustrate human existence. Some scenes portray the vagaries of Fate which push characters to extremes while others lure the viewer into simply observing the mundane. A few scenes stand out for me.

A priest who has lost his faith appears multiple times. In one instance he goes to his medical doctor begging for help but is rejected because it is closing time. There's pathos here but also some very dark humor.

In another scene, an immigrant father holds his daughter's corpse. A voice over narrator informs us that he did so to protect his family's honor but that he had changed his mind.

In a much lighter vein, at one point we see a trio of young women walking down a path and come to a café. Upbeat music can be heard coming from inside and the women spontaneously burst into dance.

The movie is very interesting stylistically. Each vignette was shot very theatrically with a completely static camera and there are no cuts. I found that this technique focused my attention or, at least, provided less distraction. Instead of feeling that my attention needs to shift from one character to another with cuts to closeups of various faces, I get the whole scene at once. I was able to take in facial expressions and observe where people sit or stand in relation to one another at my leisure. I felt like I was able to watch the scenes unfold at my own pace rather than being prodded by the editing.

Highly recommended.

********

Bonus photo: I got a new phone recently and the camera app has some special effects that you can add to your photographs. Here's a psychedelic picture of Piper. Imagine, if you will, some sitar playing in the background.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 36: Just look at that chiaroscuro!

(mid-September 2021)

Over the summer I heard that Kodak had started making Super 8 motion picture film again. This news inspired me to have my student film, which was shot on Super 8, digitized. And so I dug around the attic until I found the tin and blew off the dust before taking it to a digitization studio a nice bike ride away.

I don't recall my final grade on it – it was probably a C+ – but I do recall the gist of the instructor's comments. He remarked that my cinematography was very good and he singled out the lens flares, such as you see above, for praise.

But he gave my screenwriting a D- or a D--. And deservedly so. The movie is about the internal struggles of a young man but they're never identified. The generic trials and tribulations of young adulthood, I guess. It seems that I had been watching a lot of Akira Kurosawa films at the time because I put a sword fight into the story.

I like the look of this shot, especially how the scene is broken up into alternating areas of light and shadow. Notice how the combatants' costumes match the setting. Maybe I got a B- after all.

********

On Labor Day I got up early and was out the door and on my bike before the dawn. The sun peeked over the horizon as I cruised down the bike path. It was about 50 degrees out so I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt for the first time in months and it felt a bit odd. My ride would take me east to Cottage Grove, a town of 7,000 people or thereabouts, albeit circuitously. I found the route at the website of a local bicycle manufacturer but tweaked it so that I started and ended at my house instead of the company's store out in Mall Wasteland on the northeast side of town. Total distance would be somewhere in the 20-25 mile range.

As I made my way southeast, the landscape changed from urban to suburban to rural. The countryside was foggy and the mist was especially thick in the low-lying areas which made for some picturesque scenes.

There was very little traffic, thankfully, so I was able to hear the birds. Over the course of my ride I saw four hawks but I was unable to get a decent photograph of even one. By the time I noticed them and had finished fumbling with my camera, they were off to find another perch far away from the human. I got a good enough glimpse of a couple of them, however, to tell that they were of the red-tailed variety. But there were plenty of other animals to be seen who were not completely unhappy to have their picture taken.

I rode by several stables and saw many horses.

These 2 were mildly intrigued by the thing at the fence and stopped eating to stare at me. They weren't sleek like the racing horses of my imagination nor did they appear to be large enough to count as draft horses either, if my memory of Budweiser commercials was anything to go by. Then again, I am not familiar with the equestrian world. Still, those large caliber hooves would do some damage should I be in their vicinity when they got irritated.

Seeing them brought the song "Heavy Horses" by Jethro Tull to mind.

As the sun crept farther up the sky, I was able to get more nice photographs of the foggy landscape but with a more refulgent feel including this one where I made use of shade not unlike my movie. Look at that chiaroscuro! This photo reminds me of Days of Heaven. Néstor Almendros and Terrence Malik would be proud.

I was also able to capture beams of light radiating from between tree branches. It was a lot harder to get these shot right than you'd think. The camera has to be at just the right angle and just the right distance away.

While pedaling along one road, I noticed an abandoned farmhouse with some large birds walking next to an outbuilding which I thought were turkeys. I cruised up the the gravel driveway and, upon closer inspection, I discovered that they were peafowl. Just as with the hawks, they took off before I could get a snap, scurrying behind a delipidated barn and presumably into the adjacent field which once held corn but was now an example of prairie restoration.

Less than a quarter mile down the road I looked up a long driveway and spied a couple more of them heading away from me. At the top of a small hill in the distance there were even more. There must have been 6-8 of them just casually making their way to a stand of trees at the edge of a field. (A genuine muster!) I've never seen more than 1 peafowl at a time so this was pretty exciting stuff. A farm cat appeared on the top of the hill and it lazily approached the group which was growing as a few more trickled in from the field of what I think was soybeans to see what all the hubbub was about. None of them had large tails but I am unsure if this was because they were all peahens or if peacocks shed their tails after mating season.

There was one hill on my route which was fairly steep in addition to being rather long and I nearly met my end during the ascent. After finally reaching the top, I stopped to pant and curse myself again for not having packed water. Looking at the road ahead, I saw a doe in the distance staring at me. When I got home and looked at my photos, I found that there were, in fact, 2 of them.

In addition to fauna, there was the flora. Unsurprisingly, corn was to be seen all along my route.

But I also came across a farm that grows hops.

Just north of the hops was a corn field filled with Sandhill cranes. I looked it up. A group of cranes is a sedge.

At one point, a pair flew in from the south which got a couple of the ones on the ground squawking. Before long 2 pairs took off and flew out of sight. I stayed long enough to notice that this routine was repeated a few minutes later. Perhaps this is how they motivate one another to migrate south. "Hey dummies! It's Labor Day. Time to head down to Mexico!"

This being America's Dairyland, of course I saw oodles and oodles of cows on my ride including this bull who got a bit antsy with the human.

Not long after I moved to Wisconsin, I was tricked into hopping a fence into a pasture one day. My newfound friend neglected to tell me that it was home to a bull who happened to be out of sight at that moment. Well, the field's inhabitant must have smelled teenager because he eventually came around to investigate. He fixed me with a gimlet eye before his demeanor made it obvious to me that my new bovine companion would brook no humans on his turf and he began to run towards me. I ran in the opposite direction and hopped that fence in record time!

While I am on the subject of things country folk do to city folk, I want to note that more than one person gave me the BS hunting story that goes something like this:

They run out of ammo or their shotgun is otherwise put out of commission so they climb a tree with their knife at the ready should a deer walk underneath it. Then, in what must have been the worst bit of luck ever, they lose their knife just as the biggest buck they've ever seen walks below them. In an act of manliness worthy of Ernest Hemingway himself (or desperation), they drop down on top of the unsuspecting beast and kill it with their bare hands.

Now that fall is right around the corner, the animal landscape will be changing soon. Heck, it probably is already. All of the herons I've seen on my walks and bike rides will be leaving soon. As will those hummingbirds that never bothered to come to my feeder despite me filling it with premium nectar! Blue jays and cardinals stick around during the winter as do rabbits, mice, and opossums. I will have to look into this further and perhaps make an effort to see more wildlife this winter.

One last photograph from the ride.

********

Bonus photo! One recent evening I went to a local restaurant and put in an order. Since it would be 20+ minutes before it was ready, I decided to stroll the neighborhood. Before long I discovered that the sidewalk on a nearby street had various quotes on the pavement, including this one. How ironic to pave over the land and then stamp the words of Aldo Leopold on it.

When your beer wanna get bock-wild: Bock Wild by Wisconsin Brewing Company

I recently discovered that The Beer Temple Insiders Roundtable podcast had been resurrected as The Beer Temple Podcast. Roundtabling has taken a back seat in this pandemic age, I guess. Instead of assembling a coterie of industry pros every week, Chris Quinn and Mike Schallau hold court and pontificate on various craft beer topics although guests do join them now & then. One episode features an extended discussion on IPA (well, a lot of them seem to, actually) and Quinn was talking about the evolution of the style during which he mentioned West Coast and New England varieties before mentioning the Midwest IPA.

What's a Midwest IPA?

While I think it had to do with the style's maltiness, I don't recall exactly.

Now, I realize that there are people on the coasts who think of everything between California and New York as this big, nebulous wasteland that is "Flyover Country". With such an attitude, I suspect that a fair number of journalists would be on the dole if unable to pen articles for all the sophistos that read the New York Times about their surprise at discovering we Midwesterners have coffee shops, fancy restaurants, hot yoga studios, and the other hallmarks of civilization.

But the Midwest is a sizable chunk of land. Chicago is a metropolis that dwarfs any other city in the region (and most others in the country) while elsewhere vast tracts of land are given over to corn. Surely being in close proximity to a Great Lake makes for a different ortgeist than what you find if you're smack dab in the middle of the Great Plains. Thinking (yet again) about regional beer specialties, I have to wonder if the Midwest is just too large for there to be a Midwestern style of beer.

Whether or not there is such a thing, I do feel that it's easier to make a case for Upper Midwestern beer specialties. And since I live in Wisconsin, I approach this issue with a distinct bias and people in Minnesota and Michigan and whatever else counts as the Upper Midwest will likely have some areas of disagreement with me. For my tongue, there are a few types of beers that just seem emblematic of the Upper Midwest generally and very Wisconsinesque specifically.

First there are cranberry beers. To the best of my knowledge, Wisconsin still leads the nation in cranberry production which gives New Glarus' Cran-bic and Cranberry Gose by Third Space a rather distinct Wisconsin identity and authenticity. Next are beers made with maple syrup. Yeah, those folks in the Northeast boil a lot more sap than we do but Wisconsin and Michigan still produce a fair amount of the arboreal treat. These brews seem to come and go and I am unaware of any Wisconsin breweries that produce a maple syrup beer with any regularity. The only brew of this kind that comes readily to mind is Lake Louie's Maple Surple, a brown ale with maple syrup. However, I recall O'so having brewed something with maple sap at some point in the not too distant past.

A hundred years ago Wisconsin led the nation in hemp production and so I think of hemp beers as being something of a regional specialty. Smokin' Hemp Porter by La Crosse's Pearl Street Brewery is the only one that I have encountered but it's tasty. I would suggest that there should be more hemp beer brewed in Wisconsin.

Lastly and most relevant to this post is wild rice beer. While some wild rice is produced here in Wisconsin, Minnesota rules the roost when it comes to cultivating this food. Wild rice it is not really rice, but rather a distant cousin of the stuff that we get in mass quantities when we order Chinese food. Botanists call it Zizania palustris and tell me that it is native to the Great Lakes area of the Upper Midwest. You just can't get any more regional specialty than that.

When I was developing a taste for microbrews back in the day, Capital brewmaster Kirby Nelson would make a wild rice lager every so often and I immediately adored this brew from the first sip. And then it seemed that ever more time would go by between appearances of this tasty elixir. He brewed it in 2009 and within a few short years he was at Wisconsin Brewing Company and I never heard of him brewing with wild rice at his new home until just recently. Doing a bit of internet sleuthing reveals that WBC has, in fact, brewed at least a couple wild rice beers - including a bock with Working Draft Brewing - but they appear to have been very limited releases and were never canned/bottled.

In November, WBC released their Bock Wild, a wild rice bock. This, as you can see, was canned but I have only seen it at one retail outlet – Brennan's Market. Perhaps it is slowly making its way through distribution channels as I haven't seen it Woodman's East and a friend saw neither hide nor hair of it at Woodman's West. Harumph.

Bock Wild is a lovely beer. It's a clear amber and my glass had a big head of loose, off-white foam atop it that lasted quite a while. There was a good smattering of bubbles inside. I could smell this stuff from several inches away which I believe is due to all of that effervescence. And it smelled just dandy! There was a large dose of that nuttiness that is the hallmark of wild rice plus sweet malt and an indistinct berry aroma.

The can's label notes that this fruity component comes from the additive here. I don't recall any of Capital's wild rice beers having a fruitiness like this nor any other such beers I've drunk having it either. Wild rice is known for its nutty aroma and flavor which are created during the parching (i.e. – roasting) process. The freshly harvested seeds are also left in piles to ripen and they are also cured so between these three processes, I suppose various aromas and flavors can be brought out of the rice including ones that are redolent of berries. Who knows. Perhaps the flavor here is just the result of some fine Minnesota terroir.

My tongue was greeted by a nice, medium fizziness upon first sip. There was a big berry-like flavor right up front with a herbal/peppery kind of hop taste there too. That nutty flavor that I crave so much came in mid-palate, I guess you'd say. (i.e. - I didn't notice it right away.) Some malt sweetness lurked underneath everything and gave it a medium body. And the fizz produced a moderate astringency.

The malt and wild rice flavors faded at the end leaving a not insignificant herbal hoppiness which lent the finish a firm bitterness and similar dose of dryness.

This is a really tasty beer. That berry fruitiness threw me off, at first, because I simply adore the nutty flavor of the wild rice so much and expect it to stand out. But as I continued to sip, the berry mixed with the malty tastes letting that toasted, nutty flavor stand out more. The rather dry finish made for a nice contrast with the grain and grass.

Junk food pairing: Bock Wild is a special treat for this season so pair it with something equally special. Grab some Nut-Thins and apply Cheddar Easy Cheese liberally.

A Salt & Vinegar Miscellany VI

Salt & vinegar enters the animal kingdom!

The chicken chips had a very nice tang to them but it was weird biting into a chip and tasting fowl. I just never got used to it despite the salt & vinegar part having been done well. I am, however, used to crunchy bits of porcine goodness and these were very tasty. Not extreme in the salt & vinegar departments but not wimpy either. Really good and extra tasty when dipped into bacon & horseradish dip.

An Unexpected Encounter: Dark Gourd by Short Fuse Brewing Company

On a trip to Chicago earlier this autumn, I stopped in at a liquor store in search of some fine Chicagoland brews. It was October – Rauchbier Month – so naturally I was seeking some of Dovetail's celebrated Rauchbier, Rauchbier. I’d had a glass of it a few years back when I visited the brewery and so I can attest to its high deliciousness quotient. In addition to loving the guaiacol goodness of smoke beers, I also relish rye in my suds so Arc Welder, Metropolitan's rye dunkel (and fall seasonal), was also on my list. Sadly, neither were at the store I visited. I didn’t feel like running around the northwest side but, rather than leave empty-handed, I chose a couple beers out of left field.

One of them was Dark Gourd by Short Fuse Brewing Company in Schiller Park, a near northwest suburb. Since The Beer Temple Insiders Roundtable has gone off the air, I sadly no longer hear about Chicago area breweries that don't make beers with "Deth" in their names. And so Short Fuse was all-new to me. In my defense, even Josh Noel, who covers the Chicago area beer beat more or less full-time, has admitted that even he cannot keep up with the flood of breweries opening there. So how could I, a mere Cheesehead with not a journalistic bone in his body be expected to know every brewery down south?

The interwebs tell me that Short Fuse opened in 2017. Looking at their tap list, I see a lot of fruited this, pastry that, and hazy whatchamacallits. Had I known this, I probably would have gone with my first instinct and bought some Polish piwo that I can’t get here in Madison. (I was in Jefferson Park, after all.) Luckily for Short Fuse, however, I was blissfully ignorant of their transgressions and bought some of what I presume is their fall seasonal. I can find neither hide nor hair of Dark Gourd on their webpage so I cannot confirm this.

The can says that Dark Gourd was "Made to replicate the flavors of a pumpkin spiced coffee." Again, had I read that at the liquor store instead of in my kitchen, I would likely have ended up with some Polish porter. It reads like they want to offer a simulacrum of a Starbucks Pumpkin Spice latte but in beer form. Not exactly something to endear me to your brew. But the die had been cast.

My pour produced a loose, tan head which was quite spirited as it fizzled and crackled away with abandon. The liquid bit was a deep, dark reddish brown that appeared to be clear. There was a smattering of bubbles inside. It almost looked as if I had poured myself a glass of Coke instead of beer. Considering the label boasts of various additives – squash, sundry spices, and coffee - I found it odd that I was only able to sniff out some nutmeg and malty sweetness on the aroma. Perhaps my nose was on the fritz that day.

As is my wont, I paid attention to the carbonation on my first sip. Considering the soda pop-like head, I wasn’t surprised to find a nice, firm fizziness. This was something of a relief because I was worried about it being too sweet after catching that sugary scent. Underneath all of that effervescence was a medium bodied beer with a fine smoothness to it. Caramel sweetness and roasty coffee flavors were joined by a touch of cinnamon along with a tad of that fine gourdy earthiness from pumpkin.

Mild herbal tasting hops and a modicum of dryness were revealed on the finish as the malt and coffee flavors receded. This also allowed what I think was a bit of ginger to peek through as well.

Despite all of this beer’s handicaps (i.e. – my biases), I rather like it. If my notes are to be believed, it’s "really good". The various spices were not overly prominent and neither was the sweetness. They and the coffee flavors found a nice balance. Plus there was just enough pumpkin. The beer didn’t taste squashy but there was enough pumpkin to perfectly accent the other flavors. "Balance" is the watchword here. No taste overwhelms the others and they all found a way to live harmoniously on my tongue.

This was an unexpected yet very pleasant surprise for me and will buy it again if I happen to see it while I am in Chicagoland next autumn.

Junk food pairing: Dark Gourd will pair well with pizza-flavored snacks and I recommend Snyder’s Brick Oven Style Pizza Flavored filled Pretzel Sandwiches.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 35: The Meat of the Matter

Besides having your mind broadened, one of the great joys of traveling is tasting a region's cuisine. (Concomitant to this is chatting with locals to inveigle them into fisticuffs with one another over who has the best version of a particular dish.) With this in mind, I would argue that there is a mental or associational aspect to eating that doesn't seem to be remarked upon much: I think it's entirely possible to eat a regional specialty in its hometown that is "objectively" not the best or even mediocre yet feel that it is a feast fit for kings because you're away from home having a good time with good company in an attractive setting.

For instance, I feel that the best shrimp po' boy I have ever had was the one I ate in Louisiana at the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival in 2002. There was nothing fancy about it at all. It consisted of a piece of French bread smeared with mayonnaise and stuffed with what seemed to be several pounds of shrimp. No remoulade sauce, no lettuce, no tomato, no pickle – just a mayo-laced piece of bread bursting with fried shrimp served to me by a kindly old lady from the local ladies auxiliary.

I don’t doubt that one reason why I think that it reached the pinnacle of po' boy goodness was that the shrimp was much fresher than I generally find in Madison. But it was also that I was on vacation with one of my best friends. I was coming off of a bad relationship and our trip had an element of putting that part of my life behind me to it. Plus, I was down on the bayou surrounded by people who spoke in a funny accent. The time and place made an experience out of eating that po' boy.

I will also note that the po' boy was the first thing I ate at the festival and that a rather large volume of hot sauce (I had applied it generously.) dripped from it onto my white shirt so I spent the rest of that day wandering around with a big red stain on my front where it was visible to all.

A friend of ours, Joe, is from the Detroit area and he sometimes laments his inability to get some of the foods from his hometown here in Madison. I never knew there was such a thing as Detroit-style pizza until he told me of its existence. Rectangular, thick crust, and lots of brick cheese. The cheese must go to the edge of the pan so that it undergoes Maillard reaction and browns to a perfect crisp.

While he has made his own Detroit-style pizza, the formula for Coney sauce eludes him. He loves Detroit-style Coney dogs. During this past summer the butcher near our house, Meat People, had Coney sauce on offer. The Frau bought some and I told Joe about it which prompted him to immediately make a trek across town to get some of his own. While it was the best Coney sauce he'd found yet in Madison, he thought it was about 50% of the way along to being the real deal. It tasted too much like chili – Hormel chili, to be exact.

Shortly after this, he returned to Michigan to visit family and his stepfather blessed with him with dogs and Coney sauce from National Coney Island which makes the ingredients he swears are the most traditional and most tasty. He returned to Madison with a cooler full and pawned some off on us so we were able to enjoy an authentic Coney dog.

Since the only regional hot dog I was familiar with was the Chicago dog, I asked Joe if you dressed this one with anything beyond the Coney sauce. "Do you apply any seasoning to it like you would sprinkle celery salt on a Chicago dog?" I asked. "Diced onion and mustard," was the reply.

I didn't have any yellow mustard so I used Polish brown.

I thought it turned out well aside from getting my moustache saturated with Coney sauce and mustard with each bite. National's Coney sauce tasted less like chili powder than the stuff from the butcher. It's more like ground beef in a brown gravy than chili. Further research is obviously required.

********

Among the many things that were canceled last year was the annual convention of the Wisconsin Association of Meat Processors held annually in April. I have been a judge for the convention's product show on and off for a while now. The 2021 version was moved to August and went on despite the Delta variant's spread.

We judges aren't told what categories we'll be judging until we get there but, while driving over to the Marriott on the west side, I found myself hoping not to get whole muscle jerky again. It's not that I don't like jerky but sampling a few dozen strips of dried meat really takes a toll on my jaws.

I met up with my friend Ed who got me into this whole judging thing in the first place back in 2005 or so when we were co-workers. He had a career in the meat processing industry before becoming a health inspector and even had the honor of then governor Tommy Thompson admonishing him in a stern voice over a conference phone, "Thou shalt not hinder commerce in my state!"

Our category assignments were announced and, much to my chagrin, I was assigned whole muscle jerky duty. D'oh! That and specialty smoked/cured bratwurst. I hoped that there weren't too many oddball flavors of sausage. Cheese or cheese & jalapeno I could handle. But I've heard tell of a butcher who puts Gummy Bears into their sausage while another who adds Kool Aid to theirs. I am not sure I could be an impartial judge of such befoulment of all that is good and holy in the culinary world.

We donned our white lab coats and hairnets and headed inside the judging room which the hotel keeps as cool as it can. This was especially nice since it was a very hot and muggy August day outside.

My jaws were given something of a reprieve as, because of Covid, there were only about half as many entries as there have been in non-pandemic years. It seemed they would survive after all. Still, we started with the bratwurst just to be sure we could get through everything.

So how do you judge a sausage? To begin, you examine the exterior. How is the color? Are the links of uniform size and shape? Does the casing have wrinkles? Any air pockets? Once we were done perusing the outside, we cut one open to examine the inside. Again, we looked at color, to start. We kept our eyes peeled for air pockets, fat pockets, and connective tissue. If there were non-meat bits, such as pieces of cheese, were they evenly dispersed throughout?

Lastly, we sliced some sausage and heated the pieces in a microwave for tasting. What was the texture like? Were there off flavors? I judged smoked poultry one year and there were quite a few samples that were oxidized and I just cannot stand oxidized chicken now.

There weren't many goofy sausage flavors to be had, thankfully. As expected, we sampled many cheese-laced brats in addition to a couple Philly cheesesteak sausages and ones made with beer. The oddest entrant was an unholy abomination unto charcuterie: a mac & cheese brat.

I guess that after mac & cheese pizza became a culinary phenomenon, it shouldn't be surprising that the venerable pasta dish would find its way into other foods. My own opinion is that macaroni & cheese has no business being on a pizza and that its presence on dough disqualifies the dish from being actual pizza. To wax philosophical, I think it's really a matter of analytical cognition: the conception of pizza is NOT contained in our intuitions about a mac & cheese pie that we get from our senses because the conception of pizza omits mac & cheese a priori. Of course, objects such as "mac & cheese pizza" can originate purely from the mind and are conceptions of reason. Thusly such pies are mere transcendental illusions. Q.E.D.

At one point in our judging, I turned around to see that behind us was the large diameter luncheon meat table. To my horror, a log of mac & cheese bologna was staring back at me.

There oughta be a law!

The jerky judging wasn't too bad as there were only 11 entrants instead of the usual 30 or so. And just a couple were bone dry and so chewy as to make my jaws ache trying to leech some flavor out of them. A few were the exact opposite: so moist that you had to question whether any attempt was made to dry the meat. Surprisingly, there were no weird flavors. Teriyaki was about as crazy and exotic as it got although there was a flavor called "Hillbilly" which just seemed mildly hot to me. But I saw Hillbilly Jerky seasoning in the trade show room and picked up a bag. (All the stuff is free and comes in food service portions.) I gave it to a co-worker who makes jerky at home and now he has enough seasoning for about 10 pounds of the tasty snack.

Meanwhile, my pal Ed was judging flavored bacon. Bacon is near and dear to my stomach but, alas and alack, I have never had the pleasure of judging either bacon category. The first category is standard unflavored cured bacon while the second is flavored. I am not really sure how people flavor bacon beyond encrusting the slabs in black pepper or injecting maple flavoring. Sitting next to a few slabs of peppered bacon were a couple that appeared to have had barbeque dry rub on them while others had had completely unfamiliar seasonings applied to them.

Since my experience with the food industry is with the preparation of it in a kitchen, I get paired with someone who has meat processing experience for judging. Sometimes it's an old duffer who worked at the Oscar Mayer plant here in Madison for decades. This year my fellow judge was a younger fellow who worked at the university's Meat Science school. Regardless of whom I get paired up with, I always end up learning something about meat processing when I judge. They can identify off flavors whereas I just know something isn't right with the taste. Why does that sausage casing have wrinkles? Well, they didn't fill it all the way. How come this piece of jerky is thicker at one end? More pressure was applied to the meat when it was on the slicer for the thick part. Et cetera and so on.

Here's the Braunschweiger section:

I don't think I could judge that category without ample rye bread and raw onion. It looks like it shared a table with the luncheon or jellied loaf category. There is some head cheese just out of frame.

Although you generally don't swallow the product you're judging and instead spit it out into a cup, you are still chewing on sample after sample of processed meat which means you consume a lot of salt. I drank a lot of water and went to the bathroom several times over the course of the 4 or so hours we spent judging.

It is also worth noting that the leftover product is all donated to local food pantries.

A look at life at the semi-boneless ham table. Note the large hacksaw.

As my fellow judge and I determined, the Grand Champion in the Bratwurst – Specialty (Smoked, Cooked & Cured) category was the Jalapeno and Cheese brat from Peoples Meat Market in Stevens Point. And the Grand Champion in the Jerky – Whole Muscle category was the teriyaki jerky from Lake Geneva Country Meats, Inc.

********

Bonus photo time. In keeping with the culinary theme, here's Grabby staring covetously at a spoon of hot pepper peanut butter ice cream from Calliope.

Slow Spiral Into Winter: Gyrator Doppel by New Glarus Brewing

Back in the early autumn, New Glarus released Gyrator Doppel, a doppelbock. "That darn seasonal creep," I said to no one in particular. "Lent it ain't," began my jeremiad to the Brewers Association which somehow never got sent. Truth be known, I enjoy doppelbocks outside of Lententide but generally reserve them for the chill of winter. It was still quite a bit too warm for drinking beers of this style, to my taste, in late September. Now that it's December and Jack Frost is nipping, I am taking the plunge.

The beer's label is interesting and may be the brewery's first to have an ichthyological theme as I can recall no Walleye Weiss nor a Small Mouth Sour. ("That's good bass!" - Dan Carey) Let's look at the description and start with this bit: "Dan’s re-discovery of whole cone Diamant hops grown at his urging in Hallertau, Germany". Wait, wait, wait. Dan Carey, co-owner/brewmaster/whatever of New Glarus Brewing Company can get a foreign hop grower some 4,200 miles away to do his bidding?! Does Dan have some compromising photographs?

It vood be a real shame if diese Fotos ended up on der Internet…

When Carey isn't "urging" German hop growers, he can be found Googling long lost grains. To wit: "Over ten years of his personal heritage barley research…"

The blurb on the label then goes on to note that the brew was double decocted, lagered for 10 weeks, and then took some R&R in the bottle for another 6 months. This is not just some brief diversion from brewing endless gallons of Spotted Cow.

If all of this time and effort wasn't enough, Gyrator was released in 6-packs for the same price as Cow. I don't mean to knock Spotted Cow here (I like it much more now that the corn has been removed), but rather to express astonishment that what could have been a fairly expensive limited edition release available only at the brewery instead sits on store shelves next to and at the same price as New Glarus' more workaday beers that weren't made with obscure heritage grains and bespoke hops. I think my sixer cost $7.49. Craft beers are luxury items, to be sure, but this is like getting an Aston Martin for the price of a Lexus.

As with most beers, the doppelbock has its own lore. In short, the story is that the monks of the Paulaner monastery in Munich (or its environs) developed the rich, malty sweet style in the 17^th century to provide their daily bread in liquid form during Lententide. As with countless other tales about the origins of beer styles, this one too appears to be blatantly untrue. It seems that the doppelbock was initially brewed for a feast and eventually became a regular part of the monks' diet year-round instead of being reserved for a mere 40-day stretch of cenobitic austerity. Still, it's an engaging bit of legerdemain that is sure to be repeated by beer-loving doofuses like me for some time to come.

My pour produced a big, loose, tan head that went away quickly and noisily. It looked like I had just poured myself a Coke with bubbles carelessly exploding as I tried to get a decent photograph amid the din. Gyrator is a lovely deep chestnut and clear too. I saw a smattering of bubbles inside. It smelled sweet, as I expected, with aromas of caramel, raisin, plum, and milk chocolate dancing around in my nose.

Those scents made their way to my tongue with raisin and milk chocolate being most prominent. Caramel brought up the rear along with a smidgeon of roasted grain. Fizziness was middle of the road but enough to keep the sweetness from becoming cloying and give the beer a mild astringency. The sweetness faded on the finish leaving a little lingering raisin/caramel and allowing a hint of bread to come through. Then a herbal-floral hoppiness kicked in and added a firm dryness which makes you forget that you just drank about half of your recommended daily dose of carbohydrates in one sip.

I was surprised to discover that Gyrator wasn't as sweet as I had expected it to be. Sure, it was full of rich malt goodness and was chock full of sweet flavors but the sweetness itself was moderated perfectly. And that toasty bread flavor at the end (a result of decoction, surely) was a treat. In addition, I really liked how the hops came in and made for a dry finish which pleasingly contrasted with all of the grainy flavors.

I am not well-drunk when it comes to doppelbocks. My brain's entry for them is "Something-ator. Oh, it's a big, malty sweet doppelbock!" But I think I am going to have to revise it to include language about Gyrator being the Platonic ideal of the style.

Just food pairing: With such a great beer, be sure to pair it with something a cut above your typical junk food. Since I like to drink doppelbocks in cold weather, I suggest something warm with my favorite being SuperPretzel Soft Pretzel Bites filled with Pepper Jack cheese.

A Salt & Vinegar Miscellany V

 

Aw, nuts!

Out of all the non-potato chip salt & vinegar snacks, these are the best so far. Both had a solid vinegar tang to complement the starch and fats in the nuts.

Highly recommended.

THE/OWL/BEER/IS/NOT/WHAT/IT/SEEMS: Rhoades' Scholar Stout by South Shore Brewery

Despite the suggestion on the label to "Try one in place of a cup of coffee", I want to begin by declaring that I drank mine in the evening after work and not first thing in the morning before work.

The breweries of northern Wisconsin (for a discussion on how to determine if you are in northern Wisconsin, go here) don't get anywhere near the love and attention that those in the south do. It's understandable, I suppose, as they are in small media markets and usually have limited or no distribution to the Madison and Milwaukee areas. They lack trendiness as well as the cachet of a New Glarus Spotted Cow that compels countless visitors from Illinois and Minnesota to stock up on cases of the stuff before heading home.

From my austral perspective in Madison, the biggest champion of the beers of the northern part of Wisconsin is Ryan Urban, an/the editor at the Barron News-Shield. He is the former host of the Beer Run Podcast which was, as far as I can tell, the last regular news source of beer happenings up north and it ceased activity in 2017. Today he writes about beer on the odd occasion for his paper's The Urban Rural Column and tweets about it on his Twitter feed.

On one hand, I do wish that some of the boreal beers of Wisconsin were more readily available down here because there are some delicious brews to be had. On the other, I appreciate regional variety and encountering different breweries and beers while I am traveling. Now, I grant you that you will find Spotted Cow in every corner of this state but, as I experienced on a recent trip, there are plenty of breweries up north with very limited distribution that basically require you to take a trip in order to taste their suds. (Or to attend the Great Taste of the Midwest. Still, I'd bet not all of those breweries up north are there.)

While most northern Wisconsin breweries see scant distribution here in the Madison area, beer from Ashland's South Shore Brewery regularly makes its way from the shores of Lake Superior to those of Lake Monona. South Shore began life as a brewpub in 1995 and eventually became a fully-fledged brewery. It took several years but their beers did eventually make the journey south to Madison in the early 2010s, if memory serves. At some point, distribution here stopped only to begin again at another time that is equally lost in the mists of time to me. Well, that's how I recall it, anyway. (I am almost certain that the 6-pack of their Inland Sea pilsner that I had in 2015 was purchased in Foster.)

Today I see their Nut Brown Ale and Rhoades' Scholar Stout around town. Ever since noticing their return to store shelves, they've been on my to-buy list. It's just that I'd always get distracted by other beers while at the store and whisper "Next time..." to myself as I grabbed a 6-pack of something else. Recently, however, I overcame my inclination to procrastinate and bought some of that stout.

Stouts have a reputation amongst many as being these thick, dark, heavy beers. Like motor oil. And there's something to this. I recall attending a Russian Imperial stout tasting back in 1994 or thereabouts here in Madison which was held in the basement of the Italian Workingmen's Club. As best I can recall, the event was hosted by the Madison Homebrewers and Tasters Guild. It was a wonderland of potent, stygian beers made by some of Madison's finest homebrewers. Bearded libation bearers proudly poured samples for the relatively (in contrast to any beer event today) small but eager crowd. My beer palate was rather inchoate at this point so I was not particularly familiar with the style and remember looking at my first sample thinking, "It looks like motor oil." I also recall thinking that these antidotes to sobriety were quite delicious. (My memories of the event get hazy after this.)

But those were the Imperial variety and your normal, workaday stout need not be redolent of Valvoline. Indeed, South Shore tries to head off viscous concerns at the pass with the description: "It’s everything a stout should be: rich, hearty, not thick or overpowering, and with a creamy head."

Rhoades' Scholar pours a deep, dark reddish brown and comes with a lovely tan head of loose foamy goodness that lasted what I think of as being an average length of time. The stuff was so dark as to be opaque but, if I held my glass to the light and at the right angle, it appeared clear. It had a sweet aroma redolent of milk chocolate, coffee, and plum. No wonder the brewery recommends it for dessert.

The marketing division of the South Shore Brewery didn't lie: this is a rich tasting beer. Some roasted graininess and a fair amount of dark, though not particularly bitter, chocolate were most prominent. Behind them was some coffee taste and a hint of stone fruit. (Note that plum I smelled.) It had a touch of sweetness as well.

That coffee taste really came to the fore on the finish and, as the grain flavors faded, a nice herbal bitterness shone through which added a firm dryness.

The marketing division of the South Shore Brewery was also telling the truth when they said that the beer wasn't thick or overpowering. It had a medium body and its viscosity didn't approach that of bubblin' crude. I found it to be quite flavorful with a firm fizziness helping keep the richness from becoming too much and adding a mild astringency.

My notes say "Great beer" and they don't lie. This is a wonderful treat from the North. It's jam-packed full of flavor but isn't thick or cloying. While I probably wouldn't choose this beer on a hot day, it was a perfect choice on a recent fall day.

To the best of my knowledge, a stout is/was simply a strong porter. Rhoades' Scholar has the requisite flavors and is 6.3% A.B.V. which seems stronger than a porter to me.

Junk food pairing: The marketing division of the South Shore Brewery says that Rhoades' Scholar complements desserts so pair it with a bag of Peanut Butter and Chocolate Muddy Buddies.