I Found That Essence Juniper: Sahti by Vintage Brewing Co.

For me, it all started with the shrimp.

The Frau and I started eating shrimp fairly regularly at some point during the pandemic. We soon fell into a routine of cooking them with a Mexican verde sauce – lime and something something. Then we added a scampi-like variation with lots of garlic. (She loves the garlic.) It eventually made its way into a stir fry. The best of these meals involved good shrimp purchased down the road at the Lake Edge Seafood Company but most of the time we were dealing with the skrimps you find at your supermarket.

Out of the blue one day I felt crustacean ennui. I was bored with all the well-worn shrimp recipes and desired something novel. I'd been listening to an album by a Noura Mint Seymali, a singer and musician from Mauritania which brought back memories of a former co-worker who hailed from nearby Morocco and I ended up cooking Moroccan-style shrimp. Well, sort of.

Firstly, I completely forgot to add the ginger. I still don't know how I managed that. Secondly, my coriander was positively antediluvian and it smelled and tasted like dust. This was not a good pairing for grocery store shrimp which often times tastes not totally unlike cardboard.

The next day was Bloody Wednesday because my spice shelf suffered a massacre. That ancient coriander? Gone. That $0.99 jar of turmeric that pre-dates meeting my Frau? Down the drain. Those cardamom pods from c. 2002? Meet the disposal. Juniper berries from the last millennium? 86'd.

All were replaced with fresh jars from Penzey's.

Perhaps because I was reading a book about the Russian invasion of Finland in November 1939, I started in on the juniper berries. First came a beef pot roast made with them. This was followed by chocolate hazelnut cookies seasoned with toasted juniper and then a pork tenderloin covered in mustard infused with crushed juniper berries. It only seemed natural, then, when my mind turned to sahti.

Sahti is a Finnish style of beer. I went back through my extensive (ahem) archives and found that I drank one actually brewed in Finland back in 2007. My suspicion – and I'd love to be proven wrong – is that you'd be hard-pressed to find a genuine Finnish sahti in Madison today. I base my hypothesis on my failed attempts to find English-brewed porters and milds and bitters here. There seems to be little enthusiasm for these beers because American brewers are brewing those styles and so why bother.

A craft brewed sahti seems to be an ale brewed with barley and rye, a dose of juniper spicing, and a yeast like that for hefeweizen that will produce those banana and clove flavors. And I don't doubt for a second that there are Finnish breweries brewing it exactly this way. However, now that I've read more about the style from genuine Finns, it's clear that there's more to the sahti than meets the craft brewer eye.

The style seems to go back to the 16^th century and traditional sahti today hews to those brewing methods, more or less. The highlights of traditional sahti brewing are, as near as I can tell, foregoing a period of boiling the wort that other beers undergo, the use of baking yeast, and time the beer spends in a vat with juniper branches lining the bottom. I certainly don’t expect any Americans beyond the most adventurous homebrewers to adhere strictly to the sahti brewing from the days of yore. Still, Scott Manning of Vintage Brewing here in Madison brews a contemporary take on the beer and I was happy to see that he still had some on tap when I was in the grip of my juniper mania.

At first, I thought it was from last summer because I was used to seeing "Summer Sahti" on their beer menu. But I was corrected. There was no Summer Sahti anymore because their winter sahti, Joulupukki, was also no more. So it was just "Sahti". And it was brewed back in the fall. No matter. It did not stop me from pursuit of juniper beer and supporting a local brewery.

So, keep in mind this was finely aged sahti.

It poured amber in color – maybe a bit on the light side. I got a creamy, white head and it was rather hazy. Not NEIPA turbidity, but definitely unclear.

My nose caught some caramel sweetness first which was followed by that familiar banana scent from esters. A little resiny pine lingered in the background.

The first thing I noted about the taste was that it had creaminess to it and I suspect that's because of proteins that make up the haze. This used to be the summer brew so it's not big and full tasting like the winter version was but retains a bit of that taste. That delicious rye spiciness was joined by sweetness that reminded me of apricots and a smidgeon of banana. Rather prominent was a whiskey-like taste. Unexpected but not bad and something I'd guess to be the result of age. Fizz was medium and there was a mild juniper taste as well.

The finish (ha!) had a nice spiciness that tasted like hops as well as a little more of that juniper resin.

While this beer tasted its age, I think the core sahti essence remained intact. It had a bit of that rustic rye flavor along with the fruity esters from the yeast. I think that some of the juniper had worn off but it wasn't totally absent. Rye and juniper are two flavors I really enjoy and so I do adore this beer. I gather that sahti is normally 8-10% A.B.V. while this comes in at 5.4%. So, if you want a traditional Finnish boozy blue gleam on your face, you'll need to drink a few extra.

I was happy to further indulge my taste for juniper.

Junk food pairing: Grab a large bag of rye chips such as Gordetto's for your snacking needs while enjoying Sahti.

The goal of all life is good lager: Vienna-Style Lager by Dovetail Brewery

Let me begin by dropping some factoids that I just know will blow your mind:

1) I love Vienna lagers.

2) It is highly likely that I've never had a Vienna lager from Vienna or any other part of Austria.

Should I pause here so you can gather yourselves together?

I suppose that when I write "I love Vienna lagers" what I really mean is that I enjoy American-brewed amber colored lagers that sources such as the BJCP say is permissible to label "Vienna lagers". Whether the definitions of Vienna lager promulgated by the craft beer clerisy have any resemblance to the historical Austrian style of beer is questionable in my mind. I think the rise of craft beer here in the United States has propagated countless tall tales and outright falsehoods about beer and brewing history. See pretty much everything about the IPA. Due to my laziness and blogging deadlines** I've done precious little research and so the following nano-history of the Vienna lager may be completely bogus. Caveat lector.

The invention of the Vienna lager is a story worthy of an episode of James Burke's Connections as its genesis drew upon a myriad of technologies and techniques from outside of Vienna and invented in the past. Burke would, no doubt, start several thousand years in the past somewhere in deepest Mesopotamia. I am not.

Instead let's go back to the first time a Vienna lager made its way into the Kuchen hole of a paying member of the public: c. 1840. This was made possible by one Anton Dreher, proprietor of Brauhaus zu Klein-Schwechat which I think translates into English as the Klein Schwechat Brewery. (Klein Schwechat is a town near Vienna.) But before taking over the brewery from his father, Anton had a few adventures with his Freund Gabriel Sedlmayr, Jr. (Sedlmayr the Senior was the Braumeister at a little brewery in Munich called Spaten.)

Trekking through Germany and eventually Britain, Anton learned about bottom fermentation, speedy wort cooling, and kilning with indirect heat which yielded pale, non-smoky malt. He even used the humble thermometer which was, I have read, eschewed by early 19^th century Viennese brewers because apparently they were a bunch of zymurgological Neanderthals.

The merger of new-fangled technology and new(er) methods in Dreher's brewery yielded the Vienna lager.

If we jump ahead to 2016 in Chicago's Ravenswood area, Dovetail Brewery is opened by two Chicagoans who met in Munich while studying the art of brewing. Together they brew continental European style beers with the occasional American technique or ingredient thrown in for good measure. This is not my first encounter with Dovetail's beer as I enjoyed their Rauchbier at their taproom a few years back and, more recently, their Helles. However, this is my initial taste of their Vienna-style lager and I didn't have to go to Chicago to get it as Dovetail started appearing on select Madison store shelves late last year or earlier this year, I cannot recall.

The beer is amber in color whereas the stuff Dreher was making was likely paler, more of a golden hue. It had a touch of haze and a lovely white head that went away rather quickly.

Its delightfully biscuity malt scent caressed my nosehairs and stimulated my olfactory bulb. Ooh la la! I also caught a little toffee and some grass from the hops.

The liquid was medium-bodied and featured a little toffee flavor. But the pièce de resistance was the rich biscuit taste that melded with melanoidins giving that lightly toasted flavor that my tongue covets so. My understanding is that Dovetail decocts, hence the melanoidins. When I finally stopped gushing over the grainy goodness, I noticed there was also a moderate fizziness and a tad of grassy-floral hoppiness.

At the finish there was a touch of lingering sweetness but mainly it was a bit dry with that fizz and some bitterness from grassy-spicy tasting hops.

As with the other beers I've had from Dovetail, their Vienna-style lager is superlative. I don't know exactly how close it is to the ur-Vienna lager from back in 1840 but it's at least on the right track with having the malt up front. Indeed, it's masterful in its melanoidin, terrific in its toastiness, and scarce in sweetness. This, along with the subdued hop presence, jibes with what I've read about Dreher's brew.

In the end, though, Dovetail isn't obligated to brew a beer that tastes like one from 180 years ago. It is however, obligated to brew tasty beer and they've certainly done that here. The sweetness is toned down and the bready/toasty malt flavors shine through, as is my preference in such matters, with some Noble tasting hops lending a little balance and dryness.

Junk food pairing: This beer is up for pairing with what is one of the best potato chips out there – Jay's Hot Stuff with its prominent paprika flavor and its heat.

**Hahahahahahahahaha

My Blonde Period: Bubbler by Next Door Brewing

Picasso had his Blue Period and a Rose period so this must be my blonde period because I have recently reviewed at least three blonde ales and I have now found another to add to the pile.

There are times when I get the feeling that the blonde ale gets a bad rap. Sometimes labeled Kölsch-style, golden ale, or summer ale, it is a frequent denizen of craft brewery taprooms. But blonde ales are dismissed too often as the beer for non-beer drinkers who find themselves stuck at a brewpub or for macro lager drinkers who end up at a Bud-free joint with friends who are there to get lost in a juicy haze.

You taste some malt, a little fruitiness from the yeast, and some hops with a bit of bitterness. There's balance with no flavor dominating the others and it's light, not only to the eye, but also on the tongue. While I am sure that some American craft brewers somewhere have barrel aged them and even made them dark so as to have a black blonde ale, they generally seem to be left to themselves, thankfully. However, I do recall Vintage Brewing here in Madison steeping sumac in their Sister Golden several years back and Sam Adams has used/uses Grains of Paradise in their Summer Ale so the style is not additive proof by any means.

This time around we have Bubbler from Next Door Brewing. While not next door, Next Door is only about a mile and half from my house so it is my local brewery. (Well, until that person in my dreams opens a zoigl brewery when the Voit Farm property is developed and it assumes the title.) I don't frequent Next Door that often but they have always had good food when I've eaten there and you can take your meal in the company of total strangers as they offer communal seating. I have enjoyed the beers of theirs I've had and I like to go there during the summer to order a Berliner Weisse sampler with a variety of syrups. I'm a Waldmeister man at heart, but a little mango and whatever the blue flavor is makes for a nice summer treat.

About five years ago there was a trio of Wisconsin brewed beers called "Bubbler", including this one. Considering the Wisconsinness of the term, I am surprised it took so long for the name to appear.

Bubbler is a classic example of regional English. It refers to a drinking fountain that has the water bubble up from a spout instead of shoot out towards a drain. Having grown up in Chicago, I always said drinking fountain as opposed to the decorative kind like Buckingham Fountain down in Grant Park. "Bubbler" is a Milwaukee-area word owing to Kohler fountains (made in Kohler, WI, just north of Milwaukee) that bubbled the water and Milwaukeeans taking a shine to the word.

And so at one time we had a blonde ale from tiny Plymouth Brewing, a hefeweizen from New Glarus Brewing, and Next Door's blonde ale all having this name. I have no idea how that shook out trademark-wise but I haven't seen a New Glarus Bubbler in a while, Plymouth either doesn't can/bottle its beer or distributes in a very small area, and Next Door's Bubbler is a common sight in beer coolers around town.

My glass of Bubbler was a light gold and a tad hazy. Atop the beer was a nice-looking, loose white head that proved to be in no hurry to go away.

With smells of biscuit and straw, it was not totally unlike, say, a Miller High Life. My nose also caught a bit of fruit – like apricot.

In a 180 from my last beer review, Grainne's Special Bitter, Bubbler had a firm fizz to it. I tasted cracker and a touch of white raisin sweetness. It had a smoothness to it as well and I caught some berry in there on subsequent sips. A grassy and slightly spicy bitterness came out on the finish which was fairly dry.

Of my recent encounters with blonde ales, I must admit my preference for Bubbler. It's got a really nice cracker taste with restrained sweetness and fruitiness. The carbonation and judicious hopping keep things on the dry and crisp side but not overly so. Balance is the watchword. There's simply a tasty harmony amongst the malt, hops, and yeast here. A little bit of everything but never too much.

Junk food pairing: Bubbler will pair well with Ruffles Poutine Potato Chips.

The Corona Diaries Vol 11: The focus is sharp in the city

There's a Tumblr called Sleazy Madison which features nothing but newspaper ads. Most of them are for X-rated films at theaters and for strip clubs like this one.

But they also have ads for non-pornographic films through the years and live performers and concerts that are pretty neat. Here's one for Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff from 1949.

I take it that the Orpheum had recently had air conditioning installed. And from 1962 we have an ad for Phyllis Diller coming to town.

********

This "Babushcats" photo made me think of my grandmother and several great aunts. I am planning on giving one to my cousin as a retirement gift soon.

********

"What's new in Madison?" is a question I hear a lot from friends and family. The first thing that comes to mind now that we no longer have Scott Walker actively trying to screw over Madison and Milwaukee at every turn is that Madison continues to grow.

Our population seems to gain 3,000 people, give or take a couple hundred, every year. While it's not Sun Belt level of population growth, it is growth nonetheless. If things didn't dramatically change last year because of the virus, we're sitting at 261,000-262,000 people. By no means a metropolis but nicely medium-sized.

For all the problems growth brings with it, it's much better than to be hemorrhaging population. I was in St. Louis back in 2017 with some friends and there was much to recommend it. For example, we ate some wonderful barbeque at Pappy's Smokehouse and drank some great beer at Urban Chestnut. Plus there's that arch thingy and the Old Courthouse across the street from it. And it's on the Mighty Mississippi with all that history. St. Louis was the gateway to the West back in the day, after all. But it was really depressing to see all of the vacant buildings with their windows boarded up wherever we went.

We ate at a restaurant south of downtown in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. The street was lined with red brick 4 flats and every other one was boarded up on the 2 blocks we walked. The city has lost about two-thirds of its population since the 1950s so it's no surprise that there are so many empty buildings. A lovely city in many ways but depressing in others.

Madison is the opposite of St. Louis. With a growing population and a fair number of IT/biomedical jobs, there are a lot of apartments going up with studios often going for $1,200+/month. It seems crazy that people are paying in rent roughly the same amount as my monthly mortgage payment. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. The average home value in the city is now north of $300,000. Not in the same league as Seattle or San Francisco, I grant you, but that's a good chunk of change in these parts.

For a taste of all the building going on around town, check out this article.

It focuses on the area to the northeast of the Capitol on E. Washington, a.k.a. – Highway 151, and includes some before and after photos. In addition to the new buildings documented in the article, there's more to come in that corridor. E.g. - new offices in the picture immediately below and more apartments in the following one.

(I cannot but help think this one is going to lead to the demise of many a bird.)

And on the Capitol Square, this was just approved:

The list goes on. And not just downtown, campus, and environs. Apartments with first floor retail are going up everywhere. My neighborhood's new library went into the ground floor of a shiny new building with apartments on top. The grand opening was slated for 12 March of last year, the same day the state was ordered into lockdown so I've never been inside. (Although my mother has, curiously enough.) Instead, I pick up items from a table out by the back entrance.

It's hard to keep up with all of the new buildings even though Madison is fairly small as developers practice their diablerie on every side of town. Every time I bike through neighborhoods where I lived in a student slum while I was in college, it's ever more gentrified. (But we're woefully short on "affordable" housing which is another hot topic these days.)

But that's what living in the city is all about, right? The churn of people and places and ideas with the familiar giving way to the new and the novel.

There's been a little comfort to be had lately as a couple new ghost signs have emerged from the rubble.

While I am on the subject of historic Madison, I found this neat website - https://maps.sco.wisc.edu/panorama/ - which is a panoramic view of the city from the Capital dome in the 1890s. There are some clickable spots that allow you to see that site in the current day. It's sad to think of all the lovely buildings that were torn down for parking ramps.

The bonus photo this time is of a historic marker. It's just off of County I north of Madison on, would you believe it, Easy Street. I have driven into and out of Madison on County I countless times over the past 20+ years and seen the brown signs with "HISTORICAL MARKER" emblazoned on them but never bothered to investigate the marker until this past fall.

I had no idea that the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone" were written by a Cheesehead who grew up just north of Madison.

I trust the sight of the ESB refreshes you: Grainne's Special Bitter by Parched Eagle Brewpub

With Covid still on the loose, the Frau and I are forced to push any plans for a trip to London back further. I may be trying to make up for this by drinking more Extra Special Bitter, a.k.a. – ESB. Last time it was Working Draft's take on the style and this time we have Grainne's Special Bitter from Parched Eagle here in Madison.

The Grainne in Grainne's Special Bitter is a friend of Parched Eagle proprietor Jim Goronson. Both of them have a fondness for the ur-ESB, Fuller's, and the beer was named after her. There is a bit more to this story and, in an act of blatant synergizing, I will direct you to the episode of the podcast I do with my pal Old Man Schuck, Time Enough At Last, which features Goronson as our guest where you can hear the man himself give you all of the details.

When I bought my bottle of GSB, it was the last one they had, tucked away in the back of the cooler forcing the bartender to move bottles around and really dig for it. If it's not on tap, you may have to wait for the next batch to be brewed in order to taste it. But do so. I really enjoy the Parched Eagle taproom. It's got koselig, hygge, and coziness in spades. There's no brewing equipment visible so it lacks that sterile industrial chic that is prevalent today and is all the better for it. The room is fairly small and has a warm, welcoming feel to it that many taprooms lack.

The ESB is a bigger, stronger bitter beer. The strength of a bitter seems to vary widely – from 3.X% to 5.0% A.B.V. The ESB is naturally a headier brew but nothing outrageous – think 5.5% - 6.5% A.B.V. With Grainne's Special Bitter at 6.6%, it's on the upper end of the scale.

On my first pour of GSB, my glass had no head. A second pour produced a small off-white head that went away quickly. This seemed in line with my expectation that the ESB should have only a little fizz to it. While the first two pours were clear, the beer at the bottom of the bottle was hazy.

I was surprised at the beer's smell which was kind of meager. Maybe it was my nose but I could only smell a berry-like fruitiness and a little floral hoppiness. While I loved both scents, I simply expected more smells to be smelled.

On the first sip, my fizz detector discerned just a hint of the stuff and GSB lacked the astringent quality of Working Draft's ESB, Elbow Patches. There was some leather flavor, a bit of honeyed malt sweetness, and a touch of that berry from the nose. Everything was nicely balanced.

That leather taste remained after I swallowed and was joined by a nice woody flavor and moderate herbal hoppy bitterness.

Exactly how closely Grainne's Special Bitter adheres to the Fuller's ESB template remains to be tasted and awaits a trip to London for confirmation. But I found GSB to be excellent. Having had Working Draft's ESB recently, I cannot help but compare and contrast.

Going easy on the fizz gave Parched Eagle's take on the style a gentle mellowness that Elbow Patched lacked. They have similar flavors in their respective mixes, though Elbow Patches is a bit nuttier, while GSB is more balanced. Both beers finished with a tasty herbal hop bitterness. GSB is boozier but it doesn't taste like a big, strong brew. Instead, it is a gentle giant.

Personally, I prefer Grainne's Special Bitter but I hold out hope that Working Draft can forego some fizz in the next batch of Elbow Patches. The more ESBs, the merrier.

Junk food pairing: Pair your Grainne's Special Bitter with a fine English cheddar like Extra Cheesy Cheez-Its.

While I am on the subject of English beer styles, WorkingDraft recently brewed a British style lager – no idea what that entails – and there may still be some on shelves around town. Also, Karben4's mild, ChampagneTortoise, is listed as a spring seasonal on their website so it will theoretically be available soon.

A Taste of Old Blighty: Elbow Patches by Working Draft Beer Co.

Had fate/the pandemic not intervened, the Frau and I would have spent some time last year in London. In anticipation of the trip, I did some preparation such as memorizing Imperial measurement units and so I now know my weight in stones. I also put in a lot of practice on London vernacular speech. E.g.:

"Let's go down the pub for a piss up!"

"A pint of your best bitter, guvnor!"

"Cor, that's a good ale!"

"Last call is 11 o'clock?! Bloody hell!"

No doubt we would have fit right in with the locals.

The trek would have afforded us the opportunity to head to some pubs and indulge in some English beers and/or ales. While I am quite ignorant about beer generally, it is especially the case with brews from the British Isles as evidenced by my recent encounter with an English style porter. Over there you find a whole different type of porter in addition to milds and bitters - beers with little carbonation served at warmer than straight-out-of-the-refrigerator temperatures. Pubs and their beer engines are guarded day and night by CAMRA members who are like the Hells Angels and they help preserve the beer and brewing heritage that has accumulated over the centuries.

Not really but I hear that some CAMRA chaps can really be pains in the arse.

Despite the prevalence of adjunct lagers today, people on these shores in 1776 weren't swillin' Bud. They were drinking beers based on English styles no doubt adapted to circumstances in the colonies. For example, it seems that molasses was a popular ingredient back then. George Washington is reputed to have been a homebrewer of no mean skill but I'd bet his brews were English styles or adaptations thereof.

While contemporary American brewers have leeched pretty much anything English out of the IPA outside of those three letters, you'd probably have to look elsewhere for the influence of English brewing here. The amber ale comes to mind and, from what I've read, it's a variation on the English pale ale. A lot of beers apparently are members of the pale ale family. I take it this is because "pale" ranges from gold to brown – basically anything is pale that's not obsidian here. One beer style that isn't obsidian in color is the ESB.

I figured that, if Henry VIII wasn't quaffing ESB as he went about looking for new wives and ridding his lands of Catholicism, then at least Charles Dickens' characters were drinking the stuff after cleaning chimneys and emptying their chamber pots into the Thames. But no.

The ESB dates back to the late 1960s when the venerable English brewer Fuller's introduced their Winter Bitter in 1969. It was rechristened an ESB a couple years later, it seems. Extra Special Bitter sounds right to my ears but Extra Strong Bitter also passes muster from what I can tell. It sounds like ESB was born as more marketing gambit than new style back when The Beatles were breaking up. (Not unlike the IPA here these days.) I mean, it's not like there weren't headier than average bitters out there.

So what's a bitter? My understanding is that it's simply a type of pale ale that's more bitter than the mild. Not 100 I.B.U. lunacy, mind you, just more hops to balance the maltiness of a mild.

Recently the folks at Madison's Working Draft Beer Company brewed an Extra Special Bitter called Elbow Patches. Having finished off a 4-pack of English porter, I figured it was time to move onto an ESB. This was Elbow Patches Chapter 2 and I'm not sure if this means that it's their second batch of the beer, their second ESB recipe, or something else. I don't associate Working Draft with English beer styles (no, hazy IPAs don't count) but they may be the Barclay, Perkins & Co. of Madison for all I know.

My pour of Elbow Patches yielded a large, light tan head that was in no hurry to go away. This was surprising because I thought the ESB was one of those beers that was supposed to be very lightly carbonated. My picture above isn't great so I will note it was copper colored and clear.

Working Draft notes the beer was brewed with Fuggle and East Kent Goldings hops. They provided a herbal scent while the Pale and Crystal Maris Otter malts smell like biscuit along with a raisin-caramel sweetness.

I could taste the herbal hoppiness, though it wasn't particulary bitter, but a more than moderate sweetness tasted like pear rather than caramel to me. There was a really nice nutty flavor that reminded me of raw pecans as well as a fairly strong leathery taste. While it didn't taste very fizzy, that is, it didn't taste like a bunch of bubbles were rolling across my tongue, the beer had a quite noticeable astringency to it.

That nutty/leathery flavor lingered and was joined by some hoppy bitterness and a hint of residual sweetness after the liquid had gone down into my guttiwuts.

A friend of mine who lived in London for a spell commented to me that he thought this was a fine beer but not flat enough. I agree. Although I liked Elbow Patches, I wish it tasted a bit less astringent. For me, it detracted from the beer's nice sweetness – not too much, not too little. Similarly, I loved the nutty taste but felt that the leather flavor was a little overpowering. I would prefer the flavors to be more balanced. Having said that, I truly appreciated the herbal hop and nutty tastes which I feel are in short supply these days. Here's hoping there's a chapter 3.

Junk food pairing: I did my tasting on a Sunday so, if you cannot find any appropriate crisps from England, open a bag of Old Dutch Prime Rib potato chips. Er, crisps.

Things Get Ugly: Uglies Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips

Uglies Snacks is a brand belonging to Dieffenbach's, a maker of potato chips since 1964. Uglies' chips are made from potatoes "with minor cosmetic imperfections" such as these:

The Uglies website positions itself as being on the frontlines against food waste which, they claim, is also a waste of money and an impediment to "creating a sustainable food system". They rescue spuds that are "too large or too small; those with the wrong color or have the wrong sugar content. Some of the potatoes are slightly blemished and, of course, some are just farmer surplus." It proceeds to describe how we Americans throw out lots of uneaten food that ends up in landfills in alarming quantities. I think consumers are supposed to infer from this that Uglies is rescuing potatoes that farmers would otherwise throw into the garbage. Or something like that.

I have no doubt that Americans waste a lot of food by throwing it away. But were the potatoes that the folks at Uglies use for their chips in danger of being interred at a landfill as their website implied? Or would they have met a different fate? Reading about the ugly produce movement, I find myself growing ever more confused. Some scientists argue that companies like Uglies are a hoax of sorts saying that those ugly spuds would been eaten by farm animals or simply plowed under to become fertilizer. Others in the debate say, sure, they don't end up in a landfill but becoming animal feed is still "food waste".

At this point in my understanding of the ugly produce debate, it's still something of a he said, she said kind of thing. And it brings up the question of whether your average consumer of potato chips can tell if their snack was made from cosmetically imperfect spuds or not. I highly suspect not so why doesn't everyone use ugly spuds? Or do they to one degree or another but just not advertise the fact like Uglies?

If you look at these chips, they are really not all that different from other brands. They are perhaps not as uniformly colored as other chips but they certainly don't stick out like a sore thumb. There is, however, one way, that Uglies are different from most of the other brands of salt & vinegar chips that I've tasted and that is their smell. When I took a whiff, my nose was greeted by a pungent cloud of vinegar fumes and not the usual smell of potatoes and oil. From what I've read, acetic acid (the main component in vinegar) is aromatic when it exists in its whole form. When you apply it to a base food, it loses a hydrogen ion and loses its aroma. But when applied to an acidic food, that hydrogen ion stays put and you smell that distinctive vinegar smell.

To be found amongst the ingredients are citric and lactic acids so my guess is that the potatoes are already slightly acidic by the time the vinegar powder is applied thusly the hydrogen ions have nowhere to go, much like people during a Covid pandemic, and hence the chips' aroma.

These chips seemed to be a bit thicker than average. As kettle chips go, they had a solid crunch to them that was pleasing to the ear as well as the tongue. I tasted just a hint more salt than average here which I rather liked. Plus, there was "way more vinegar" as my notes say. A really nice tang. I suppose this isn't surprising considering the recipe uses vinegar powder, sodium diacetate, citric acid, and lactic acid. In fact, you'd have thought that, with all those acids, they'd have been even tangier. The spuds themselves had a more earthy flavor mostly lacking that spudly sweetness.

It seems debatable to me that Uglies really do much to lessen food waste in this country but it is incontrovertibly the case that Uglies makes a fine salt & vinegar potato chip with its firm tang and solid crunch.

I get home at 5 o'clock and I take myself out a cellar temp porter: English Porter by Delta Beer Lab

Delta Beer Lab is one of Madison's newest breweries, if not its newest, having opened in February 2019. (Union Corners Brewery is about the same age, now that I think about it.) Located in a rather suburban area on Madison's south side, it's something of an underdog in the Madison beer scene. The area is not particularly walkable nor is there much in the way of stores nearby to bring in thirsty shoppers. If you're not making a dedicated trip to their establishment, it's unlikely you'll wander past it by chance. Plus, there is just so much beer out there and Delta doesn't seem to have found its break out beer, the beer that it's known for. It doesn't have its Spotted Cow, Hopalicious, or Fantasy Factory.

Honestly, I haven't delved into their offerings much until rather recently. I'd look at their menu and see a whole lot of beers that were IPAs, fruited, or loaded with additives, none of which appealed to me. It's not that there were never any beers that I wanted to try, but few enough to put Delta down the list of places to visit and sample. Then last autumn I was camping with a friend who is thoroughly enamored of their Coffee-infused Brown Ale. She gave me a can and I thought it was quite tasty. I gave more thought to making a trek down to Badger Road. But Old Man Winter arrived and with it some of my favorite beers such as Tippy Toboggan by Vintage, Sprecher's Winter Lager, and WinterSkål from Capital. Ergo Delta became something of an afterthought once more.

Recently I spied their English Style Porter at a grocery store and took the plunge because it was additive free and how often do you come across an English porter these days?

After tasting Delta's brew, I went to a local bottle shop with a good reputation for fine beers and a large variety seeking an English English porter. This place (Steve's Liquor on Junction Road) is the kind of establishment that carries the Schlenkerla flown to the States and canned out in New England for maximum freshness. When I asked about it, I kind of felt like I had farted in church for a fraction of second. I guess even Fuller's London Porter hasn't been seen in these parts in a while. The gentleman said that, even if some were available, he doubted it'd be fresh. Bummer.

(I also inquired about German maibocks and will be getting a call if/when any arrive.)

The term "porter" to describe a style of beer dates back to 18^th century London. It seems that the name was used to describe the brown beers found around the city. My search for a more exact date of when the term was first used on these beers has proven fruitless but they were apparently quite popular with porters, people who lugged things around the city, presumably to/from trains, barges, warehouses, shops and the like. It's kind of ironic then, that a 4-pack of a beer named after a working class vocation of people of modest means is now a low-level luxury good that costs $12.

Porters, of course, changed over time. They got hoppier, they got darker and roastier, and so on. New Glarus took a shot at an 1870s porter called Old English Porter back in 2009. Ten years later Goose Island brewed Obadiah Poundage with beer historian Ron Pattinson, an attempt to recreate an 1840s porter. Both blended fresh and aged beers with the later being soured. Today in Craftbeerland, the porter is a very dark, almost Stygian, beer, not simply brown, that has a lot of roasted flavors, even some bitter, fuliginous tastes from black patent malts and is decidedly not sour. Nor is it particularly hoppy.

Since I failed to procure an English porter from England, I am not sure what passes for a porter over in its homeland these days.

Delta Beer Lab's take on the style poured a nice, loose tan head. It disappeared fairly quickly as one second I was inspecting the beer's color and the next I looked up to see the head largely gone. That color was very dark – a deep reddish brown that appeared black when staring at it head on – and the beer was clear. Not particularly different from American porters thus far.

I took notes while tasting two pints of this stuff and each had some nice milk chocolate or carob scents. One sample had a metallic smell to it while the other added a bit of plum fruitiness and some grass to the chocolate. Definitely different from American porters here.

Each tasted more or less the same. There was milk chocolate with moderate sweetness. A little stonefruit and just a touch of fizz. Not much bitterness in the herbal hoppiness but fairly smooth. After swallowing, I tasted some bitterness from grassy hops along with some lingering chocolate.

Although it looked like your typical crafty porter, it tasted very different. Instead of the dark chocolate, coffee, and slight smokiness of what I think of as an American porter, this take on its English cousin is sweeter, a little fruity, and mellower.

And, as with Mikey, I liked it. I think of this as being like an amber ale made dark. It's 5.2% A.B.V., has a medium body, and wasn't overly sweet so I didn't find it filling. I can imagine that a beer akin to this would slake a working man's thirst and provide a little sustenance as well.

Junk food pairing: You've gotta get a packet of cheese & onion potato chips, er, crisps to go with your English porter.

Getting Lay'd: A Twofer from Lay's

Joe "Spud" Murphy and his conspirators at Tayto may have invented the seasoned potato chip but it seems that Lay's now dominates the potato chip world. It is a very large corporation that is a subsidiary of an even larger and multinational conglomerate, PepsiCo. They have a vast array of flavors that span many cuisines of the world meant to appeal to local tastes around the globe.

The food alchemists there are kept busy updating their grimoire of potato chip seasonings as they endeavor to bring flavors suggested by consumers to the humble potato chip as part of a contest. Thusly in years past you saw flavors like Southern biscuits and gravy, cappuccino, and gyro on your store shelves. Last year they produced chips modeled after dishes from iconic restaurants, though I admit I'd never heard of any of those establishments. I've gotta get out more, I guess. The tongue can be tempted according to nature or against nature and these were certainly of the latter disposition. The carnitas street tacos and Philly cheesesteaks at El Torito and Geno's Steaks, respectively, are no doubt delightful but their analogs in the potato chip world were just gross.

If you're in the Madison area and want a tuberous taste out of the ordinary, Woodman's on the west side carries a smattering of English crisps (or did the last time I was there) while various ethnic grocery stores carry some unique flavors. An Indian grocery store I was at had Lay's India's Magic Masala flavored chips, for example.

But I am here to write about a flavor more familiar to most of us in Madison, the humble salt & vinegar chip. I wouldn't doubt for a second that Lay's has many iterations of this flavor for sale worldwide but, from my vantage point in here Madison, I've only seen their Salt & Vinegar and Kettle Cooked Sea Salt & Vinegar chips.

Going in I figured that A) these chips would be basically the same with the big, if not only, difference being that the kettle cooked variety would be crunchier. And B) they'd both have a mellow vinegar tang because the unwashed masses wouldn't be keen on a prominent sour flavor.

The regular Lay's smelled like roasted potatoes to me while their kettle kin smelled like French fries with a hint of vinegar. As expected, the common chip was thinly sliced and had a wonderful delicate crispness. The kettle ones were similarly sliced and had a bit of that crunchiness but not a lot. They were still rather light. Each had had salt applied modestly.

The regular chips had a fair amount of vinegar on them as they tasted rather tangy, coming up just short of what might reasonably be described as "assertive". I was genuinely surprised at how much vinegar flavor there was. For their part, the kettle chips had just a tiny bit less. Regular Lay's had a mellow, earthy potato taste with just a little sweetness while the kettled tasted like French fries. That is, a similar taste but with a more intense potato flavor to it.

Both varieties were very tasty and could have used a bit more vinegar. The regular ones had the perfect crispness that keeps you coming back for more while the French fry-like taste of the kettle chips was rather novel and I enjoyed their hearty spud taste.

"My kingdom for a French cruller!" Playlist

Here's the playlist for episode 21, My kingdom for a French cruller!, of Time Enough At Last. For season 2, a little Lou Reed is our opener. This was our gastronomy show with talk about coffee, doughnuts, the legendary Guerilla cookie (legendary if you're from Madison, I guess), and hamburgers. We then move on to chat about the debut album by London Afro rockers Osibisa called Osibisa. No, there is no song called "Osibisa" on it.

Tuberous Connections: Avocado Oil Malt Vinegar & Sea Salt Kettle Style Potato Chips by Boulder Canyon

Back in 1968 or so a certain English bluesy/jazzy kind of band with a singer who played flute on one leg were christened "Jethro Tull". In those early days the group's name was constantly changing in an effort to land gigs and, in a cruel act of fate, the one that stuck was that of an agronomist of some note who lived from 1674-1741. For their part, the band members were not particularly happy with such an unhip name but it was the one giving them work. Ten years later they were much more at ease with the moniker and recorded Heavy Horses, an album about English rural life including a large dose of farming.

Some 40 years later a deluxe version of the album was released with unreleased songs dragged kicking and screaming from the dusty vaults. Amongst those songs was "Horse-Hoeing Husbandry", which was also the name of the name of Jethro Tull the agronomist's book describing one of his inventions – the horse drawn hoe. Tull's invention apparently made the lives of farmers much easier as it did a swell job of breaking up the soil and bringing up weeds.

Tull worked on methods to cultivate the potato and helped promote root vegetables generally, a worthy endeavor indeed. Staying in the British Isles, only moving a bit west to Ireland, but fast forwarding to the mid-1950s, we come to Joe "Spud" Murphy. He was the owner of an Irish potato chip, er, crisp, company called Tayto and he apparently grew weary of crisps seasoned only with salt. Tayto ultimately figured out how to season them and changed the world forever when he introduced cheese & onion seasoned crisps. Salt & vinegar soon followed.

My guess is that Tayto used the tried-and-true method of spraying vinegar onto a food starch such as maltodextrin, drying it, before finally making it into a powder suitable for putting onto crisps. Now we cross the Irish Sea and fast forward again to 1968 when a Canadian food scientist named Jim Connell was in England on assignment. His mission changed to inventing a new way of seasoning salt & vinegar crisps and he did so. He invented sodium diacetate, a mix of sodium acetate and acetic acid, the latter being the tangy part of vinegar.

Moving ahead 10 years, Jethro Tull the band were out touring the United States in support of their Heavy Horses album and on 7 November they played the McNichols Arena in Denver, Colorado. Our final fast forward takes us ahead 16 years and 25 miles or so outside of Denver to Boulder where Boulder Canyon, maker of malt vinegar & sea salt chips fried in avocado oil was founded.

I have previously reviewed a different iteration of these chips. However, that was almost 16 years ago and those were not fried in avocado oil.

These chips are "Canyon Cut", i.e. – ripple cut, something I don't recall having run into before on the salt & vinegar trails, even the cousins of these chips. They smelled like potatoes and oil but, if I took a really deep sniff, I caught a little vinegar. They are "kettle style" but you'd be hard pressed to know this without reading it on the bag as they possessed only a little of the kettle crunch.

For my taste, these were a bit saltier than the last couple brands I've tried but there were by no means overly salty. The malt vinegar taste was really good but also rather weak. You'd think a ripple cut chip would have more surface area to accommodate vinegar dust. For their part, the potatoes had a really nice, earthy taste that was less sweet than the previous few chips I've sampled.

I'll be honest here and say that I do not know what frying in avocado oil is supposed to bring to the table. Will it give chips fried in it a distinctive taste, even if it's not strong? Or is avocado oil in some way "healthier"? I guess I need to do more research into frying oils.

As with many other brands, Boulder Canyon's chips taste good – I really like the potato flavor – but simply need more vinegar tang.

Time Enough At Last Episode 21: "My kingdom for a French cruller!"

The latest episode of Time Enough At Last, the podcast I do with my pal Old Man Schuck, is now available. It's called "My kingdom for a French cruller!" and this time there's a lot of talk about food. We chat about the prospect of Stoughton getting its first Starbucks before turning to stories about doughnuts, People's Bakery being put up for sale, and the death of the Guerilla cookie's inventor. We finish our gustatory chat with some badinage about burgers here in Madison.

Lastly, we review the eponymous debut album by the Afro rock band Osibisa.

Now With More Syringol: NightCall by Karben4 Brewing

I just looked and it has been over 8 years since Karben4 opened for business on Madison's northeast side. Tempus fugit! I am a bit surprised that they're still there in the same location. Karben4 took the space over from Ale Asylum after they rode the success of Hopalicious to shiny new and larger digs just a couple of miles away. With Fantasy Factory being the hip new IPA in town, I thought they'd soon be looking for more space while the nondescript building on Kinsman Boulevard would become an incubator for breweries.

Karben4 had a soft opening just after Christmas back in 2012. I suppose we were all breathing a collective sigh of relief after the cataclysms predicted by the Mayan calendar to have started the previous week did not, in fact, come to fruition. New Age grifters were looking for a new con while a bunch of us were packed into Karben4. NightCall, their smoked porter, was on tap that very first night and I thought it was quite tasty as smoked beers are like the opposite of Kryptonite for me. I wrote of tasting it that at the brewery's opening: "NightCall was tasty as well. The smoke flavor didn't dominate like a Schlenkerla but rather accented the roasted malt flavor."

At that time and for years afterwards, NightCall was made year-round. It was odd and also very wonderful to have a local smoked beer available all the year long. At some point, however, it became a fall seasonal. I guess there were too many Fantasy Factory variations and other IPAs that needed space. Also, at some point they started using quite a lot more smoked malt so that the smoke taste was front and center instead of simply being an accent.

I am beginning to wonder if 2020's batch has such a prominent smoky flavor simply by accident as the Karben4 webpage still says "This brew provides a subtle smoke profile…" I am not complaining, though, because at least it is still around instead of having been discarded in favor of another fruity-hoppy brew.

NightCall is a very deep reddish brown. Really, it looks like motor oil until your glass is nearly drained and its true color comes shining through. Plus, you can also see that it is clear. I managed only a small tan head but this may very well have been the result of poor pouring skills on my part. It went away fairly quickly.

The beer's smell was quite something. There was the expected smoky smell from those delightful syringols and guaiacols and phenols and whatever else makes smoked foods smell so effin' good. In addition, I caught some roastiness (this beer looked positively Stygian, after all), a touch of malty/honey sweetness, and an astringency/boozy scent. Lastly there was a fruity element too – like cherry/stonefruit. This made me wonder if cherry wood was used to smoke the malt.

A rich smoke flavor caressed my tongue upon tasting the brew. Beneath it were the hallmarks of the porter, those piquant dark/bitter chocolate and coffee tastes. A smidgen of plum sweetness and moderate carbonation were also to be had. Mild spicy hoppiness and bitterness finished things.

Hopefully this new smoke intensive edition of NightCall will remain as I really adore it. It's full and flavorful and is a wonderful accompaniment to falling leaves and falling temperatures. Plus, it still tastes great during the winter. Folks less enamored of smoky flavors may not be so thrilled, however. The old recipe was delicious as well and I think there's a place for a brew that goes easier on the smoked malt on Madison store shelves. Hopefully someone will step up to fill the void if this year's batch proves not to have been a fluke.

We'll go down to Traverse City: Bold Sea Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips by Great Lakes Potato Chip Co.

The Great Lakes Potato Chip Co. is in Traverse City, Michigan. Whenever I see "Traverse City", I immediately think of Warren Zevon's Transverse City album and picture a futuristic scenario with neon vistas and laser lights ablaze as street corner Jerry Garcia holograms play the solo from the title track. But Traverse City does not look like it came out of Blade Runner and, when I visited there many years ago, it was an average-looking but quite nice small city on the shores of Lake Michigan. (We're talking lower Michigan all you map averse coasties.)

I found my bag of Great Lakes' Bold Sea Salt & Vinegar chips at Jenifer Street Market. From my experience, it's the only grocery store in Madison to carry them but it's not like I have shopped for salt and vinegar potato chips at them all. Seeing "Bold" on the bag made me feel rather sanguine after the Late July chips and their paucity of vinegar taste.

Allow me to go on a brief tangent here.

Several years ago, I was involved in an online debate with someone who wanted the City of Madison to ban plastic grocery bags outright. Part of this person's argument was that they were made with oil and, since the use of oil is bad, the argument went, plastic bags were also bad. Q.E.D., right? Well, I poked around and found that plastic bags are generally made from natural gas and not oil. This revelation did not change my interlocutor's mind on the issue but it introduced me to the idea that natural gas has utility beyond being lit aflame for heat.

I was reminded of this recently when I discovered that you can use it to make white vinegar. Pure alcohol can be synthesized from natural gas which, in turn, is fermented into the stuff that cleans coffeemakers, that pickles live in, and is made into dust for putting on potato chips. However, it seems that vinegar makers use natural gas as a vinegar starter very infrequently.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I gleefully opened my bag of Bold Sea Salt & Vinegar chips and took a whiff. They smelled like fryer oil. There are worse things to smell like, I grant you, but I was rather hoping to smell potato and/or vinegar. Was this a function of the type of oil(s) used? Is sunflower oil more aromatic than canola oil? Did something go wrong with the frying process?

These chips were sliced a bit more thickly than normal. They had a bit more crunch than delicate crispness to them. As with the last few brands of chips I've sampled, restraint was used in the application of salt. Truthfully, I am becoming a bigger fan of this. Here, it allowed a really nice, sweet potato flavor to shine through. Unfortunately, I did not find these chips to be bold. Instead, they had a rather timid vinegar flavor. Not bad, mind you, just lacking. Maybe the "Bold" referred to something else.

Although their salt & vinegar chips aren't bold enough for me, I am interested in trying their Michigan Cherry BBQ chips. Michigan leads the nation in cherry production and the Traverse City area is Montmorency Central. Sounds like a tasty, regional treat.