A Proustian Moment: Hindsight German Pilsner by Working Draft Beer Company

In my relationship with Working Draft Beer Company, I use the rhythm method. I'll go to my local purveyor of barley pop and see some WDBC brews that look to be right up my Strasse and I want to try all of them. Then on my next visit I find that those beers are all gone and have been replaced with hazy/juicy/pulpy or whatever IPAs that I have no interest in and wish would go away forever. But, with some patience, beers of theirs that I want to drink eventually appear again on a return visit. It's like the circle of life. But different.

Earlier this year they had a Czech pilsner and then an ESB. Just dandy. Soon enough, however, the beer cooler situation turned hazy. It eventually dissipated to reveal that there was a Czech amber lager on offer. When that was gone, then the juicy returned. But we're back on the upswing here as I recently saw their German pils, Hindsight, in the cooler.

While the German pils doesn't exactly count as a rarity in these parts, there are far fewer of them brewed here in the Madison area than one might expect for Wisconsin. Capital and Great Dane each offer one year-round, although it's too bad that Great Dane's Verruckte Stadt lost its local color when it was renamed the less idiosyncratic, though more descriptive, "German Pils". Vintage, Parched Eagle, and Next Door all put out a German pils seasonally or perhaps just whenever the brewmasters feel like it.

Into the fray comes Working Draft. Or came, rather, as this is Chapter 5 of the Hindsight saga. I don't know if this simply means it's the fifth batch, the fifth iteration of the recipe, or something else. From what I can gather on the interwebs, chapter 1 of Hindsight came out in 2019 so they seem to brew it a couple times a year.

So what makes a pilsner German? The Czechs invented the pilsner but the Germans aren't stupid and they picked up on a good thing when they tasted it. A Czech pilsner has a fair bit of breadiness to it along with a healthy dose of Saaz hops. The Germans took the general framework but tweaked it a bit. They went easier on the malt and used a goodly amount of their native hops which proved to add more bitterness. Oh, and they gave it more fizz too.

The funny thing is that I've always found Czech pilsners to be more hoppy and more bitter than their German counterparts. No doubt there are various reasons for this including having sampled few pilsners from the land of the Czechs. While I've sampled many a pils from Deutschland, they probably, not unlike their Czech counterparts, weren't all that fresh. And just how representative are the pils from Krombacher, Bitbuger, Warsteiner, etc. of the style? The imported German pils on store shelves here in Madison are from larger breweries, some of which are parts of even bigger conglomerates. Are they the German equivalent of Bud/Miller/Coors swill? Or more true to style?

I don't know the answer to that quandary. But I do know that it can be had with a trip over to central Europe. Perhaps my impression is simply due to having had more Czech pilsners made here in the States where restraint in hopping is not a virtue than from the Bohemian motherland.

Now, onto Hindsight. Mine was canned on 5 June which made it pretty gosh darn fresh when I did my sampling.

It poured a crystal clear yellow with just a smattering of bubbles to be seen inside. Atop that was a nice white head of loose foam that stuck around for what I think of as an average amount of time.

I'll be honest with you, dear reader, and say that I was ill-prepared at first for my sampling. I opened the can and poured the beer but had trouble finding the right spot for a photo and then I couldn’t see my phone's screen because the brightness was turned down on it but not on the sun. And so my photo doesn't quite get the full head and there is condensation on the glass so it doesn't look quite as pretty as it should. On the other hand, it meant that my nose was tempted by Hindsight's aroma for longer than it normally would. And this was a good thing because it was simply delightful with hay, pepper, and citrus smells wafting about. When I moved my nose in closer, it caught a little cracker. I think I started to salivate at this point.

After wiping the drool away, I put the glass to my mouth and let 'er rip. The light body held some cracker taste mixed with a wonderful triad of hoppy flavors: grass, lemon, and a more general herbal one. The fizz was a model of effervescent perfection. It tingled my tongue just right and added a pleasant dryness but it let all of the grainy and hoppy flavors through. While there was some bitterness on the finish, I didn't find it to be as much as style guides admonish brewers to provide. The hops left lingering herbal and spicy flavors to hang out with a biscuit taste. It was crisp and moderately dry but, again, not as dry as my reading had led me to believe it should be.

It's obvious from the first sip that Hindsight is an excellent beer. No doubt the freshness was a big part for me. Opening the can and smelling those hops led me to a Proustian moment. At the very instant when those sprightly hoppy scents touched my nose, I quivered, attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening inside me, you could say. It's that grass/hay kind of scent. It goes right to my limbic system and triggers something because I just adore that aroma. I am drawn to it like a moth to the flame.

To my taste, Hindsight just has it all. A mild yet very tasty malt flavor sits easily next to a wonderful zesty, green hoppiness with everything in perfect proportion. It's 4.8% and really hit the spot on a recent summer day.

Junk food pairing: To accompany such a delicate and exquisite beer, you should pair it with a big bowl of shrimp chips. Get the ones you have to fry yourself, if possible, as they'll be warm and greasy as well as light and puffy.

A Balancing Act: Fareway Kettle Cooked Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips

When I find myself away from home, I like to stop at a grocery store wherever I am to compare and contrast what's on offer versus what I have available to me at home. I don’t dedicate a lot of time to this nor do I go far out of my way to hit a grocery store. But, if there's time and a store in fairly close proximity, I make the trek. From my admittedly limited experiences, I have concluded that supermarkets around the country generally don't offer a whole lot of regional variation when it comes to types of foods. Sure, I'll find unfamiliar brands on the shelf but rarely foods that I cannot buy down the street at my local supermarket.

I recall going to a grocery store in Alabama several years ago. The cheese selection was inferior to that of any Wisconsin store, as is to be expected, but it was disappointing to find only 1 item that seemed to be Southern and unavailable at home: boiled peanuts. However, while on my first shopping trip after returning to Madison, I spied cans of boiled peanuts at Woodman's. All was not lost, though, as the store carried beers by Mississippi's Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company and one was brewed with pecans while sweet potatoes were used in another. I was happy to have had found some form of regional particularity in the store.

Better luck was had in Louisiana many years ago when I was down there to deal with my father's estate after his death. I ended up staying in the Pelican State for a few weeks because the Teamsters couldn't get a moving truck over there in anything approaching a timely manner. Everything moves more slowly in the South, you see. Anyway, I was down there alone for 2 or 3 weeks so I had plenty of time to check out what the local supermarket had on offer.

It was no surprise that the cheese selection made me realize how spoiled we are here in Wisconsin because it was not good. I also recall that they had ready-to-eat fried chicken dirt cheap. It was like a dozen pieces of dark meat – the best kind – for something outrageously cheap – around $5. While there may have been more regional delectations, I can only remember 2 and my delve into the blog archives came up empty.

One aisle was all stuff you'd need living down on the bayou. A section of it was dedicated to seasoning for crawfish boils. Next to that was a seemingly infinite variety of breading for fish and shrimp. And across from that was perhaps the ultimate convenience in Cajun cooking: pre-made roux. The first and only time I've seen it at a store. The second unique item was mayhaw jelly. Mayhaw trees grow in the South and the jelly made from their berries was a delightful sweet treat for me.

Tangentially, I discovered that bratwurst was not unknown in the town where my father had lived. A gentleman of some means lived there who was originally from Wisconsin and brats from Wisconsin were imported every year for a festival that I can recall nothing else about.

Recently my Frau and I took a trip to Dubuque and we had the time to visit a Fareway supermarket on our way back from the gardens/arboretum (they're wonderful so go there sometime). Fareway is a chain based in Iowa and most of its stores are west of the Mississippi River and none in Wisconsin. Before our trip I did a little internet research to find out if Dubuque (or Iowa more generally) had a dish or food item that it was known for. I mean no offense to Iowans when I note that I couldn't find anything that fit the bill and was left with what I already knew: they grow a lot of corn and raise a lot of pigs in Iowa.**

We wandered to the snack aisle and saw bags of Sterzing's Potato Chips, an Iowa brand that was unknown to me. Unfortunately, Sterzing's had no salt & vinegar chips on offer. But Fareway did.

These chips were a lovely golden yellow and most of them had brown splotches on them, usually at spots where the potato was at its thinnest. The bag advertised that they were sliced "extra thick" and this was easily visible. Aristotle himself would appreciate the aroma here as potato and oil were present in nearly equal proportions with both being complemented by some sharp vinegar tang.

The extra thickness and the cooking process gave them a definite kettle crunch. Salt was average, I'd say. Enough to enhance the flavor but not stand out or get in the way. The vinegar taste was much the same - middle of the road. Finally, I'll note the chips had a nice earthy-sweet potato flavor. Lactose was listed on the ingredients list but I am unsure how much, if at all, it contributed to the potato taste.

Overall, I'd say Fareway (or Fareway's hired spudsmith) did a very good job. These are some of the best smelling chips I've come across as potato, oil, and vinegar were all present in good measure. Similarly, the flavor found a harmony between roughly equal amounts of sweetness and earthiness which I really liked. My only gripe is that need a bit more vinegar. These were pleasantly piquant but I prefer a bit more sharpness in the acetic acid department.

**I'll cop to having poor Internet search skills as Dubuque does indeed have an indigenous dish: the Turkey and Dressing Sandwich. See footnote here.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 19: Eddie Touhy Is Rolling in His Grave

Mid-June 2021

For the Frau's birthday we had dinner at the Tornado Room, a downtown steakhouse. It was quite tasty. We were there last year and I had a wedge salad. This year she took the plunge and enjoyed it so much that we ended up buying a head of iceberg lettuce and French dressing on our next trip to the grocery store so she could make it at home.

The plan originally was to have dinner one last time at The Wonder Bar but I found out, much to my chagrin, that it was permanently closed when I called to make a reservation. While I was aware that the owner is selling the property to a developer who has an 18-story apartment building planned for that block, I thought that it was to remain open for a while yet as designs were being finalized and approvals sought from various city commissions.

This is a shame as The Wonder Bar has been around since 1929 and was built for Eddie Touhy, brother of Chicago mafia kingpin Roger "The Terrible" Touhy. There are supposedly tunnels underneath it that were used for bootlegging operations during its early years. And there is also tell of openings in the walls that were like arrowslits - but for guns. There is some hope left as a group is trying to find a spot to move the building to instead of seeing it succumb to the wrecking ball.

********

The next day the Frau and I hit the road for Dubuque. I'd been there previously but that was in the mid-90s. At that time I was dating a young lady from Dubuque and I went to meet her family one Thanksgiving.

My memories of that trip are limited to meeting her kin and eating too much. While I remember her father being standoffish in a not totally unfriendly way, I was warmly welcomed by multiple families, you might say. My girlfriend's mother died when she was quite young – an infant, I believe. Her father remarried and her stepmother became "mom". (I hope I am getting this right.) They divorced and he later remarried again. And so we ended up spending time with and eating meals at the homes of her father, her mom, and her birth mother. I think my stomach nearly ruptured by the end of the day. At the last stop, I was offered my fourth or fifth slice of pie of that day and, because A) I wanted to make a good impression and B) I love pumpkin pie, I accepted. Upon completion I immediately felt like Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and desperately hoped that my darling girlfriend would not offer me a mint.

Since we were doing the family thing, we didn't sightsee. This meant that our trip this year might as well have been my first visit although I did get a sense of vague familiarity as we crossed the Mississippi River and headed towards downtown.

Our first stop was at 7 Hills Brewing Company for lunch. It was in an old industrial building in the Millwork District which was largely given over to slick new apartments and trendy eating and entertainment venues. Other buildings had similarly been brought back to life while I saw some that were still being used for industrial purposes. I saw a few that still sat empty as they awaited their turn to be gentried.

We ordered some fried Brussels sprouts to start which seems to be a trendy appetizer these days. I did some research before we left on the indigenous foods of Dubuque and didn't find anything**. No equivalent of Chicago's Italian beef or deep dish pizza. It could have been my poor Googling skills, though. Brewpub fare is generally a rather monotonous assembly of burgers, wings, and sandwiches these days so I really had no right to expect some uniquely Iowan food there.

Tangentially, I recently learned that it was only in the 1990s that the bitterness was mostly bred out of Brussels sprouts by Dutch botanists. This makes me wonder what my parents were thinking as they ate them back when I was a kid.

To drink we opted for variety in the form of a four beer flight. And, since we were in Iowa, one of our choices was a glass of Town Clock, a pilsner made with the food item I most closely associate with Iowa - corn.

The consensus was that the green tea ale was the best of the bunch (although I also really liked the cherry wheat ale) and we ended up bringing some home with us.

I found this next to the men's room:

After lunch it was off to the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. We started in the Mississippi River/freshwater building. Walking in, we were confronted by a large pool full of fish and turtles. A pair of wood ducks sat on a log preening themselves.

The ducks were there sometime later when we left and I was surprised that they didn't seem to have moved and I wondered just how they were made to stay on the log or near the water since the pool was not enclosed.

Personally, I could have watched the turtles all day.

Another tank held snakes and we were glad that they were behind glass and not on a log pile free to attack us.

We stepped outside to make our way to the other building and were pleased to not only see that the William M. Black, an old steam-powered dredge from the 1930s that was used by the Army Corp of Engineers was docked nearby, but also that touring it didn't involve an additional fee. While walking on the dock out to it, we passed by a section of the shore that was a pond/wetland area replete with docks that allowed you to walk out into the water and feed the fish and see more turtles.

On the way to the ship, we were attacked by a red-winged blackbird! I guess its nest was close by. While there was a sign warning folks about this behavior, you had to pass through the gauntlet first before you came to it. Thankfully we came out unscathed.

It was neat to walk around the ship imagining the crew running around performing their assigned tasks as the ginormous pistons turned the wheels on the sides of the ship and propelled it down the river.

The other building of the museum had exhibits about salt water marine biology as well as a social history of the Mississippi. We learned about how Native Americans used the river as well as the vast trade routes that were served by the river. E.g. – pipestone mined in Minnesota made its way south on the river while German silver crossed the Atlantic and ended up in New Orleans before being shipped north.

We saw more creatures of the deep there and I thought this sight had some H.P. Lovecraftian/Cthulhu vibes.

The Frau and I were extremely impressed by the museum. It was really neat to see all of the marine life, learn a bit about the vessels that sailed the Mississippi, and get some of Dubuque's river history as well. It's a huge and very important river but doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves. Popular culture doesn't seem to do as much to acknowledge its importance, celebrate it, and mythologize it as it used to. Or perhaps I am just not paying attention to the right bits of pop culture.

On the way down, we caught Highway 61 just outside of Dickeyville where it joined Highway 151 heading southwest. Thinking about all of the legend and lore surrounding the Mississippi River, I also thought about the history of Highway 61. It is storied in its own right. Witness it in the title of one of Bob Dylan's seminal mid-60s albums, Highway 61 Revisited. The highway's northern terminus used to be in the far northeast reaches of Minnesota, near his birthplace. (Today it's closer to the Twin Cities.) It winds south 1,400 miles or so to New Orleans, largely following the river.

Following Highway 61 you encounter a lot of the history of the middle of the country. Some highlights were included in Son Volt's "Afterglow 61" which references Bob Dylan up north, Mark Twain in the middle, and Leadbelly down south.

US highway from north to south.

It's history breathing.

I think one of the attractions for me of the Mississippi River and Highway 61 is that they speak to the history of not only the Midwest, from which I hail, but the middle of the United States generally as opposed to the coasts.

The museum complex is part of the Port of Dubuque which seems to have largely been transformed from an industrial area into an entertainment/tourist one. My only gripe is that the riverfront area is cut off from downtown by railroad tracks and an expressway. That's too bad but I'm sure it has been that way for ages and is what you get for having so much industry on the river.

While the Frau took a short nap, I went out for a stroll around downtown to see the sights. Just a couple blocks from the hotel I spied the namesake of the corn-laced beer that I had with lunch.

A few blocks away is the county courthouse that was built in the 1890s.

Dubuque has retained a lot of old buildings which means there were quite a few ghost signs to be found.

********

The bonus photo this time features Piper and Grabby back when Piper was just a couple months old.

** I did a poor job of searching the Internet and have since discovered that Dubuque's indigenous dish is the turkey and dressing sandwich. You take cooked turkey and combine it with dressing. To this you add gravy and this admixture goes on a bun. I do not recall seeing this on any menus.

While not a Dubuque specialty, the maid-rite sandwich is an Iowa staple. It's a loose meat sandwich - ground beef - but I am unsure of the exact nature of the seasoning. I do not recall seeing this on any menus either.

Hopefully the trendy joints in the Millwork District aren't all turning their backs on their Iowa heritage. Every brewpub in this country has wings and burgers and flatbread pizzas. So dear trendy Dubuque establishments: deviate from the norm by adding some local color with a maid-rite or turkey and dressing sandwich. Or both.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 18: Return to the Banks of the Oconto

Early May 2020

There is a house in Eastmorland they call the "heart house" and it's been the ruin of many a poor boy...

Well, I don't really know about that whole bringing anyone to ruin part. But the heart house is called that because the exterior is decorated with many a heart such as that row above the garage door. Here's a photo showing some detail:

The house stands apart from the others in our neighborhood. It looks nothing like the rest which are mostly cookie cutter and designed to be chosen from a catalogue by World War II veterans looking to settle down and have children. This one was built in 1939-40 by the owner, supposedly all by himself. The current owner has a background in historic preservation and remarked on Facebook that old Madison trolley rails were used in some of the concrete pours as rebar.

When I first saw the house, I thought that it had a vague look as if it was from a fairy tale with those steep peaks, gables of various sizes seemingly placed randomly, and it's general lack of symmetry. Had the siding been brown, I would have been surprised if two blond children didn't wander up to the door. I found this old photo showing some of the original heart decoration and more of that cottage in the enchanted woods vibe:

Back in the day, kids thought it was haunted and rumors floated about the younger set that the large rocks in the front yard were in fact gravestones. The original owners apparently had a pet monkey(!!) for a while and its appearances in windows freaked out many a child.

It was on a lot that was larger than the standard one and in the big backyard the original owner put a neat, fantastical table shaped like a crescent moon with star stools which further added to the fairy tale look.

Sadly, the house was sold a few years ago and the lot was riven in twain. The backyard shrank, the table & stools disposed of, and a new house erected in their place.

********

Last month the Frau and I trekked up north to the cabin owned by a couple of friends that lies outside of the town of Mountain, in the northeast corner of our fair state. As noted in a previous entry, I was there back in October by myself but this time I would not only have my Frau with me but there would also be a few other people there to make this a true gathering.

We lucked out and had extremely nice weather. Everyone was in good spirits having received a Covid vaccination and determined to go out and have fun after more than a year of sheltering at home and social distancing.

My walk at Heritage Sanctuary earlier in the month proved handy when I stepped out of my car and saw this:

A trillium!

The cabin is on the shore of the Oconto River and I took my friend's dog, Wolfy, out for a walk along the shore.

As evening set in, our hostess set out to start a fire. She pulled the tarp off of the woodpile and got a sssserpentine ssssurprise.

The poor snake was probably just taking a nap when it was disturbed by a human. Everyone pulled out their phones almost simultaneously to find a website that would identify it. Was it a highly venomous timber rattlesnake? Or just a harmless cousin like a fox snake? Despite finding info that the timber rattler doesn't live this far north and east as it sticks closer to the Driftless Area, it gave us all a fright. Before long it slithered off into the woods, presumably to find some dinner, and one of my friends who, like me, was to sleep outside promptly moved his tent farther away from the trees and towards the cabin.

With the snake off prowling the woods or more likely, just trying to find a spot where it wouldn't be bothered by some pesky humans, folks started to gather around the fire. I was the last one to arrive and ended up with the sole remaining Adirondack chair which was a bit rickety and I quickly noticed that one of the arms was loose. After a short time, I leaned back just as the chair had decided that it had had enough and gave up the ghost.

Luckily Wolfy was there to lick my ear for comfort.

They have a sauna as well but we didn't use it this time. It was, unsurprisingly, built by a Finn over in Minnesota somewhere.

The sauna is really nice in the autumn. You can sit around in it for a spell and sweat it all out before stepping outside in the chilly air and rinsing off. I have not done the sauna in the winter, however, but I hear from Finnish-Americans I know that it's quite invigorating and best paired with booze, preferably some fine akvavit.

Hopefully we'll head back up later in the summer or in the fall.

********

Bonus photo – a flower seen on a recent walk in our neighborhood. No idea what it is but I managed to get a decent picture of it.

Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth: Discovering Jethro Tull

Jethro Tull (or their social media person) recently asked fans via Twitter for stories about discovering the band's music. Since I rather like their music and have for a while now, I thought I'd write a little something about it.

Like a lot of people my age, I first encountered Jethro Tull on classic rock radio in the first half of the 1980s. The way I recall it, stations played mostly songs from Aqualung – the title track, of course, plus "Locomotive Breath", "Hymn 43", and "Cross Eyed Mary". I remember also hearing "Living in the Past" and "Bungle in the Jungle". And I wouldn't doubt that I also heard "Bouree" and that edit of "Thick as a Brick" which is basically the first 2 or 3 minutes of the piece. Perhaps "Teacher" was in there as well. Now that I think about it, I surely heard "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day" too. Basically, it was the standard classic rock fare.

And so while I had "discovered" Tull's music on the radio as I was running headlong into my teens, it wasn't until 1987 that I looked beyond the appetizers being served on the radio and into their back catalog in search of the main course.

By that year I had been a Genesis fan for about 5 years and was busy exploring other progressive rock bands. More than one elder proghead had given me the "If you like old Genesis, then you need to check out…" speech. It was an interesting year as prog stalwarts Yes, Pink Floyd, Rush, and, of course, Jethro Tull all released albums that year. I recall seeing ads for Tull's latest, Crest of a Knave, in Kerrang and other music zines that I read at the time and at some point I said to myself, "Now is the time for me to get into Jethro Tull."

I began by getting a copy of Crest of a Knave. It seemed that most older progheads I encountered at this time were more interested in what the band had done in the 70s. Sure, I was interested in that too but I was also keen to hear what they were up to now because they weren't a band from some distant point in my past – I was just a teenager – but a band that was still around flexing their creative muscles.

While I don't recall exactly how long it took, I suspect it was only a matter of days before I had thoroughly consumed, absorbed, and fallen in love with Crest of a Knave.

Sure, Ian Anderson's voice was quite different from what I was accustomed to. I was unaware throat problems in 1985/86 had narrowed his range and made it raspier, grittier. Having never heard Under Wraps at this time, I had no conception of Crest of a Knave as having any atavistic qualities to it. Martin Barre's guitar had never played second fiddle to keyboards, to my ears.

While the drum machine and synths on "Steel Monkey" brought ZZ Top's mid-80s stuff to mind, the album as a whole just sounded like the quirky Jethro Tull that I had enjoyed on the radio as it had plenty of loud electric guitar that was usually doing some twisty turny pas de deux with the flute. There was the expected acoustic guitar but also a guest violin courtesy of some gentleman named Ric Sanders. A clutch of more straight-ahead rockers was complemented by songs like "Budapest" and "Farm on the Freeway" which balanced acoustic and electric, fast and slow, and loud and soft. These longer songs took melodic detours and went the scenic route full of dynamic playing.

The next step for me on my journey into Tull was to return to the source of many a musical discovery for me – my older brother's tape collection. Eager for more flute-laden proggy goodness, I scoured it and eventually found a tape with 1982's The Broadsword and the Beast on one side and Thick as a Brick on the other. I immediately took to Broadsword with its loud guitars sharing space with synthesizers plus the occasional mandolin. Thick as a Brick took longer but I eventually fell under the spell of its bouncy folk melodies and crazy time signatures.

At this point I was completely hooked and began to seek out and devour the rest of Tull's albums. That fall I went to see them in Chicago with a friend of mine who was also a prog neophyte trying to catch up with the back catalog of many a progressive rock band. While there were no codpieces to be had, it was rockin'. The setlist had a good variety of songs from the band's career and didn't neglect the new stuff which sat well alongside 70s classics.

I would go on to gobble up the rest of Tull's records, see the band/Ian Anderson in concert several more times, and write a goofy essay in which I attempted to tease out some meaning from Anderson's lyrics (or at least something meaningful to me). I was even allowed backstage before one of their shows and got to have Martin Barre and Shona Anderson poke fun at me – all in good jest, of course. It's hard to believe it's been 34 years since I got into Jethro Tull and discovered their music in a meaningful way.

It was only a few years ago that I was able to find a copy of that very first Tull show I attended back in 1987, along with the opening set by Fairport Convention whose fiddle player was one Ric Sanders. Here's "Farm on the Freeway" from that very concert.

The full setlist from that night:

Songs From The Wood

Thick As A Brick/Steel Monkey

Farm On The Freeway/Heavy Horses

Living In The Past/Serenade To A Cuckoo

Budapest

Hunting Girl

The Waking Edge (intro)/'Classical' Instrumental/Keyboard Solo/Drum Solo

Wond'ring Aloud

Skating Away...

Jump Start

Too Old To Rock'N'Roll...

Aqualung

Locomotive Breath/Thick As A Brick (reprise)

Wind Up

Where Apiology Meets Zymurgy: Bee's Knees Honey Cream Ale by Vintage Brewing Company

There was a stretch earlier this year when I was investigating blonde ales as I was anticipating the weather getting warmer and I had to find some tasty springtide beers to see me through until New Glarus' Kid Kölsch became available closer to summer. OK, this isn't wholly true as I do drink more than Kid Kölsch during the summer months but it is a majestically tasty beer by all objective standards. It is also true that I was looking to find something that wasn't a blonde ale nor a Kölsch yet delicious, light-bodied, and, to my mind, appropriate for warmer weather. So I went for a style I drink infrequently yet seemed to fit the bill: cream ale.

The humble cream ale is really quite popular here in Wisconsin despite the style not having an "I" or the word "India" in it. The taxonomic experts of the internet tell me that New Glarus' Spotted Cow falls into the cream ale category and they sell a shit ton of that stuff. (I suppose this means that the cream ale is also popular in Illinois.) Having read a bit about the style, I now realize just how apropos it is to describe Spotted Cow, as many do, as a kind of introductory craft beer for folks accustomed to American macro lagers like Bud, Miller, and Coors. From what I've read, American brewers developed the cream ale in the mid-19^th century in reaction to the burgeoning popularity of pilsners brewed by an increasing number of German immigrants and their kin.

Honestly, I had no idea that the cream ale is indigenous to the United States although the thought would have occurred to me sooner or later had I bothered to cogitate upon the matter for a while. Had I done so, I don't think it would have taken too long for me to realize there isn't a Samuel Smith's Cream Ale nor a Bitburger Sahne Obergäriges Lagerbier. The cream ale is a light beer generally brewed with some corn or perhaps rice to help give the beer a light body just like American lagers. Being top fermented, it's an ale but cream ales are often lagered so it's an ale because that's American brewing for you. Aging makes the fruity flavors go away and you're left with a nice malt-hop balance.

On a recent trip to the liquor store, I opted for Bee's Knees, a honey cream ale from Vintage Brewing here in Madison (and Sauk too). It is available in cans as well as on tap at its various locations.

In addition to honey, there's also oats in Bee's Knees to further the beer's retreat from the style's conventions as brewmaster Scott Manning likes to mess with things because it is in his nature to do so.

Bee's Knees looks a lovely a gold and my pour had a frothy, slightly off-white head that lasted a long while. This auric elixir had just a touch of haze to it and there were bubbles to be seen inside. I smelled that sweet-savory, vanilla-like honey aroma right away. Malty sweetness was fairly prominent while bread and a bit of grass made up the rest of the aroma.

I wish I knew more about honey to be able to give you some more info like its variety, terroir, and whatnot but that is beyond me. This is a shame because honey is in my blood. Back in the Middle Ages, Germans and Slavs led the world in honey production and German and Slavic make up most of my ethnic heritage.

Some interesting honey trivia: I am used to talking about and eating foods that are native to the Americas and there are lots of tasty things out there that I am privileged to eat only because Columbus got lost. E.g. – maize, tomatoes, chilies, potatoes, etc. Rarely am I cognizant of the opposite situation but we have one right here. While there were honey bees in the Americas when our intrepid explorer made landfall in the Bahamas, they did not live in North America. The honey bees found to the south have, shall we say, more catholic tastes in nectar than their European cousins. These bees are happy to collect "nectar", so to speak, from sources most bees dare not tread such as corpses and poop. Their honey must be quite extraordinary and has surely been eagerly gobbled up at one of those legendary Explorers Club dinners, perhaps as part of a glaze to a wooly mammoth roast.

No doubt Vintage acquired their honey from a more mundane source.

Honey was also the first thing that my tongue noticed – that earthy vanilla kind of flavor. There was some malt along with a little corn but it wasn't particularly sweet. All of this was complemented by a really nice herbal hoppiness. There's a was a firm fizz to be had and I tasted a smoothness underneath it which was likely from the oats. The hops took a turn towards the peppery for the finish and left a little bitterness to go with some lingering corn taste.

Despite Bee's Knees, as Neil Peart would have said, deviating from the norm with oats and honey, it still had a medium-light body with the oats adding a little something more to it. The barley, oats, corn, and hops were all in their proper places to create a balanced flavor. 16 I.B.U.'s of hops and a nice fizz helped give Bee's Knees a pleasant crispness. But what really endeared me to this beer, besides its Flapper era name, was the honey and the herbal hop flavor. I really enjoy honey in beer because it provides a flavor that is mainly earthy and savory but has just a hint of the sweetness it used to have before the sugars were eaten by the yeast. And the herbal hop flavor is something of a rarity these days and I just find it to be ever so tasty.

Junk food pairing: pair Bee's Knees with a bag of Thai Sweet Chili potato chips. Both the sweetness and the spicy chili will provide a delicious contrast to the mellow, easy going cream ale.

Oh, those chips were so inviting, on the beach at Waikiki: Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips by Trader Joe's

Several of these chip reviews ago I lamented that I had seemingly exhausted the local supply of new salt & vinegar chip brands here in Madison. What a fool I was. (Still are. - ed)

I also noted a review or 2 ago that I am quite parochial when it comes to grocery shopping. Woodman's east is my main source of food although Jenifer Street Market is where I generally buy coffee. I also make an occasional trek to the Willy Street Co-op. But there are plenty of other places at which you can get your grub and, as I've learned, some of these joints have hitherto unknown brands of salt & vinegar chips.

Not too far from home, Meat People Butcher opened fairly recently in the Lake Edge Mall. While it sounds like the name of a cookbook to me, I summoned the courage to go check it out recently. In addition to cuts of beef that I was totally unfamiliar with, they had bags of Lillie's Q Hot Pepper Vinegar Kettle Chips. I am undecided if these qualify for a review here. Should I institute a Reinheitsgebot for potato chips? They're salt and vinegar it's just that the vinegar has been infused with chili goodness. I've already decided not to review Pringles because they're not slices of potato. And I have opted to forego non-potato salt & vinegar snacks like plantains despite plantains being extremely tasty. We shall see…

Another one of these places is Trader Joe's. It didn't even occur to me that there may be tubera incognita there awaiting my eager maw. This is likely because I don't think I've ever so much as stepped foot in a Trader Joe's. Thankfully my Frau has and she kindly brought me a bag of their Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips from her last trek out there.

The bag says these are "Hawaiian Style" but I am not sure what that means. There was no mention of ham nor of pineapple anywhere to be found. And I didn't even notice those words on the side of the bag until I went to take a photo of the it after I'd eaten most of the chips already. They are unpeeled and the bag says they're cut thicker than your average potato chip so maybe those are the criteria.

These chips surprised me with their aroma. Usually, chips smell of oil and potato in that order. These, however, smelled mainly of fried potato. Aside from bits of skin, they were a darker shade of yellow with mostly uniform coloring. If they were in fact sliced more thickly than your average chip, it must have been around a micrometer because they didn't appear to be particularly thick.

The bag indicated these chips were cooked slowly and this, perhaps in concert with a little more girth, definitely made for some kettle crunchiness. Salt was applied moderately while the vinegar tang rated medium to medium-high. What distinguished the flavor was the lemony zip owing to some citric acid. I found these chips had a nice earthy potato taste on the finish.

Overall I found these to be very good chips with a good sour taste from the vinegar and they got a few bonus points for the added citrus sour flavor which made for something novel.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 17: None in the Valley and None on the Hill

Early June 2021

Bad news on the floor front. We were supposed to have had it installed on Monday but I received a call from Home Despot the preceding Friday that I did not want to receive. The guy on the other end of the phone began by giving me some gobbledygook lesson on vinyl floor taxonomy that went completely over my head. I was then informed that there had been a mistake and that their flooring installers do not, in fact, deal with the type of vinyl planking that I had purchased.

From Home Despot.

It took them nearly 6 weeks to figure this out. Less than 1 business day before the install was set to be done. I was given the choice of keeping the materials and finding someone else to do the install or to get a refund. I opted for the latter.

So we were back at square one. I have hired another (smaller, local) company and am now awaiting them to assign an installation date that should, I have reliably been told, be a day in the week of 12 July. It's been so long since we've had something other than plywood in the kitchen that I've forgotten what it's like to have a nice, easily cleaned vinyl floor.

OK. Here's a photo of Grabby and Piper to cleanse the palate after my griping.

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I've known for a long time that Georgia O'Keeffe was born in the neighboring town of Sun Prairie. Well, it's fairly sizable these days with 30,000+ inhabitants so it's more of a city, I suppose. There's a historic marker on Main Street downtown noting that the artist and one time student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago grew up on a farm south of the city and I recently found out exactly where that was.

The farmstead is on a county road east of Madison that I used to drive fairly frequently back in 2002-2003 on my way to the town of Marshall where I had friends. I never noticed the sign previously. Or, if I did, I had completely forgotten about it.

Here is the O'Keeffe home. I am unsure when it was torn down.

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The Frau and I had originally planned to spend some time up north in the Upper Peninsula the week of her birthday. We were to stay at a hotel called The Fitz, named after the Edmund Fitzgerald, on the shores of Lake Superior. She has a friend that lives up there and we were to visit with her as well as cruise around the U.P. to enjoy the bucolic scenery and try to avoid hitting deer with our car.

These plans were thrown into jeopardy when we were told by Home Despot that the earliest date to have our floor installed was the day we were hoping to leave town. I felt badly because Covid and the Frau's surgery conspired to scrap last year's plans to spend her birthday in London and history was repeating itself, more or less. Eventually we abandoned the U.P. trip and she decided that she wanted to instead head west to Dubuque to visit the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. I convinced her to make it an overnight affair instead of a day trip.

Since our drive would take us by Dickeyville, we just had to stop there.

Dickeyville is in the far southwest corner of Wisconsin and is the subject of the Goose Island Ramblers song "No Norwegians in Dickeyville".

The Goose Island Ramblers were a Madison band that started in the early 60s and played what their biographer (and UW-Madison folklorist) James Leary calls "polkabilly" at a weekly gig at Glen 'n' Ann's Cozy Inn, a tavern on the outskirts of campus until the late 1960s. At that time it was bought by Marsh Shapiro who rechristened it the Nitty Gritty and took the music into a rock direction. After they were dismissed, the Ramblers packed up and headed east to play at The Packer Inn (now Chief's Tavern) which is a just few blocks away in my neighborhood.

Their repertoire was a mix of songs from Anglo-Scotch traditions – hillbilly – and those that come from non-English speaking traditions such as polkas, waltzes, and schottisches. "No Norwegians in Dickeyville" uses the music from a Swedish waltz called "Kväsarvalsen" but adds distinctly Wisconsin lyrics.

Aside from an old fiddle tune, Dickeyville is also known for its grotto. The Dickeyville Grotto is actually a series of grottos and shrines on the grounds of Holy Ghost Parish. Stones, dishes, seashells, glass shards, etc. are all held in place with mortar. It was built in the 1920s by one Father Mathius Wernerus who was pastor at the time.

It is quite the sight.

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No entry would be complete without something food related. Last weekend the Frau came home from the farmer's market with a loaf of Korean cream cheese garlic bread. I presume that, if it's available in Madison, it's available in all larger metro areas and has been for a while.

The best way I can think of to describe it is to imagine challah bread having a baby with a crab rangoon. You've got a cream cheese core surrounded by a mantle of garlic butter nestled inside a crust of vaguely sweet, light bread. Is this really available on the streets of Seoul? I don't know but it's tasty stuff.

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Bonus photo. I spied these in someone's yard on a recent bike ride. I guess they're really into old sci-fi b-movies.

I Like Hefeweizens and I Cannot Lie: Sandy Cheeks by Wisconsin Brewing Company

Recent plans for the Frau and I to meet a friend at the Olbrich Biergarten were quashed due to rain. While it was a bummer to have a chance to be social with someone we hadn't seen in quite a while denied us, I was happy to have Mother Nature water the new tree that the city planted in front of our house instead of me doing so. But in addition to missing out on seeing our friend and all the Gemütlichkeit that a trip to a biergarten entails, it was to be a tap takeover by Wisconsin Brewing Company which meant I also missed my chance to finally try Wisconsin Vacation, their pils.

Now that I look at their webpage, it's billed simply as a "lager". Well, crap. More specifically, "Lager.  Behold-a classic lager.  Refreshing, crisp and bursting with joy." How blatantly unhelpful. (Are there any ales that are given the minimalist moniker of simply "ale"? I look forward to the John Cage Brewing Company putting out empty beer bottles labeled only with "12oz".) Is this stuff Supper Club redux? My experience lately has been, if a beer is simply labeled "lager", then it's an American pilsner, i.e. – a crafty Miller/Bud/Coors simulacrum. Back in 2016 a WBC beer release calendar showed a Czech pilsner as a new year-round offering. This never happened, as far as I know. It seems that Wisconsin Vacation is the end result of that initial attempt to put another pale lager into the WBC line-up.

Well, to try and makeup for having missed WBC at Olbrich, I recently decided to give their Sandy Cheeks, a pineapple hefeweizen, another try. I had it on tap a couple of years ago and thought that it wasn't bad. Just a little too much pineapple for my taste ensured it would be a one pint only deal, though. But that was then and this is now. Perhaps the formula had been refined or The Great Curse of 2020 had slowed pineapple imports or made the fruit quite expensive leading to its more judicious use in Sandy Cheeks. I mean, hope springs eternal, right?

Pineapples are a common enough (and cheap enough) sight down at the supermarket these days that we forget that it (and many other fruits) were once rare and precious. Although native to South America, Columbus encountered them in the Caribbean in 1493 and they became an instant sensation when he brought the tasty, sweet, pinecone-looking fruit back to Spain. It wasn't long before every Tomas, Ricardo, and Haroldo with a greenhouse was trying to grow them. Expensive to ship from the New World to the Old, pineapples were once the province of the rich alone. In Europe, anyway.

They became a very coveted fruit perhaps by no one more than 19^th century essayist and poet Charles Lamb who wrote of them in an erotic way that puts that My Octopus Teacher guy to shame. Eating one, he wrote, was "a pleasure bordering on pain, from the fierceness and insanity of her flesh, like a lover’s kisses she biteth." I like pineapples and hefeweizens but, if there's any pain involved in drinking Sandy Cheeks, I am hoping it simply means I cut myself on the can.

If, like WBC, you're keen on adding fruit to your hefeweizen, you could do worse than pineapple. (Notice how the coolers at your liquor store aren't being overwhelmed with durian hefeweizens.) Like the hefeweizen, pineapples contain fruity esters and a phenol which adds a clove-like taste. The fruit also contains citric acid which is how she, er, it biteth you. So it's rather complementary to the bier.

It is my understanding that Sandy Cheeks was first offered a few years ago but was a draught-only brew until last year when it was canned for the first time. As I noted above, I had it on draft a couple years back and found it to be tasty. While the pineapple flavor was just a touch shy of cloying, it was still sweet enough to mask some, but not all, of the hefeweizen taste. I was happy to have a pint and then move on to something else. Is the 2021 version any different?

While it is surely the case that my photography is lacking, my picture still does a decent job of showing you what a pretty beer Sandy Cheeks is. It's a very hazy light yellow and I got a big, frothy, white head that was in no hurry to leave my mug. This is a very pretty beer – one that looks like summer in a glass.

It smelled almost exactly as I imagined it would. Brewmaster Kirby Nelson preaches balance in beers and the aromas are all in harmony here with a bit of wheat and a little of the pineapple here and your typical hefeweizen bubblegum and banana there.

Sandy Cheeks is a late spring/summer seasonal and it was brewed to spec. It has a medium-light body that was perfect for a recent balmy day. A medium dose of fizz fit well with all of the fruit, esters, and phenols. As with the aroma, pineapple, bubblegum, and banana were well-balanced with one another. I was quite pleased that the application of pineapple was done with a bit more care than in the past as there was no sweetness that even approached slightly excessive. A little wheat came through towards the end as did a velvety smoothness which was unexpected.

Some spicy hops and their attendant bitterness appeared on the finish as the fruity flavors lingered.

The moderation in the pineapple addition here paid off. There's nothing remotely cloying about Sandy Cheeks these days and more of the excellent hefeweizen reached my eager tongue. The flavors are all in their places living in harmony. I could definitely drink more than one of these.

Junk food pairing: With a Sandy Cheeks in one hand, you'll still be able to grab handfuls of hot and spicy pork rinds with the other.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 12b: How to Recognize Different Types of Flowers from Quite a Long Way Away

No. 1

The trillium.

The trillium.

Mid-May 2021

Back in another entry earlier this year, I noted that I had taken a walk at the Heritage Sanctuary (just a bit east of my house) back when there was still snow on the ground and that it was noted for the trilliums (or is it "trillia"?) that bloom in May. Well, I went back there recently to see these storied flowers.

In addition to being all verdant, it smelled wonderful. There were a couple spots that had that tang of pine but mostly it was simply plant scented. It smelled "green", I guess you'd say. There were 2 varieties of flowers everywhere: the white ones above and a those of a light purple hue.

I had to ask a fellow walker which was which and was told that the white ones were the trillia. Now I know how to recognize different types of flowers from quite a long way away.

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Since my last entry I've been to the movies again. This time it was Final Account.

It's a documentary concerning some of the folks who propped up the banality of the evil that was inherent in the Third Reich. While we meet a former member of the SS and someone who was a guard at a concentration camp, most of the people were just average folks who talk of getting swept up in the fervor of the time. They join the Hitler Youth as it was expected of them. Others talk of how they got used to the smoke from the ovens used to burn bodies at a nearby camp. It became almost unexceptional.

I'm not sure how people can live with such things but I suppose we humans can put up with a lot of horror and inhumanity if it's out of sight or doing so is what allows us to get on with our lives.

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I found a blog post called "photo-documenting a chicago two-story brick cottage unoccupied since 1939" which was really neat.

Given recent events, the first thought that came to my mind was, "Holy Christ! Look at all that asbestos! And lead paint too!" Secondly, I had to wonder why it's been unoccupied for so long yet the owners do minimal upkeep to prevent it from falling down instead of just demolishing it.

I can imagine the place in better days and that it might have looked something like the apartments my grandparents and great aunts and uncles lived in at that time. The men would be seated around a table playing pinochle and drinking beer while the ladies were gathered in the kitchen.

Check out the rest of the blog as it has lots of stuff about bygone buildings in Chicago. I guess the company salvages old architectural ornaments, furniture, and whatnot and resells them. Lots of neat bits about architecture and photos of lovely old buildings.

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I've been doing some medieval reading lately.

Life in Medieval Europe was good. It's a short book directed at the lay reader that gives a high-level overview of, well, life in medieval Europe – western Europe, mainly. It was a fun read even if most of the material was already known to me. But if you're unfamiliar with the period, it's a nice intro that busts a lot of myths such as that people didn't drink water during this time and that spices were generously applied to cover up the taste of rotten meat. The Victorians sure started a lot of pernicious rumors.

If you have any interest in the Middle Ages but don't know where to start, you could do much worse than Ms. Cybulskie. In addition to her books, she hosts a podcast for Medievalists.net which is perfect for neophytes.

Another book I read recently:

This too is for the lay reader. It's a series of excerpts from primary sources (in modern translations) about a variety of topics illustrated with period art and illumination. It's very pretty.

I adore medieval illumination. Perspective is all goofy and people usually have a rachitic look about them. Things look surreal and I just love it.

With a new film based on the tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight coming out in July, I wonder if moviegoers will attempt to read the source material. I am sure medievalists the world round are hoping for a renewed interest in their field of study.

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Bonus photo: The Frau is apparently now into garden gnomes. She bought this one recently. Very Zen.