The Corona Diaries Vol 39: Autumn = Food

(late October 2021)

I want to get the bad news out of the way first. About 3 weeks ago our oldest cat, Marilyn, a.k.a. – Grabby, was diagnosed with lymphoma.

The cancer is fairly well along so we opted out of treating it. Instead, some of the symptoms will be treated to make her as comfortable as possible during her final months with us. She was picked up as a stray but we think she's 13 or 14 and we've had her for 11 years or so.

She is doing fairly well, all things considered. Her stomach seems better and she is still rather spry and playful. I am hoping that she can last until the spring (and beyond) because I'd like to bury her in the backyard but not have to dig into frozen ground.

I am really going to miss her when she's gone.

********

While it has certainly gotten chillier and I am not happy at having to turn the heat on, I can take some consolation in the pretty scenery. A neighbor a couple doors down from us has what I think is a maple in their backyard which turns a blazing orange in the fall and it is simply gorgeous.

It's nice working from home for several reasons, not the least of which is having such a lovely view.

While I plan on more bike rides through the fall – last year I was riding into December - I took one last trek a couple weeks ago where I could still wear shorts and a t-shirt. (Shortly after this I put on a pair of pants for the first time since the spring. It felt rather odd.) I didn't go very far and mainly cruised around the neighborhood to check out construction projects in progress, Halloween decorations, and fall colors.

I found one neighbor giving his vintage car one last wash before putting it into storage for the winter.

He told me that that it's a 1954 Eldorado with some 1956 parts. I couldn't help but think of a certain Johnny Cash song...

 

 

I went to check on the progress of the new bike path by Starkweather Creek. A new bridge was installed over the creek, Starkweather Drive, which runs along the creek, was narrowed down to a one lane street, and a bike path was installed creekside.

Across the bridge is an old sugar beet factory/feed mill that has been turned into a big food court where one can get pizza and ice cream (the cayenne-peanut butter flavor from Calliope is exquisite) before having a cup of gourmet coffee. A smoker of salmon also calls the building home and perhaps a maker of kombucha, if memory serves.

If you'd rather take a pass on stuffing yourself, there is also a yoga practitioner and a spa on site for all of your mind-body needs.

The bike path leads north to a park where another bridge spans over some wetlands and eventually you'll find yourself on a busy street.

I zipped down a dead end street and saw this sign:

Down by the school I ran into a rafter of turkeys.

"Hey! Anyone home?"

********

Almost as soon as the weather changed, I started cooking heartier foods and drinking beers that are darker and a little heavier. For reasons unknown, I got a taste for Swedish meatballs and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies one day shortly after September had given way to October. September still has a patina of summer to it but October, well, October is all autumn to my mind.

The meatballs were tasty.

I thought that the cookies turned out rather well despite my lack of baking acumen.

I used chocolate chips that were made with coconut sugar as they contain less carbohydrates. I'd never had such a thing before but was hopeful that they didn’t taste drastically different from your run of the mill chocolate chips. Aside from being more disc-shaped than droplet, they were little different from chocolate chips without coconut sugar.

Having German blood in me means that I get a craving for marzipan as winter approaches. Well, that's misleading. I get a craving for marzipan when spring, summer, and fall approach too. But cookies and confections with that ultra-tasty almond paste generally have a reputation for being made at Yuletide.

My Frau had made another stop at our favorite orchard, Lapacek's, so we had a surfeit of apples lying around. A look through one of my German cookbooks yielded Überbackene Marzipanäpfel - baked marzipan apples. I used a trio of Braeburn.

After paring them, I dug out the core about halfway and stuffed them with a mix of marzipan and raisins (I didn't have any currants on hand.) that had been soaked in rum. I got them soaking that morning in the antelucan hours. Before feeding the cats. Even before starting the coffee! I tell you, the cats were pissed. They glared at me with a look that was a mix of astonishment and anger as I haphazardly rifled through the liquor cabinet.

A little butter on top and they then spent some time in the oven in a pan that had had white wine applied generously to it.

Once done, the remaining wine was added to a sauce pan and had some apricot jam added to it. After being properly reduced, the apples were sauced.

With Halloween around the corner, that means All Souls' Day/Día de Muertos will also soon be upon us. And so I had to buy a loaf of Pan de Muerto this week. But our favorite Mexican bakery which was just 3 blocks away closed last year. What to do?

Go to the next closest Mexican bakery.

The Frau and I made the mistake of stopping there on our way to the grocery store to get dinner. I ended up getting a loaf that had just come out of the oven and it filled our car with the most heavenly scent. My mouth started watering instantly.

It was great! Slightly sweet, eggy, and with a smattering of dried fruit which was mostly pineapple.

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Bonus photo: This time it's a weathervane – with a dragon!

Pint or Stout, or Pint o' Stout: Repo Man by Revolution Brewing

While I am no epigeneticist, it's difficult for me not to think that the diets of my ancestors are somehow manifest in my palate. Let me give you an example: rye.

Rye is a hardy plant. It's so stout, in fact, that you can grow it in relatively poor soils and even as far north as the Arctic Circle. If you go back to medieval Europe, you'll find lots of poor people eating rye bread while those who were better off ate wheat. And the really well-heeled got to eat white bread because they could afford flour made from wheat that was shorn of its bran or whatever bits of the wheatberry gave a brown tint. Thusly it's quite ironic that white bread today here in the States is cheap and plentiful.

Today rye is most prevalent in northern and eastern Europe with Poland and Germany, which only started growing more wheat than rye in the 1950s, being the largest producers. Now, I love rye so is it mere coincidence that 50% of my genetic inheritance is Polish and German? Or that the great majority of my ancestors hailed from northern and eastern Europe? I ask you.

If we share this rye bread
Then we can eat
Secale cereale

Sorry there, Sting.

With my taste for rye, it is sometimes frustrating that there are so few rye beers. I think every brewer I've ever broached this subject with gave me the same riposte: rye is a pain in the ass to brew with. It turns into this thick sludge like oatmeal so brewers need to be extra vigilant and stir and stir until they can stir no more. Plus, I guess it's also a pain to clean up. This behavior is apparently due to the pentosans, a type of carbohydrate, in rye which can absorb a lot of water.

Today's brewers are beset with demands for ever more fruit flavors and this, combined with rye's intractable brewing behavior, means that there are precious few rye beers around. Not being much of an IPA drinker, I largely avoid beers of that style including the ones made with my beloved grain which means the precious is even rarer. So, when I heard that Chicago's Revolution Brewing was going to release a rye stout last autumn, I made sure to keep an eye out for it during my treks to Chicagoland during the holiday season.

I don't know much about Revolution but they seem to be the New Glarus of Chicago. I believe they brew more beer than any other craft brewery down there that isn't owned by AB-InBev so they're like the top dog of the Chicagoland brewing scene. They brew a lot of IPAs and a lot of barrel-aged stouts and their reputation is mostly based on these brews. Or so it seems to me. Neither of these styles can accurately be called my jam so I have mostly avoided Revolution's beers. But I've had a few of their other brews and I found most of them to be good.

Repo Man is one of their limited release beers and was apparently brewed back in the early days of the brewery. The name and its funkadelic label refer to the classic 1984 film of the same name by Alex Cox and starring Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez.

 

My pour produced a goodly sized head of loose, tan foam. It dissipated quickly and, if memory serves, it was another one of those instances that I've seen a fair number of lately where I was reminded of soda in that all those bubbles popped and made an audible PSHHHHH sound that I could easily hear with the glass several inches from one of my ear holes. Holding my glass up to the light, I saw that it was a deep, dark reddish brown. (Is this an accurate description of chestnut?) Oh, and it appeared to be clear. I was able to smell coffee, some roasted graininess, and an earthy scent which I think was the Precious.

My tongue was greeted by a medium dose of fizz as well as the corresponding flavors from the aroma - coffee, roasted grain, and rye - but with a little dark chocolate for good measure. It had a nice medium body and a mild astringency. I tasted a lingering bit of malty sweetness at the finish along with that coffee flavor. Then some herbal/grassy hop flavors came in to add some bitterness and end things with moderate dryness.

Excellent! I love how the roasty grain, coffee, dark chocolate, and rye flavors all come together to form this savory synthesis yet the sweetness peeks through on the finish being chased by the hops doing their best to keep it at bay. There's a real panoply of flavors here and each sip is like a micro-journey through them all. Wonderful beer.

Junk food pairing: a great beer like this deserves to be paired with a great junk food so do yourself a favor and get the largest bag of Jay's Hot Stuff potato chips to go with your Repo Man.

He came home to Madison and made a present of the Calamintha to the Gardens at Olbrich: Olbrich Porter by Working Draft Beer Company

 

Considering the widespread addiction to Girl Scouts Thin Mints cookies, I am somewhat surprised that mint isn't used more often in beer, especially dark beers which contain malted grains that add the taste of dark/bitter chocolate such as, say, the porter. It seems a no-brainer. However, I don’t recall ever having drunk a mint-laced beer that wasn't homebrewed. And that was but a single occasion.

The person who brewed the mint beer I was given - a porter! - remarked to me, "When you're sick of drinking the stuff, make ice cream floats out of it." This isn't surprising considering that mint is generally used to flavor sweet foods (and, yes, the beer did make a fine float). Think the above Thin Mints, gum, ice cream, and so on. I once had a co-worker from Morocco who told me about the tea that he drank at home. It was full of fresh mint leaves – and no small amount of sugar. Other drinks made with mint are also laden with sugar – see the mint julep and the mojito. What do you eat with the leg of lamb on Easter? Mint jelly. I suppose our tastebuds like a little something to dull the sharp pungency of mint.

But mint isn't always paired with something that is replete with sweetness. I recall having a meal at Kabul here in Madison which was minty yet not sweet. So mint gets in on the savory action too, though rarely, it seems.

Fairly recently, my Frau expressed a rather substantial preference for peppermint over spearmint, the two most common varieties of mint. Or was it spearmint over peppermint? I cannot recall. Regardless, I never knew she had strong feelings on this matter and the revelation made me consider the herbs. I mean, I don’t think I'd ever given much consideration as to how peppermint and spearmint differ beyond the color of the gum wrappers. It seems the biggest difference is that peppermint contains menthol whereas spearmint does not. Hence the former tasting like cold. (Think Ralph Wiggum, "It tastes like coldness!")

There are many varieties of mint including watermint, which is a parent of peppermint that I'd never heard of until just now. Another type of mint is calamintha (nepeta), which, in addition to being raised in areas around the Mediterranean, is also grown just a few blocks from my home at Olbrich Botanical Gardens and that is how it found its way into a porter brewed by Working Draft Beer Company called Olbrich Porter.

In addition to calamintha, the brew was also made with birch sap from the Gardens. Neither of these ingredients were familiar to me and so my curiosity was piqued. (Plus, proceeds from the sale of Olbrich Porter go to OBG, a worthy cause.)

 

While I was unfamiliar with some of the ingredients, it looked just like the porters I've known. My glass had a big, tan head that was comprised of large bubbles that reminded me of those you get with root beer. And they were loud. The liquid was a Stygian reddish brown. Tilting my glass just right, I saw that it looked slightly hazy. On first sniff, I caught a big wave of mint – shocking, I know – along with a pungent whiff of anise and a hint of the portery things like bitter chocolate and roasted grain. Upon taking a bigger sniff, the calamintha gave off an aroma like oregano. It wasn't strong, mind you, but it was there lurking in the background.

On first sip, I tasted a mellow fizz set against a very pleasant smoothness. Overall, the beer had a medium-light body. Like the aroma, mint was most prominent followed by anise with some faint dark chocolate and roasted grain flavors playing supporting roles. There was also a hint of sweetness but I am unsure how much of it was from malt and how much from the birch sap. I've never had birch sap (nor birch syrup) but apparently it has less sugar than its maple counterpart so I am guessing that either the sweetness was a combination of malt and birch sap or a lot of sap was used in making this beer with much of the water having been boiled off.

On the finish, those mint and anise flavors endured and were joined by the gentle bitterness and herbal flavors of some Brewer's Gold hops. I also tasted a little dark chocolate here.

Overall, I enjoyed this beer. I liked the minty sweetness and, as it warmed, the chocolate notes from the grains which got stronger pushing it closer into Thin Mint territory. But I am not the biggest fan of anise so this was not a beer I would care to drink all night long. Having said this, I do wish more brewers would explore the non-hoppy offerings of the botanical world. Hopefully Working Draft will root around Olbrich Botanical Gardens again for more interesting flavor combinations.

Junk food pairing: go to your local Asian or Indian grocer and get some curry flavored potato chips to go with your Olbrich Porter. At the last one I was at, they had a couple different curry flavored chips that Frito Lay dare not sell in mainstream American stores.

The Corona Diaries Vol 38: The Kids Back Then Knew the Game of Fisticuffs

(early October 2021)

It seems only a week ago that trees were merely tinged with yellow, red, and orange and that my sidewalk was more or less leaf-free. But now, when I take a peek out my living room window, it looks like it’s snowing out there with leaves falling by the hundreds when there’s a breeze turning my sidewalk a sea of yellow. In preparation for winter, I went out and bought a roof rake. We had really bad ice damns last year with water coming through the soffit out front and even through the front porch’s light fixture. No water came in the house, that I noticed, but I’d still like to not have sheets of ice on the front porch and front door’s screen like last winter.

Even though the trees are becoming barer by the day, the weather has been fairly temperate lately so I’ve been able to get out on my bicycle. Here’s a scene from one of our neighborhood's parks just before the colors started to change.

I haven’t been out on a long trek in a couple weeks and my two-wheeled journeys have mainly been to run errands and then take a really circuitous route back home. On one such ride I went down a street I’d never been on before (which is really an alley) and found this lovely tall grass.

On a bus ride last week, I noticed a Trachte shed that I had never seen before so I made a point to get a photograph of it when I went to the pet food store which is only 2 or 3 blocks away.

On my way there I crossed the Yahara River and noticed many ducks swimming below on what was a beautiful day. In addition to many a mallard, I saw this one:

I am not sure what kind of duck we have here. Rare species? A common one just passing through on its way down south?

So I got my shed picture and was making my way to purchase some succulent tuna when I decided to get some photos of the reliefs on the elementary/middle school I was riding by. Although I lived a block away from it for 6 years, I’d never documented all the animal reliefs near the east entrance.

There were ducks, frogs, fish, and my beloved cats.

Wondering if there might be more, I began walking around the school. Almost immediately I discovered that it still has a fallout shelter sign next to a disused entryway which was filled in at some point.

Capacity was 100.

Going over to one of the entrances on the older building, I found the datestone – 1939. (There’s another wing which was added in 1961.) Looking up, I discovered that there were more reliefs just below the roofline with one of the man whom the school was originally named after, Père Marquette, in the center.

Before Marquette wintered in what would become Chicago in 1674, he and Joliet traveled to Green Bay and paddled the Fox River south until they could paddle no more and portaged the rest of the way to the Wisconsin River. The area where they lugged their canoe is now a city called – quelle surprise! – Portage and is about 30 miles north of Madison.

From there they made their way to the Mississippi River. Today one can see the confluence of the two great rivers from bluffs in Wyalusing State Park, one of our state's grandest.

Continuing my way around the building, I found another set of Marquette and company reliefs above the other main entrance. At the opposite end of that side were more animals adorning the walls. The gymnasium must have been on this side of the building at one point (perhaps it still is) because reliefs illustrating various sports dotted this side. In addition to activities you’d expect like basketball, there was this one:

It appears that they taught pugilism in gym class back in the day.

I eventually got to the cat food store and stocked up on skipjack tuna and shrimp cat chow. However, my little venture investigating the school’s reliefs meant that I didn't get home until past 5 o’clock and so I got the look from Marilyn/Grabby that appeared in an earlier entry.

********

Food!

In a past entry, I noted how my Frau and I have made the last Tuesday of the month Taco Tuesday with a trip to nearby Marshall and Las 3 Hermanas. On the last TT I had these tasty tacos.

A week or so ago we went to a restaurant called Ahan. My Frau had been there previously but I had not. It’s mainly Laotian-Thai food but with some Chinese and Vietnamese thrown in for good measure as the chef is ethnically Laotian, Vietnamese, and Chinese.

My late, great brother Carl was a big fan of Thai food and, if my memory serves, I believe one of his favorite dishes was tom kha gai, a coconut soup. While I enjoy it, I am partial to tom yum soup. Truth be told, I think it is one of the best foods ever devised by humanity. Some kind of gustatory magic is conjured when you put lemongrass, lime leaves, chili paste, and fish sauce together. Its spicy piquancy is undergirded by umami and I just cannot get enough of this incredible ingesta.

My favorite in town is at Ha Long Bay which the Frau and I used to live 3 blocks from. The joint has remained incredibly popular during the pandemic. It's nightly packed dining room and an entryway perpetually populated with several diners waiting for a table or takeout are the stuff of Anthony Fauci's nightmares. So how would Ahan’s take on it measure up?

I had 2 options: tofu or breaded & fried chicken. I opted for the latter despite it sounding very odd. Indeed, I’d never heard of such a thing. But it’s not like I am a Thai culinary expert. Perhaps that is a trendy method of preparation back in the homeland.

The Verdict: 2^nd best in town. The broth was really, really tasty. Perfectly tangy with just a little chili heat. I could drink it by the gallon. Perhaps even as good as Ha Long Bay’s. But the breaded chicken, although it tasted fine, was just out of place. It was as if someone played a cruel joke and made Paula Dean guest chef that day. I will definitely try it again but with tofu.

********

My most recent trip to the movies was to see this:

I’d never seen any of director Julia Ducournau’s previous films and went on the strength of it being described as twisted and disturbing. And so it was.

It concerns a young woman named Alexia who was involved in a car accident as a girl which left her with a metal plate in her head. Well, she becomes a murderer. While on the lam, she adopts the identity of a boy who went missing several years ago and would now be roughly her age. Oh, and this happens after she has "sex" with a car.

The missing boy's father is so desperate that he accepts her as his long lost son. He is what I guess we'd call a first responder. She accompanies him on his job. We then find out that Alexia is pregnant.

Like I said, it is pretty twisted and was a fine intro to the Halloween movie season.

********

The bonus photo this time is photos. A then and now pair of an intersection downtown Madison. I think the first photo is from the 30s sometime.

Drinkin' Ryewine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee: Ryme & Punishment by Parched Eagle Brew Pub

Last year, when it was much warmer than it is now, I saw that the Parched Eagle here in Madison had a ryewine, a cousin of the English barleywine, on offer. I love rye so of course I headed over there and bought some. But, if brewmaster/ proprietor Jim Goronson thinks I am going to drink a big (10%), treacly, maltfest of a brew in the baking heat of a Wisconsin summer, he is out of his mind. The brave(/crazy) English explorers saved the big brews like Allsopp's Arctic Ale for when they were up in the godforsaken wastes of northern Canada. At home they surely drank the milds, bitters, or whatever brews of lesser potency as they argued in drawing rooms about the location of the Northwest Passage, shot random footmen for sport, and other such activities favored by the English aristocracy at the time. So I cellared a bomber of the stuff to be retrieved when the Fimbulwinter had settled upon us. On a recent winter's day, the high never reached double digits and so it was the perfect weather for the heady, rye-laced elixir.

In addition to ryewines, there is the aforementioned barleywine, but I have also seen wheatwines.

 

"So," you're thinking, "how can a beer be a wine?"

I recall being similarly perplexed back in c. 1992 when I encountered my first barleywine, Old Nick. But I was intrigued as well. And how can you go wrong with a picture of the Devil (or was it Machiavelli?) himself on the label? The explanation I was offered then and continue to labor under now is that these grain-wines are simply very strong ales that have alcohol levels approaching that of wine. Now, exactly how much wheat or rye is required to be branded a wheat- or ryewine is unknown to me. I suppose as much as the brewer wants.

To the best of my knowledge, the barleywine is English in origin but it's more of a marketing term and not a distinct style per se like the double dry hopped barrel aged milkshake IPA with vanilla and cocoa nibs is. I suppose there's a whole taxonomic rabbit hole to go down regarding what exactly constitutes a "strong ale". English beer historians such as Martyn Cornell will no doubt offer a definition that differs from that given by ignorant bloggers like me. I generally think of these grain-wines as being 10%+ A.B.V. and brownish in color. Yeah, not exactly a model of precision here, I know. Oh, and American versions - quelle surprise! - are usually hoppier than English ones.

About 30 seconds of internet searching revealed that the wheatwine is supposedly an invention of the late 1980s and hails from California. I find the idea that British brewers never made a strong ale with wheat unlikely but, then again, I am no Martyn Cornell. I found nothing on the question of the genesis of the ryewine. With rye being much more prevalent and desirable in northern and eastern Europe, I am doubtful that the ryewine originated in Ol' Blighty and find it likely to be another American invention. But stranger things have happened.

 

It was a chilly afternoon indeed when I poured the first glass of Ryme & Punishment. There was no head to speak of which I suppose wasn't surprising considering this was an English-style brew or English-style-adjacent, at least. But my glass was filled with an absolutely gorgeous elixir that was a deep amber and clear. Watching the beer flow, it just looked thick and viscous and by its appearance alone one could tell it was a heady brew. Taking a whiff, I caught a prominent raisin smell along with big malty sweetness and slightly less of a generic grainy scent.

Remember how I said above that this stuff looked thick as it flowed into my snifter? Well, it tasted that way. This beer had a heavy body - just as expected - almost syrupy. Despite the paucity of bubbles, I still tasted a light fizziness but it was unable to hold its own against the rich, grainy sugariness that had a plum-like flavor to it. There was also that spicy rye to be had. Mmmm...great stuff. I was unsurprised when that sweetness lingered after I swallowed but a measure of herbal/spicy hops added welcome dryness. It was this point that some boozy heat kicked in and wrapped my tongue in its burning folds for a bracing conclusion.

What a fantastic winter warmer/strong ale/whatever you call these kinds of beers! It was thick and sweet yet the hops and booze (10% A.B.V.) kept it from being cloying. I should add that this was a pleasantly smooth beer. However, I didn't taste Ryme & Punishment fresh so I am unsure how much of this was inherent in the brew and how much, if any, can be attributed to my mad cellaring skillz.

Sadly, we will likely have to wait until the coming warmer months for another batch of this stuff. But, when it's on offer, do avail yourself of the opportunity to get some to stow away until next winter.

Junk food pairing: I am a believer in pairing locally so grab some jalapeno cheddar potato chips from Madison's finest chip purveyor, Slide.

Little Sir Bohn and His Nut Brown Bowl: Nut Brown Ale by South Shore Brewery

While it might simply be my brain doing a spot of fabulating here, I recall drinking a fair amount of brown ale from Ol' Blighty at the Come Back In, a tavern here in Madison, back in the mid to late 90s. And my recollection is that I generally reserved my encounters with Newcastle Brown Ale and Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale for those nights spent at the Come Back. Alas, my memory of why these particular bouts with John Barleycorn were usually done there is lacking. Perhaps it was simply availability. Or maybe it was about finding contrast with the boots of Helles quaffed next door at Essen Haus.

Regardless of my motivation, those ales were tasty and I felt it was really neat to be drinking beers that were direct descendants of brews of the Middle Ages. I mean, John Barleycorn had his nut brown bowl and that song was hundreds of years old, right? This was a beer with heritage! Wasn't John Locke sipping on a nut brown ale at his local tavern while arguing with fellow patrons about the right and true relationship between the governed and their government? Did Jeremy Bentham not have a pint of the stuff before him as he lectured John Stuart Mill on the utility of felicific calculus? Was nut brown ale not one of the primary fuels of the Enlightenment?!

Well, no it wasn't. According to classic punk afficionado and beer historian Ron Pattinson, nut brown ale is an invention of the early 20^th century.

Ooops!

But, while the beer style is relatively new, the term "nut brown ale" used for marketing purposes dates back further. I can try to console myself at having my illusions shattered by imagining Arthur Conan Doyle with a pint of it as he brought Sherlock Holmes to life. Or perhaps that it was favored by Emmeline Pankhurst as she argued in favor of women's suffrage, pointing out that the esteemed philosopher Jeremy Bentham had promoted the idea 100+ years before so what was taking so long?

Not too long ago I wrote about Rhoades' Scholar Stout by South Shore Brewery. I surely noted therein that the brewery, located on the shores of Lake Superior, regularly ships two beers down here to Madison. Now the identity of the second brew can finally be revealed! Wait. Never mind. I mentioned in that very post that their Nut Brown Ale was also found here in these southern parts.

So what is a nut brown ale?

I am unsure, to put it mildly. English beer styles are largely a mystery to me. One day I'll read some of Martyn Cornell's books but, until then, inexhaustive internet searches will have to suffice.

From what I gather, "nut brown ale" at least began as a description of color before moving on to having something to do with flavor. No doubt American and English variations differ in subtle and, perhaps, not to subtle ways. There also appears to be regional variation in England with northern and southern varieties being the most prominent. The more I read about it, the more complicated it gets. All of these brown ales and some of them aren't even brown. A bit more sweetness here, more dryness there. It's a really Daedalian maze of shades of brown, alcohol content, locale, et al.

Let's just investigate South Shore's take on the style, shall we?

English beers are often stereotyped as being flat and this one did nothing to dispel the image. My pour produced no head and there were just a few bubbles to be seen inside the glass. The liquid was brown, albeit with a slight red tint, which makes it a dark amber, I suppose, and clear. It smelled of roasted grain, some caramel, a little stone fruit, and, dare I say, a bit of nut.

Just a hint of fizz to be had on a sip. Some roasted grain and chocolate were also there. Either dark milk chocolate or milky dark chocolate. Also, some plum, although this was not a particularly sweet beer. Finally, there was some nuttiness. Think of a nice bread that was made with flax and sunflower seeds - a bit like that. I found that the roasted grain flavor lingered on the finish as a mild herbal hoppiness kicked in lending a touch of bitterness and a very mild dryness.

This is a very tasty beer. Nutty and mild, with a nice smoothness. (Look ma! No fizz!) I enjoyed the restrained sweetness and medium-light body which helped it go down easily. The nutty flavor and the herbal hoppiness are fairly uncommon in today's craft beer world and so they were an extra tasty treat for me. More of those please! It's 5.8% A.B.V. which seems a bit more potent than its English cousins.

Finally I want to say good on South Shore for an IPA-light set of offerings and instead giving us Madisonians a fine nut brown and a tasty stout instead.

Junk food pairing: Complement the nutty flavors of Nut Brown Ale with a bag of parmesan & garlic potato chips. Can't go wrong with Old Dutch, I say!

The Heat Is On: Hot Pepper Vinegar Kettle-Cooked Potato Chips by Lillie's Q

  

It's been a while since I've found a new salt & vinegar potato chip. Apparently I've sampled all of the brands on offer here in Madison. Well, until a shopkeeper somewhere starts carrying a new one.

Such is the case with Lillie's Q Hot Pepper Vinegar Kettle-Cooked chips. I ran into them last year on a visit to Meat People Butcher (a rather ominous name that sounds like it's from an alien cookbook) having never heard of them previously. Lillie's Q is the brain child of Chef Charlie McKenna who caught the BBQ bug from his grandmother Lillie. He grew up and had his taste for BBQ molded in Greenville, South Carolina. But before you start getting images of gentlemen dressed like Tom Wolfe and ladies holding parasols in one hand and mint juleps in the other, know that McKenna's base of operations is apparently Chicago. He has a restaurant there which looks to be in the West Loop, one of the city's trendier neighborhoods, so, instead of well-dressed Southern gentry, we're talking people in Bears shirts. The chips' package indicates that Lillie's Q has a Chicago address though the chips themselves are packaged (and presumably made) by the Great Lakes Potato Chip Company in Michigan whose comestibles I've encountered previously.

The Lillie's Q brand is, unsurprisingly, all about trading in on Southern traditions. The chips' webpage proclaims that hot pepper vinegar is a staple in Southern kitchens. That may be but I don't recall seeing it on my ventures down South. At least not with a frequency that would make it a staple. Hell, maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Regardless, I recall looking at the bag for the first time thinking, "I love salt & vinegar. I love hot peppers. How is it that I've not seen this flavor combination on a potato chip before?!"

 

Now that I think about it, I can't say I've ever seen salt & vinegar paired with any other flavor on a chip beyond potato. What else would you add to a salt & vinegar chip? I put vinegar on greens but I am unsure how well collard green powder would go on a thin slice of deep friend potato. My guess is that some kind of Carolina BBQ sauce chip would be a good fit. They have some kind of sauce out there that uses a lot of vinegar to make it tangy instead of letting sweetness run amok. How about a sour cream and onion and salt and vinegar chip? I mean, the sour cream has a bit of the sour - a cousin to the vinegar tang - but its mellow fatty/dairy smoothness stands as a nice counterpoint to all of the acidulous tastes. I think you could also get away with something a bit simpler like just adding a touch of rosemary to your salt & vinegar chips.

My consulting services are available to any chipwrights out there for a nominal fee.

 

So let's get to Lillie's Q chips.

 

They were cut a bit thicker than your average chip and I saw what appeared to be traces of skin on some of them. Color was uniform and I don't recall seeing many blemishes.

These chips smelled really good. The first thing my nose noticed was a big, clean oily aroma which was followed by a modicum of vinegar zestiness and a little chili piquancy.

The bag says that these chips were kettle-cooked and they had the requisite crunch. Vinegar tang was middle of the road, for my taste, and I found the chili flavor to be about the same. You have to eat more than a few to feel any of that fine capsicum burn. But there is something to be said for keeping the flavors balanced instead of letting any one of them dominate your tongue. The oil here had a nice clean taste, as if these chips were bathed in fryers full of virgin sunflower and/or canola oil, that stood apart from the potato. I found the potatoes to have a nice earthy sweetness to them that leaned towards the sweet, perhaps because of the thicker slicing.

While Lillie's Q strove to bring a Southern twist to these chips, I honestly was reminded of the late, great Wah Kee, a Chinese noodle restaurant here in Madison that closed in 2019. Their lo mein dishes served in broth were exquisite and I miss them to this day. You'd be hard-pressed to find a better gustatory antidote to the chill of winter. And Wah Kee had bottles of chili vinegar on every table which was perfect for dumplings with it's mild vinegar bite and easy going chili taste.

While I normally prefer a bit more vinegar and chili flavor, I thoroughly enjoyed the restrained balance of those tastes here. And that fresh oil flavor topped things off perfectly.

On my most recent trip to Meat People, I found plenty of potato chips from Lillie's Q but no Hot Pepper Vinegar. Hopefully they'll return soon.