Oktoberfest season starts now

Seen yesterday, 25 June 2025:

Just in time for the summer solstice. Uff da! We're still 3 months out from Oktoberfest and horny deer running out in the middle of the road.

On the bright side, I tried this which I thought it was great.

A very fine blend of roasty and coffee flavors along with a little dark chocolate too. Nice green-spicy hops for balance. Light body - very reminiscent of a Schwarzbier. Highly recommended.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 97: Adventures With Plums

(mid-July 2023)

I returned home from vacation to find that my Frau had acquired even more flowers. A tight squeeze at points but the carport and deck looked colorful and lovely.

Not sure what this one is. A deadly Pitcher Plant?

The purple thingies in the hanging basket were coming along nicely.

It was nice to see her develop a nascent green thumb and to have fallen into a routine of watering the flowers every morning. I am more than a bit jealous as I cannot seem to keep a plant alive for very long.

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I decided that I needed a break from my usual podcast routine and that I should find something new to listen to for a change of pace. After poking around my hard drive, I settled on the audio drama Bronzeville.

I had enjoyed the first season when it came out but had mysteriously never gotten around to putting the second into my earholes. There was no way the second season would make sense without listening to the first one again and so I set out to listen to both.

Although it concerns the titular Chicago neighborhood in the 1940s, it begins in Arkansas where a young black man, Jimmy Tillman, stabs a white man in self-defense and flees northward. He ends up in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood and lands a job with the Copeland family who run the numbers game – an underground lottery - in Bronzeville. They inherited the game from Curtis "Eyeball" Randolph, voiced by the magnificent Laurence Fishburne, who has gone legit and become a banker.

The show dramatizes the problems that the Copelands run into and the attempts by the African-American denizens of the neighborhood to carve out their own space and live their best lives in the face of the racism of the time. The family not only has trouble with the city - da mayor, the cops - but also with other gangsters who are from St. Louis.

I was reminded of the connection between the 2 cities. From what I've read, it was quite a rivalry back in the second half of the 19th century. St. Louis was the Gateway to the West and was situated on the shores of the Mississippi River and Chicago was its regional competition. The short story is, if I recall correctly, that Chicago invested in rail and became the Big Cheese in the middle of the country leaving St. Louis in its dust. I've also read that monied interests out East were reluctant to invest in St. Louis because Missouri was a slave state while Illinois was not.

Today, the rivalry seems to exist mostly in baseball with the Cubs and Cardinals taking the parts formerly played by rail barons and steamship tycoons. Amtrak connects the cities with multiple trains a day and the route was recently given an upgrade to make it competitive with driving so the regional economic connection still remains, apparently.

Sadly, today St. Louis is in a bad state. While I enjoyed myself when I was there back in 2017, there were abandoned buildings aplenty as people continue to flee the city. In fact, its population is probably just barely above Madison's these days.

Now, not every Copeland is involved in the family business. Little sister Lisa is a newly-minted college grad and her older brothers do everything to keep her out of their shady dealings.

Lisa is voiced by the lovely Tika Sumpter who does a fantastic job.

Lisa goes from a young woman seeking her way in the world away from the dealings of her brothers to being absorbed into the family business where she kicks ass and takes names. Do not mess with Lisa Copeland!

I think I may have developed a crush on Ms. Sumpter…

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For a couple weeks after my return, I sampled the goodies I had brought home and did some baking. For instance, here’s that loaf of einkorn bread I bought at the Dells Mill gift shop.

It had a crumbly texture, was tasty and was also indistinguishable from bread made with the hybridized wheat we are used to. Einkorn is truly an ancient grain. Thought to be the first wheat humanity ever cultivated, it dates back in our diets some 10,000 years. I have read that its gluten content is not well-suited for bread so I dunno how the Amish baked this loaf. Perhaps it was cut with bread flour. Or the crumbly texture is simply the result of being low on gluten.

The legend is that einkorn went out of fashion, with we Westerners, anyway, and basically disappeared from our culinary map. Then, in the 1970s, some proto-foodie discovered that it was still being used in eastern France by people who lived in a secluded valley and still clung to the old ways instead of wearing flares and big collars as they pulled bits of steak from a hibachi grill and dipped them into fondue pots. Einkorn hasn’t attained the foodie cred of, say, quinoa, but I did notice it at the store recently.

I also bought a loaf of cranberry wild rice bread up north. Very tasty stuff! I love the earthy taste of the wild rice and that hint of tartness from the fruit.

And while I am on the subject of bread, I’ll note that I baked a loaf of rye with some of those rolled rye berries that I had bought at the Dells Mill thrown in. It was that recipe I mentioned a few entries ago with cocoa powder and molasses. I am pleased to say that it turned out alright.

You can see the bits of rye on the crust. A hearty looking loaf, if I do say so myself.

While up in Spooner, I noticed a chocolate factory had opened called Mayana and so I bought a couple of their bars at the local supermarket.

These were very thick and smelled tasty. They certainly drew Grabby’s attention.

I liked the shortbread base, I loved the chocolate coating but that was just too much caramel for me.

Lastly, because I love my co-workers so much, I bought them a couple bags of poop-themed candy.

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One day I was doing some internet searching for recipe ideas and hit on the idea of lemongrass chicken. A marinade was prepared and, the next day, the grill was fired up. I was fortunate to be able to serve a glass of lemongrass pilsner from 3 Sheeps Brewing up in Sheboygan with it to complete the theme.

I was quite pleased with how those chicken thighs turned out. The lemongrass added its floral lemony flavors while the grill added its charred, smoky goodness. The fresh jalapeno was icing on the cake. Oh, and that pilsner was mighty fine too. It was light and crisp with a nice, sprightly flavor that complemented the lemongrass from the chicken and the chilies as well.

For reasons I cannot recall, I recently decided that I wanted to cook with plums. It may have been a desire to tweak my German grilling marinade recipe and plums just sounded Central Europeany. So I took the usual mix of dark lager, grainy, brown mustard, and a proprietary herb & spice blend** and then added fresh plums. Pork chops soaked in this stuff overnight.

The results were mixed. That is, the chops tasted very good but the fruit was barely noticeable. And so on the following Saturday when I was grocery shopping, I bought a bottle of plum juice and more pork chops and tried again.

Better. Kind of.

The plum was much more evident and quite tasty. But the beer taste was subdued so I am in the process of tweaking beer-plum juice proportions to maximize the flavor of both.

I then decided to approach this plum predilection from another angle: prunes.

A co-worker of mine loves to smoke meat so I inveigled my way into a batch of smoked prunes. He’d never attempted to smoke fruit before so we were both in terra incognita. Hic sunt prunes!

At work one day I was presented with a small bag of prunes.

I took about half the batch, diced them up, and threw them into a bowl of stuffing which was promptly, um, stuffed into a pair of thick pork chops.

The chops then spent some quality time on the grill.

I felt they looked and smelled quite tasty and was eager to try one.

The verdict?

While extremely delicious, the prunes needed more smokiness. I think they had spent about 2 or 2.5 hours in the smoker and I believe doubling that would do the trick.

Practice makes perfect, right?

Lastly, on a food adjacent note, a friend and I took the ancient microwave that was mounted on our kitchen wall and sent it to appliance heaven. While not older than me, I did look up the serial number and found that it was like 40 years old or some such thing. Carter was still president when it rolled off the assembly line.

The city will dispose of unwanted microwaves but for a fee. I discovered that one can no longer go to a library, pay the $10 or $15 fee, and get the requisite sticker needed to properly dispose of these things. It must be done online. This harkens back to my commentary about the Art Institute going cashless in a previous entry. It seems ridiculous to me that a city government would require a credit card and an internet connection in order to dispose of garbage correctly, to keep stuff out of our landfill that doesn’t need to be there.

Rant over.

After dismounting the microwave, we were treated some vintage wallpaper. 

If you look at the lower right by the outlet cover, you can see some of the newer wallpaper peeking out.

Our house was built in 1950 so I would guess that this kind of stuff was de rigueur in the late ‘40s. In my mind’s eye, I can see the mom of the family surrounded by this wallpaper as she pulls TV dinners out of the oven for the kids as chipped beef simmers on the stovetop for her husband. And you know there was a Jello mold in the refrigerator for dessert.

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Bonus photo. You might recall in an earlier entry that I went in search of and found a geodetic survey marker just south of Osseo when I was coming back to Madison from my vacation. Well, I looked on the USGS map and saw a smattering of them around Madison and discovered that one was quite close to a bus stop that I use.

**Probably just Penzy's Bavarian Seasoning.

Marinating

Yesterday I spent some quality time in the meat department of my local supermarket and followed this up by buying charcoal. My bill from Farm & Fleet was rather more than I thought it would be. Inspecting the receipt, it looks like cat litter is twice as expensive than I remembered it being and I had bought 250% more charcoal than I normally do.

When I got home, I marinated some boneless/skinless chicken thighs in a faux Southeast Asian marinade that had lemongrass in it. I grilled them up in the evening and served them with a glass of Lemongrass Pils from 3 Sheeps Brewing.

The chicken was quite tasty while the light body and big citrus-floral taste of the beer complemented the grilled meat and jalapeno slices very well.

My next project was to tweak my standard German grilling marinade for some pork chops.

I bought a silo of Köstritzer Schwarzbier and poured some into my mixing bowl. Then I liberally added Polish mustard and followed this up with a generous portion of Penzey's Bavarian seasoning blend. Pretty standard stuff.

The tweak was to add plum.

I mashed some of the plum pieces to try and liberate their Prunus essence. Tasting the marinade, I concluded that I had put in too much mustard. These chops will go down fine but the senf adding needs a lighter touch, I suspect. We shall find out, though, when the marriage of the flavors is consummated.

The Corona Diaries Vol 29: And we've got to get ourselves back to the (Olbrich Bier)garden

Early August 2021

I wrote previously that I was saddened when the news came down that an old Prohibition era roadhouse here in Madison with ties to Chicago mobsters called The Wonder Bar was slated to be demolished to make way for an 18-story high rise. In a surprising turn of events, the Madison Plan Commission saved the building by denying permission to the developer. Considering that the owner was ready to sell and that the restaurant has been closed for months, I am not sure that it is out of the woods yet but at least it has been given a temporary reprieve.

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I saw this at the grocery store last week: sauerkraut in squeeze bottles from a company called Sauer Frau. I love the name and logo.

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A cousin of mine sent out an email last month with a link to a photo gallery of train stations from the days of yore. I was reminded of this missive a couple weeks ago when one of our local papers ran an article about the debate over where to build a train station should intercity passenger rail return to Madison.

The article quoted a local urban planner:

"If Madison aims high, and hires the best station architects available, then it can have a beautiful new civic icon," he said.

Our mayor wants to locate it on the north side in the former Oscar Mayer site which is in the early days of being transformed from a meat processing facility into something new that doesn't smell like hot dogs. Here's a rendering showing a train station in the lower center with a clock tower.

Personally, while I understand that transit can spur development and growth, this seems wrong to me. Transit's first job is to move people as best it can, not promote economic growth. This site is not close to downtown and is absent from all current BRT plans. Put the station where it serves passengers the best, not where you want to do a ribbon cutting in a few years. 

Of course, there's no guarantee we'll even need a station in the near future. But let us hope. Biden's infrastructure bill is working its way through the legislative process…

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Despite having been open since 2017 and being a mere 2 blocks from our house, the Frau and I had never been to the Olbrich Biergarten until a week or so ago. Located on the north shore of Lake Monona, it serves up beer, soda, pretzels, and mini-bratwurst in an idyllic setting. Well, it's idyllic when the lake doesn't smell of toxic algae slime.

I recall the controversy back in 2016 when it was first proposed. A bunch of neighborhood fuddy-duddies were against it and predicted nightly bacchanalian revelry with uncontrolled noise, drunkenness, debauchery, and mayhem. On our visit we saw mainly families and older folks. One couple brought their dog in a stroller which was funny. Bands of 21 year-olds looking to get sloshed and cause trouble on a Friday night were noticeably absent.

It seems that all of the doomsaying by the local Cassandras didn't come to pass, thankfully.

While the lake's odor held off, unfortunately, the 3 Sheeps pilsner they had on offer was not good. I double checked my tastebuds a couple days later by drinking a can of it and it was the same.

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Back in high school I read Kerouac's On the Road and Ginsberg's "Howl". It took me a while but I have finally read something by the final member of the Beat Generation holy triumvirate, William S. Burroughs. I don't know why it took me so long especially considering his brief resurgence of popularity while I was in college when he did a couple spoken word albums with the musicians Kurt Cobain and The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, respectively. It was the Beat Generation collaborating with Generation X.

While I enjoyed Burrough's writing style and his turns of phrase, I just couldn’t get into it. I was not far in when I realized I had no idea what was happening beyond a junkie was looking for his fix and before long there was an orgy and then people were being killed. I just went along for the ride, not worrying about plot. It seemed to be an impressionistic survey of the life of a junkie instead of a conventional piece of storytelling with a 3 act plot and the action being led forward by cause and effect.

After I finished reading the novel, I sought out a little more about the man and found that the radio show This American Life broadcasted a BBC Radio 4 documentary about Burroughs called "Burroughs at 100" and it can be found here. To say that the guy was a character is a vast understatement.

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Now that there's fresh, local sweetcorn to be had, I bought some at the stand just 5 or 6 blocks from us. I grilled it up fine and turned it into elote, a.k.a. – Mexican street corn. I mixed some mayo with crema (Mexican sour cream) and smeared it on liberally. Then a layer of cotija, a dry cheese that crumbles into small bits easily, followed by some chili powder, and finally plenty of lime juice. It accompanied some fresh kielbasa that was also grilled to perfection.

We also enjoyed some locally raised porcine goodness recently. I wanted to cook something German for dinner and so I stopped in at my local butcher who sliced a couple pork chops for me that were nice and thick. She even made the slits for stuffing it for me. On the menu was Gefüllte Schweinerippchen à la Holstein or Stuffed Pork Chops, Holstein style.

The stuffing included rum soaked raisins and, on the day I was to cook the chops, I got them soaking first thing. I mean it was 5 A.M. and I went to the liquor cabinet to find the rum even before turning on the coffeemaker. My morning routine normally starts with the Brewing of the Coffee followed by feeding the cats who are noisily petitioning me with meows for breakfast so you can imagine they were not happy and even a bit confused as to just what the human was up to. In addition to those raisins, the stuffing had apple slices sautéed in butter, some cinnamon sugar, and bread crumbs. The chops were braised with beer in the oven and I think they turned out pretty well.

Sadly, it looks like cooking German food, drinking German bier, and watching German films will have to suffice for a while since we are unable to make a trip over there.

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Bonus photo. I saw this on the back of a car on one of my bike rides. When they turn on the rear windshield wipers, Arnie flexes his muscles.

Smooth Operator: Cashmere Hammer by 3 Sheeps Brewing Company

Nitrogenating beers is the latest fad in microbrewing. Instead of an arsenal of strictly carbon dioxide bubbles, nitro beers are given a shot that is mostly nitrogen with a small amount of CO₂. The effect of this on a beer's taste is that your brew will be smoother on the palate because there's much less carbonic acid which is formed when CO₂ is dissolved in water. Less acidity means less of that tingling sensation on your tongue and a beer that tastes much more smoove.

Guinness is famous for their nitrogenated beers and the widgets that they put at the bottom of cans that release the gassy goodness when the can is opened. Now that the fad is gaining momentum, Guinness introduced a nitro IPA last year while Sam Adams will be introducing three nitro beers shortly if they're not already in stores – a nitro white ale, IPA, and coffee stout.

Truth be known, my experience with nitro beers is basically limited to cans of Guinness stout. There are likely some one-offs nitro brews that I've had on tap but, when I read "nitro beer" I think of cans of Guinness. I've used the word "fad" here intentionally because most nitro beers I've seen to be essentially gimmicks. A large segment of American microbrew drinkers covet novelty so adding some nitrogen to the beer you have sitting around already is a relatively simple way to create something "new". This is not to deny the effect nitrogenation has on a beer's taste. But I just don't believe that everyone had their road to Damascus moment at the same time and put a ton of thought into it. Jesus, there's even a coffeehouse here in Madison that has a coffee put into kegs and nitrogenated because "The infusion of nitrogen creates a stout-like head and mouthfeel."

I blather on about this because the beer at hand is Cashmere Hammer by 3 Sheeps up in Sehboygan. It's nitro rye stout.

Cashmere Hammer pours a deep, dark sepia. It was opaque when looked at head-on but, from an angle it appeared clear. One is supposed to pour a nitro brew such as this by turning the bottle upside down and putting it in your glass. (Mouth side down, that is.) I did not come across this information until I had already poured a glass and so my initial encounter with the much-ballyhooed nitro effervescence was quite brief – a small tan head that dissipated very quickly. When I poured the remaining beer into my glass later, it did so with a bit more vigor and managed to get a larger head and more foaming action.

Epic fail. I guess.

I proceed hoping that I didn't completely thwart the brewmaster Grant Pauly's intent and still had a drinking experience that was at least a reasonable facsimile of what he intended.

The beer smelled as I expected with the dark malts giving a luscious coffee aroma that had some dark chocolate mixed in there too. Because of some stray Pavlovian conditioning, I initially thought it odd that I couldn't smell any bourbon but then quickly recalled that this was not a barrel-aged brew. The prominence of these ingredients were reversed in the taste where bitter chocolate was most evident followed by the coffee. There was also a slight malty sweetness as well as a hint of the rye which seemed to blend in with grassy hops that gave some flavor but not much bitterness.

So what about the nitro? I tasted a medium body but the mouthfeel was very smooth – "velvety" is what my notes say. It is a very different taste from your normal carbonated beer. Lacking the bite of carbonic acid, it's very silky – somewhat reminiscent of those bottled frappuccinos.

For the finish the dark malt flavors faded leaving some malty sweetness which was joined by some more of the earthy rye and a grassy/peppery hop taste that brought a slight bitterness with it. My glass was left with just a few specks of foam but no other lacing. I'm not sure if this is par for the course or if my poor pouring is to blame for this.

I really enjoyed Cashmere Hammer. The dark malt flavors were scrumdillyicious and I love rye in beer. While it was a rather subtle flavor here and I wish that there was more, it was quite welcome nonetheless. The nitro smoothness makes it exceedingly quaffable but this beer is 6.5% A.B.V. so beware. I shall endeavor to try Cashmere Hammer again and practice my inverted pouring technique. I'd like to know if getting that nitrogen out of solution adds much to the flavor or if I simply missed the aesthetics.

Junk food pairing: Cashmere Hammer may have a smooth, creamy taste but it's got a lot more going on. Don’t be afraid to pair it with bigger foods like Xtra Fiery Sweet BBQ Pringles or some kind of hamburger/cheeseburger flavored potato chip.