The West Coast Moves East: River Rye'd Lager by Yazoo Brewing & Leinenkugel's

When I ran across this brew over the summer, I was delighted to see a rye lager in the beer cooler and a bit perplexed at the same time because I'd never heard of Yazoo Brewing. Yazoo Records, yes; Yazoo Brewing, no. Looking them up, I asked myself if a Nashville brewery was truly trying to make inroads into Wisconsin. I thought that, here in 2024, unless your brewery has a cachet known throughout Christendom, you don't expand too far from your homebase. Then I read the fine print and saw that it was a collaboration with Leinenkugel's as part of Yazoo's 20th anniversary celebration. Now this made more sense.

The rye lager is one of the great neglected bastard children of the brewing world. I still lament not being able to get Hoss every autumn and occasionally consider petitioning some government agency to rectify this terrible situation. And so, when I see one available, I am quick to fork over some of my filthy lucre.

Having read the fine print on the front of the label, I then neglected to do the same on the back where the text boasted that the beer was "generously hopped" with the Cascade variety. While I am not anti-Cascade, I do normally interpret their presence as something of a warning sign, namely to expect an American hopping regimen that gives a lot of fruity taste. My apprehension wasn't that my tongue would OD on grapefruit flavors as much as the citrus taste would overwhelm the rye.

Again, the label was the clue to it all. It said "lager" with the word "pilsner" nowhere to be seen. My understanding of beer taxonomy is that, when an America craft brewer designates their beer a "lager", they mean an American light lager like Miller/Coors/Bud with no expectation of subtle malt goodness being implied. It's a lawnmower beer or a craft beer to appease Miller/Coors/Bud drinkers. On the other hand, "pilsner" tends to mean the beer stands a chance of having a nice grain flavor with some attempt to balance malt and hop. Presumably River Rye'd would be a showcase for the hops.

Well, too late as I had brought the six-pack home. Iacta alea est.

River Rye'd looked either like your typical American light lager such as Miller or Bud or a fine pilsner, depending on your disposition. It was a lovely light yellow and clear as day. My pour yielded a very nice, loose head of brilliant white foam that lasted a little while. There were, as you can see, some bubbles inside. The aroma was ambiguous but delightfully so. Those hops gave pine and citrus scents but there was some cracker to be had too. A very nice start. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad after all, if I was able to smell some malt.

My lingering reservations aside, I eagerly took a sip and discovered a light-medium body with a healthy dose of fizz. Waves of pine and grapefruit cascaded over my tongue while a modicum of flavor of grain did its best to undergird the ostentatious display of hops. Sweetness was minimal.

For the finish, the hops lingered, grapefruit first followed by pine, as the malty base, such as it was, faded leaving a mild bitterness and only the barest hint of dryness.

River Rye'd was much as I suspected it would be after having read the label in full: it was like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale without the strong malt backbone. The Cascade hops took center stage here. While I was disappointed that the grains generally and the rye specifically were muffled by the hops, I still enjoyed the beer. But one per session was enough for me as the hops were just a little too generous.

Junk food pairing: I recommend pairing River Rye'd, should you still have some around, with a big bad of Ruffles Flamin' Hot Cheddar and Sour Cream chips. The heat will take the edge off the pine while all that dairy adds a nice, mellow tasting counterpoint to the grapefruit.

Always juicy. Always beery.: Pickle Beer by Oliphant Brewing

The pickle beer is the picotrend that just won't die. There seems to be two, maybe three, versions that are available more or less year-round with just enough breweries whipping one up periodically to keep Madison shelves fairly well stocked with this oddball style most of the time. If Donna's straight-ahead approach of adding brine to beer just doesn't cut it, you can go with a (likely extremely) sour take on it courtesy of Destihl. Those tartness-loving folks down in Illinois even have a spicy version of their sour pickle beer.

My gut tells me that American craft brewers aren't done with tinkering with the style. I wouldn't be surprised to see a pickle beer that had been aged in vodka barrels at some point. Beyond that, my imagination is strained but, no doubt, some lunatic at a craft brewery somewhere will concoct a pickle beer with Nashville hot chicken or other ingredients I dare not even fathom.

Up until now, my pickle beer purview has been dominated by Illinois breweries making this one the first from Wisconsin to cross my path. Oliphant is up north in the west central part of Wisconsin, perilously close to Minnesota. I have enjoyed the beers that I've tasted by them and appreciated greatly that they brewed a gruit and aren't afraid to smoke things up on occasion. It's just that Oliphant tends to brew a lot of beers that don't appeal to me (or sends those down to Madison) so my bouts of sampling are few and far between. Plus, their labels look a lot like those from The Brewing Projekt, a brewery that, as far as I can tell, took the trendiness of making beer fruity tasting to an extreme where they seem to view malt as a baleful intruder upon their endeavor to make beer indistinguishable from Hawaiian Punch.

To be honest, I probably wouldn't have bought this stuff had I not been gripped by the pickle beer madness. The label described it as a lager with natural flavors which I took to mean a light American lager with, well, flavoring added. Bummer. I'd rather that there be at least some brine in there rather than just Pickle Brine #304 from Amoretti.

Oliphant's Pickel Beer had a really nice white head that effervesced like soda. Sadly, this meant it dissipated fast and my meager photography skills were barely able to capture any. The liquid was quite clear and was a nice light yellow in color. I spied a few bubbles inside. As expected, a pickle brine scent came first and it was followed by lemon candy and some kind of floral dishwashing soap smell.

Its light-medium body was a touch heavier than I expected for a 4% American light lager. A mellow fizziness let some fine malty smoothness through that brought a pickle brine flavor as well as an unexpected burst of sweetness. The briney taste lingered for a bit on the finish before yielding to faint bitterness and a dash of tartness.

This stuff wasn't bad if quaffed very cold and with celerity. Otherwise the pickle brine bit tasted like flavoring and not brine. The malty sweetness threw me off too. It wasn't particularly sweet but its presence was jarring because there just wasn't anything sharp tasting for contrast - too little tartness, not enough salinity, a paucity of fizz.

This just was not my cup of brine.

Junk food pairing: Add more salt and pickle goodness with a bag of Jays Sour n'Dill potato chips to go with the pickle beer from St. Croix County.

I think vegetables can be very good in beer, don’t you?: Donna's Pickle Beer by Pilot Project Brewing

What is the next smallest prefix after pico? That may be an accurate description of the trend that is pickle beers.

I tried one from Noon Whistle last autumn, which I rather liked, and have seen one from Destihl on shelves here in Madison, although I now see 2 versions on their webpage - the regular and the spicy. What is it with Illinois breweries and pickle beers? If I recall correctly, there were a few at the Great Taste of the Midwest last year but I didn't sample any such brews. I merely recall hearing tell of them on that den of iniquity that is Twitter.

On a recent venture out to Brennan's in search of new/fresh beer from Jack's Abby and anything by Dovetail that is not brewed year-round, I stumbled across Donna's Pickle Beer. (As near as I can tell, Jack's Abby has left the state and Dovetail only delivers non-annuals to select joints around town.) I believe that it is now easier to find a pickle beer in this town than it is a smoked beer. Surely this is one of the seven seals and it is now broken.

Donna's Pickle Beer is brewed by Pilot Project Brewing, a brewery that, I presume, provides space for others to come on in and brew. It apparently originated in Chicago but now also has an incubator in Milwaukee. Donna's is the brainchild of Scott Baird and Joshua Jancewicz and is named after Jancewicz's mother. Donna the beer is made with the "original brine recipe" of Donna the woman.

While there is definitely a high gimmickry factor at play here, Donna's stands out because it's an American lager and not a sour ale like the other pickle beers I've seen and tasted. In addition, dill pickles don't taste like tropical fruit so it gets points from me for that.

Why yes, I did garnish my pickle beer with a pickle. But I also did some tasting without a spear of flavor intensity. I wish I'd had slices so I could have perched them atop the rim. And, now that I think about it, I should have put a toothpick through the spear and rested it so that some of the pickle was visible above the head. Well, I guess I didn't want to block the garden gnome's face too much.

My pour produced a lovely, loose head of white foam that went away quickly. Reminded me of soda. The beer of pickle was exactly what you'd expect from an "American lager" which I now take to mean a Bud/Miller/Coors clone-like thingy: clear, yellow, and fizzy. You know what it smells like when you put your nose above a jar of pickles and take a sniff? This stuff smelled like that. I don't think that having the pickle spear in there changed the aroma very much. It made it bolder but not really different qualitatively.

The beer had a light body and - quelle surprise! - tasted like pickle brine. Enough saltiness to enhance the flavor but not enough to make it salty like a Dead Sea(TM) Gose. I couldn't discern the grain but I suspect it made the beer a bit fuller tasting than it would have been otherwise. I also couldn't taste anything really tangy. They didn't try to compensate for the vinegar's absence and left something just savory. The finish too was pickle briny. Maybe a trace of the Noble hops that the ad copy says are in there but just a trace of something spicy.

As with the aroma, having a pickle in the beer seemed merely to enhance what was already there and not change the flavor to something different. The unadulterated version of this stuff was light with a moderate dill pickle brine taste. It wasn't faint but it also wasn't like drinking out of a pickle jar either. Adding a spear just make it more briney, more pungent.

I thoroughly enjoyed Donna's Pickle Beer. Being mostly of German and Slavic stock, I am all over dill pickles. Without garnish, this beer is light and refreshing with enough pickle taste to let you know that it's there but not so much that you think you've been involved in an accident at the Vlasic factory.

Junk food pairing: Grab a six-pack of Donna's Pickle Beer and then a bag of Old Dutch Spicy Dill Pickle potato chips to drown in dilly gluttony.

North to...Onalaska?: Northwoods Invasion by Lake Louie Brewing

Tempus fugit!

It's been two and a half years since it was announced that Arena's Lake Louie Brewing was to be acquired by Wisconsin Brewing Company. At the time, one of the advantages of the alliance would be that Lake Louie could take advantage of WBC's much larger facilities in Verona and perhaps brew some beers they'd not been able to back in Arena. Or, as WBC CEO Carl Nolen said in corporatespeak, "This new collaboration will allow us to utilize our scale to expand and enhance the Lake Louie portfolio."

Exactly what has been expanded and/or enhanced is unknown to me. However, Lake Louie does have a new summer seasonal called Northwoods Invasion. Now, exactly where Wisconsin's northwoods, a.k.a. – "up north", starts is a matter of some contention. For many Chicago folks, crossing the state line into Wisconsin means they're up north. But this is simply a lack of perspective on their part. Portage, a mere 30 or so miles north of Madison, bills itself as the "Gateway to the North". While there's some lovely country up there in Columbia County, it's still very much in the southern part of the state.

The two main contenders for the marker that signals the true start of the northwoods are highways 29 and 8. Highway 29 begins at Green Bay in the east, heads west-northwest to Wausau, where it tacks to the west until it gets to River Falls which is within spitting distance of the Mississippi. Highway 8 runs 45 miles or so north of 29. I think of Highway 29 as being the start of up north. Once you go north of it, there are no cities of any appreciable size nor any interstate highways. I mean, how can you tell me with a straight face that Chetek is not in the northwoods?

Regardless of where you feel up north actually begins, Northwoods Invasion is just the latest member of a series of Wisconsin pale lagers that trades on the reputation of "up north". I suppose Leinenkugel was ahead of the curve with their Northwoods Lager back in the day. Then there was Capital's recently departed Lake House Helles. More recently, One Barrel Brewing released Up North Wisconsin Lager while Lake Louie's parent company, WBC, has Wisconsin Vacation with a label featuring a cabin up by Barnes, a fish, and a buck. Well, it may not be a lengthy series but what can you do?

Oh, and you can add just about every beer from Northwoods Brewpub.

There. That's better.

So about this Northwoods Invasion. It's a pale lager and at 4% A.B.V., it's aims to be a summer thirst quencher. Although it may have been a brewery exclusive or something similar in past years, this is the first time it's been packaged, as far as I can tell.

As the visuals go, Northwoods Invasion was a beauty. I managed a better pour this time around and got a big, white head. It was a brilliant white and stuck around for a while so it made things look nice. The beer was a clear yellow with some bubbles making their way upwards. It smelled like a modern American beer with a prominent citrus scent along with something more floral and a big dose of sweetness.

Taking my first sip, I found that it had a medium-light body that leaned towards the lighter side, which is unsurprising here. That floral bit that my nose encountered was also keen on meeting my tongue with citrus flavors coming in a distant second. Lots of flavor from the hops but very little bitterness. Also, very little grain flavor – just a touch of cracker. A mild bitterness emerged on the finish and lingered, which I appreciated. Those floral and citrus tastes stuck around, albeit in diminished quantities, too.

It wasn't until I had already drunk the beer that I read that it was dry hopped with Citra and Nelson Sauvin hops. Dry hopping is the addition of hops after the boiling is done so you add aroma and flavors but very little bitterness. Now, I presume the Citra adds citrus flavors and that the Nelson Sauvin hops would add something vinous or grape-like, given what I've read about them. But I didn't taste anything wine-like here. Instead, I got that floral taste which reminded me of Central Waters' Summarillo, a dry hopped summer lager from several years ago.

I really liked Northwoods Invasion. The aroma was an enchanting blend of citrus and floral. The taste too had this combination and, while I do wish it had a little more bitterness, a firm fizz helped keep it from being cloying. It was light and refreshing, perfect for a hot summer's day.

Just as the head made for a lovely sight after having filled my glass, the lacing made for a pretty sight after I had emptied it.

Junk food pairing: A bag of white cheddar lefse chips is the ideal companion for your Northwoods Invasion.

If You Go to New Orleans, You Ought to Drink the Abita: Strawberry Lager by Abita Brewing Company

With the closing of The Bayou, Madison has lost one of, it not its only, bars that reliably served Abita beers.

Abita, I have just learned, is not, as I previously thought, in New Orleans despite all of the NOLA/Mardi Gras imagery on the labels. It is, in fact, in – quelle surprise - Abita Springs which lies 30 miles north of New Orleans. In Madison-area terms, Abita is about the same size as New Glarus Brewing and resides in a town about the same distance away from New Orleans as New Glarus is from Madison.

According to Wikipedia, the brewery distributes in 46 states and Puerto Rico. They even ship some of their brews to Germany. For a brewery with such reach and no small renown, I have to ask myself why I've sampled so little of their beer. I recall having one at The Bayou a few years back and just not being impressed. Since that experience, I have – unfairly – avoided their beers. Until recently, that is. It was a very hot summer day and my wife was keen on some strawberry beer. I was hesitant at first because the label has those dreaded words "natural flavoring" on them but the Abita webpage says that they use strawberry juice. So I took the plunge.

Strawberry lager pours a lovely light gold color and has a haze to it that the Abita notes is from the strawberry juice. Although I was not able to capture it with my camera, my glass had about one inch of white foam atop it. The beer was fizzy too with lots of bubbles inside.

As I expected, there was plenty of sweet strawberry aroma and I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't smell like candy. Not that it was like fresh strawberries, mind you, but instead I was reminded of the cans of strawberry nectar, I believe from Libby's, that I drank as a kid. There was also a little toasted grain.

On the hot day that I sampled this beer, its light body and plentiful carbonation were most welcome. The strawberry tasted a little less sweet than it smelled – like strawberry juice. The pilsner malt came across as a lightly toasted grain and the wheat as, well, wheat. It had that clean lager taste too which allowed a little grassy hop bitterness to come through.

Abita uses Vanguard hops with which I am not familiar. In addition to a little bitterness that you get while drinking the beer, you get even more of it on the finish. The strawberry lingers a bit but it's really the hops here with a nice grassy flavor and some mild bitterness which makes for a fairly fry denouement. The lacing in my glass was, as Darth Vader once opined, impressive with white streaks and splotches everywhere.

Considering that I was rather skeptical going in, Abita surprised me here with a great summer quencher. The beer has a light body and plenty of fizz. It's clean and crisp letting the tasty flavors shine. And those flavors provide a great example of restraint. The grains are light and toasty while the strawberry is a fine accent and not a big, sweet candy simulacrum.

Junk food pairing: Strawberry Lager will complement light summer fare such as 7 Layer Dip Tortilla Combos.

Selling Lager By the Pound: #Poundsign - A Trendy Lager by Against the Grain & Stillwater Artisanal Ales

It is very odd but there is precious little on the Interwebs about this beer. Granted, I haven't perused the entire thing but I shouldn't have to subscribe to NexusLexis, right?

What I can say is that #Poundsign – A Trendy Lager was brewed at Against the Grain's brewery in Louisville along with Stillwater Artisanal Ales who made the trip from Baltimore, apparently. Beyond this I'm in terra incognita. I am not familiar with either brewery nor can I say that I've ever tasted beer from either of them. And so am uniquely unqualified to judge where #Poundsign fits into the overall scheme of things for AtG or Stillwater. Useless as tits on a nun, I know.

From what I can tell, the beer came out in August and I purchased a single can at Steve's Liquor on University rather recently for too much money. I suspect the high price was due to this being a beer brewed in limited quantities but also because of the color photo reproduced on the can.

#Poundsign pours a burnished light yellow color. This along with its clarity gave me the impression that I was looking at a glass of American pale lager that was trendy in the same way PBR is trendy. Where were my tight jeans and ironic mustache? As you can see my pour produced a big white head that was both pillowy and ephemeral. There was a paucity of bubbles going up the glass.

My nose found the aroma to be rather simple, yet delectable. There was a little bit of grain but a lot of bright floral hoppiness. That I did not expect. An ironic PBR-eque statement this was not. Upon tasting it I found it had a light body like an American pale lager (it's quite sessionable at 4% A.B.V.) with a mild cracker-like grain taste which also featured some subtle corn in there too. The hops were prominent just like on the nose though the floral flavor was joined by more citrusy ones. It brought the flavor of Amarillo hops to mind but I cannot find anything indicating what hops were actually used in the beer. Regardless it had a really clean, sprightly flavor, abetted by carbonation, that made me feel bad that I was drinking it in December instead of August.

On the finish those floral hops faded and were replaced by more bitter ones that tasted grassy and spicy which dried out the finish. Schaumhaftvermoegen consisted of but a few thin streaks here and there.

The floral and citrus hop flavors really surprised me. #Poundsign had a great, fresh hop taste to it. They brought with them very little bitterness, however. In a feat of lupulin agility, #Poundsign did a 180 at the finish with more Noble-tasting ones coming through to give the beer a whole different spin. It made for a tasty change of pace.

Junk food pairing: Pair #Poundsign with some Kettle Brand Salt and Pepper potato chips. The salt will enhance the malt flavor of the beer while the pepper will initially provide some nice contrast and then meld into the Noble hop flavor on the finish.