They were dancing in Strasbourg, dancing in the street: Ryed of the Valkyries by Gathering Place Brewing Company

Do you suppose Frigg got pissed off when the Aesir convened to interview prospective Valkyries only to find that Thor had yet again chosen a slate of applicants that were all slim, busty, and blonde? Weren't any Valkyries brunettes? Brunettes with some small love handles and cup sizes smaller than D? If Michael Whelan and company are to be believed, there weren't. And poor Odin. With only one eye, he must have been especially busy with a clutch of comely warrior maidens parading before him. I guess you've gotta make sacrifices when you're the chief wise guy and Allfather.

This winter was rather exiting as far as beer goes as I've been able to sup not one, not two, but three different beers that were brewed with one of my favorite ingredients: rye. There was the annual quaffing of the Roggenbier with Vintage's Tippy Toboggan but also a couple of new brews: a ryewine from Parched Eagle and a rye stout from Revolution in Chicago. In one of those posts I lamented the general paucity of rye beers and how options are even fewer for those like me who eschew IPAs. Not long afterwards I encountered two more beers prepared with the coveted grain.

I was so happy that I almost started dancing. This would have been oddly appropriate since rye is hypothesized to be the cause of the Dancing Plague of 1518 which broke out in Strasbourg, now in modern day France. Records indicate a woman suddenly began dancing in the street in July and was joined by several others, mostly young women. While no one knows exactly what caused this terpsichorean outburst, there are those who blame rye. Well, ergotism.

Ergotism or ergot poisoning happens when you eat too much of a particular fungus that likes to grow on grains, particularly rye, in cool, moist conditions. I haven't found anything that explains why rye is the grain most commonly infected. Regardless, ergotism was a persistent threat in the days of yore. Not only did it cause gangrene but also seizures and mania, hence it being blamed for the Dancing Plague. 

A little more than 100 years ago some enterprising chemists put some of the fungus in test tubes and mixed it with something else and sloshed it all around or whatever chemists do and discovered that some of the ergotine alkaloids - the compounds that did nasty things to people - utilize lysergic acid in their daily routines. This discovery led another chemist named Albert Hofman to start tinkering with derivatives of lysergic acid and he discovered another acid - LSD.

Far out, man.

This bring me quite nicely to Ryed of the Valkyries from Milwaukee's Gathering Place Brewing Company, a dunkel brewed with rye. A Roggendunkel, I suppose you could say. I've had a couple of their other brews and found them to be delectable so I was keen on trying a third.

My pour produced a modicum of loose, off-white foam. The beer was a deep amber and clear so I was able to spy a fair number of bubbles inside, including a bunch adhering to the side of my glass. My sniffs revealed mostly chocolate and honey aromas but I also found small doses of grass, plum, and citrus, which I initially read as "uterus", from my notes. Now there's a challenge for a brewer who is looking to deviate from the norm.

Through a firm fizz I tasted dark chocolate, stone fruit, roasty malt, and spicy rye on my initial sips. A bit of that citrus and a herbal hoppiness came through subsequently. After drinking a few ounces, I made the mistake of reading the label which mentioned pear. It was like being told not to think of an elephant and then getting Dumbo stuck in your mind's eye. And so I couldn't get pear out of my brain and began to taste it with every sup. Stoopid power of suggestion!

Chocolate and citrus lingered a bit on the swallow while the hoppy taste became a bit spicy. There was a moderate dryness helped out by some hoppy bitterness.

This was a fine brew. Besides name-checking a certain pomaceous fruit, the label also notes that 3 types of rye were used. No wonder I really enjoyed the rye flavor. I also found the spicy finish to be very tasty. Gathering Place describes this as a "gentle nod to the classic Bavarian Dunkel" and my only gripe would be for it to be a little less gentle and boost those roasty grain flavors that Bavarian brewers conjure so well. Less fruitiness and more bread.

Still, this was wonderful stuff. At 4.8% it isn't exactly a winter warmer and would be great in the summer, but it instead eased me into the comforting folds of hygge on a chilly evening.

Junk food pairing: I am all about the rye so get a bag of Gardetto's Deli-Style Mustard Pretzel snack mix to go with your Ryed of the Valkyries.

I see a yellow pils and I want it to turn black: Storm and Stress by Gathering Place Brewing Co.

 

American beer styles seem to be clearly delineated in a way that continental European styles are not. Take the American IPA for example. A NE/hazy IPA is opaque, looks like it was drained from an orange juice swamp, and tastes like Hawaiian Punch. On the other hand, a West Coast IPA is clear, the malt can be tasted, and it tastes like a Christmas tree. Black IPAs look, well, not pale, i.e. - black. And so on. All of these beers come from the same style family but the differences are rather dramatic amongst the individual styles.

But in mainland Europe, styles often have minor distinctions that separate them rather than glaringly obvious differences. In a previous entry I expressed confusion about the differences between Czech and German pilsners which apparently come down mainly to a little less or a little more malt and a little less or a little more hops. The differences are more subtle over there than here. (Please note that I am conducting some research in this area and bought some Pilsner Urquell for my experimentation.)

There's a similar confusion for me between the Dunkel and the Schwarzbier. And I suppose there are even more granular distinctions to be made between, say, the Munich Dunkel and its Franconian cousin. (I am unaware of regional variations in Schwarzbier although I don't doubt for one second that they exist.) But let's not go there because I'd get even more lost than I already am.

Ultimately, the problem is that I've never been to Germany to figure out the answer to this great mystery. More proximately is that I don't encounter much Schwarzbier brewed in Germany and, when I do, it's usually Köstritzer, although Krombacher Dark is becoming more common in these parts. Not that it is common, mind you, it's just that you see it occasionally whereas it was totally absent previously. With examples from the Heimat being a precious few, I've been weaned mostly on versions from the teat of American craft brewing.

From what I gather, a Schwarzbier is like a pils but darker. A lot darker. The name doesn't translate to "black beer" for nothin'. It has less of a bready malt flavor to it than its Dunkel cousin with some roasty tastes and medium hoppiness. In addition, it's got a lighter body and is drier than the Dunkel. This comports with my tongue's experiences drinking Spaten's Dunkel and Köstritzer's Schwarzbier. However, it doesn't match my experiences with, say, Sprecher's Black Bavarian, which they advertise as a Schwarzbier. Black Bavarian has the roasted coffee and dark chocolate flavors of a porter but with a heavier body. I do enjoy Black Bavarian quite a bit but it is far from being a dark pils.

Sprecher's Milwaukee neighbors, Gathering Place Brewing, have thrown their hat into the Schwarzbier ring with Storm and Stress - Sturm und Drang, auf Deutsch**. A brief search of the Internet gives me the impression that they've brewed it for a few years but only now am I getting around to trying it. I had a good experience with their Franconian lager, Spezial, and I am enamored of dark beers so I was looking forward to tasting Storm and Stress.

Having had a Dunkel recently which I felt was lacking in the forms that I think of a Dunkel as having, Storm and Stress started things out according to my expectations: it was black. Well, it was clear and really a very dark reddish brown but it had that Stygian gloom thing when you casually glanced at it. A small tan head came and went. It had a very pleasant aroma that was sweet at first - think plum - before some coffee and roasted grains came in.

Despite knowing better, my brain always thinks that Dunkels and Scharzbiers are going to be like motor oil because of their darkness which allows little to no light through my glass. I always have a brief moment of surprise when I drink the stuff and find that its color belies a much lighter body, like that of a pils. (There is surely a lengthy German compound word for being surprised at something you shouldn't be surprised by and it would make a fine name for a beer, whatever it is.) And so it was here. Although not particularly sweet, there was some maltiness to be had in addition to plum as well as some coffee. I could taste grassy hops underneath it all. Dark chocolate came out on the swallow. The finish was rather dry due to a nice, sturdy dose of fizz as well as the hops which took on spicy notes that let the bitterness build.

While I would have to have a Köstritzer for comparison, I think Storm and Stress is a little intense for the style. It's like you were expecting to hear Kind of Blue but the jukebox started playing Pangaea instead. That dark pils malt subtlety is missing here and was replaced with more of a porter profile. I think it'd be more to style to have less coffee flavor and more of a gentle roastiness.

Regardless of how true to style Storm and Stress is, it is a very tasty brew indeed. I really liked the plum and coffee flavors and how the beer's body remained light. The dry finish seemed to be out of the German pils playbook and made it quite refreshing on a recent hot and humid afternoon. Get it while you can.

Junk food pairing: Pair your Storm and Stress with a bag of Mrs. Fisher's Dark Chips. They're made with potatoes that have more sugar than normal so they're darker, richer, and full of melanoidin goodness.

**After drinking this beer, I listened to the In Our Time episode about the Sturm und Drang movement and learned that "Drang" really translates as urge and not stress.

Rustic Franconian Lagers Über Alles: Spezial by Gathering Place Brewing Co.

Franconia.

Franconia.

Franconia. Franconia. Franconia. Franconia.

Looking at the region on a map, it looks like one of those areas that, if you told a big city slicker you hailed from it, they'd laugh and call you a country bumpkin. Think of someone from the Plains states telling a Chicagoan or New Yorker that they're from Nebraska or Kansas. Sure, Nuremberg has a bit over half a million people, but it looks like most other cities are rather smaller.

The marketing division of Gathering Place Brewing Co. says that each town in Franconia has its own special lager. When I make it over to Germany and tour Franconia, I will do my best to verify this claim. However, I've read something like this written by people whom I trust have been there and to be reliable narrators. This Stadt here has its own proprietary pale lager while the one down the Strasse has their special dark lager. I think of these beers as Landbiers, a.k.a. – country lagers. Not so much a style with set ranges of color, A.B.V., and I.B.U., but more a generic geographical appellation. Just the beer you find in a rural or small town Gasthaus.

And so when Gathering Place describes Spezial as a "Rustic Franconian Lager", I don't think it really means anything beyond whatever lager they felt like brewing last fall or whenever this batch was brewed. (My can had no date on it and the brewery's website says it went on sale last November.) The only other such brew from Wisconsin that I am aware of is New Glarus' Two Women.

This was my first taste of Gathering Place. I didn't have high hopes going in. More like medium hopes. It's one of Milwaukee's newer breweries having opened in 2017. While they don't appear to be a haze factory trying to do something different for a change, I also hadn't heard that the brewmaster had studied in Germany and had enough tanks at their disposal to lager Spezial for 3 months.

Out of the gate, things went well. The beer was a beautiful dark gold that looked almost amber. In fact, after my initial once over, I held it up to another light mumbling to myself, "Is it gold? Or is it amber?" Thankfully my Frau didn't notice this. Or simply chose not to say anything, more likely. Atop the resplendent elixir was a slightly tan head that was fluffy and was in no hurry to go away. This was a genuinely beautiful brew that made you want to drink it on looks alone.

Spezial smelled nice too – like grapefruit and flowers engaged in a pas de deux of olfactory bliss with a little breadiness cutting in every so often. Just wonderful.

Appearances can be deceiving. For a beer that had such a deep color, it wasn't heavy. Not watery, mind you, but rather in that golden middle. There was a tasty bready base but it was those hops that really shine here with – quelle surprise – citrus/grapefruit and floral flavors. Also lurking in there was a touch of honeyed sweetness. The carbonation was precisely to my taste too with just enough to add a pleasant fizzy bite yet not make it particularly dry. This complemented the lingering spicy hop bitterness which left a very nice dry finish.

As I drained my glass, a lovely pattern of Schaumhaftvermoegen emerged with a band here and a spot there.

Spezial was a wonderful surprise. While I wish that it had just a touch more of that bready malt flavor - something Two Women has more of, it was still very, very tasty. All those grapefruit and floral hops flavors may have been front and center but they didn't overwhelm. Just the right bitterness, just the right fizz, it looks lovely – what a great beer. It made me wish that Covid was gone so I can buy some plane tickets for Germany. Or at least that it was spring and Spezial was on tap down at The Biergarten at Olbrich.

Junk food pairing – Just as Spezial evokes the Landbiers of Franconia, Dill Pickle Kraut Krisps evoke the rich culinary heritage of Germany with crunchy, tangy triangles made of sauerkraut and delicately seasoned with dill.