As Baron von Wortzenberger said...

 

The Rauch: Rauchbier by Dovetail

It's a shame that the Steve's Liquor out on Junction Road is on the far west side instead of the more fashionable east side where I live. This is because that store is a reliable source of the elixir that is rauchbier. They always have Schlenkerla's Helles available, if nothing else, and are happy to stock rauchbiers from whomever may distribute them to Madison and not just Schlenkerla. Last year I recall going in and finding they had a rather nice selection of Schlenkerla's smoky brews.

On a more recent stop, I found some of Dovetail's Rauchbier which only has to make the trip from Chicago and not across the ocean from Bamberg. (Though I didn't see the Fastenbier on my this visit. But, it's not too late as it's still Lent.) I tasted it several years ago when I took a trek out to Ravenswood and stopped in at the brewery. Sadly, I had never seen it on a Madison shelf until now and had somehow always missed it on my various stops at Binny's.

It has been the Mr. Snuffleupagus of brews. The Dovetail website declares it's Rauchbier season and the Binny's website says, "Oh yeah, we've got some." Yet it's nowhere to be seen when I am wandering the aisles. It's as if another rauchhead always buys that last 4-pack just before I walk in the door so I just miss it by mere seconds.

And thusly I was thrilled to see it here in Madison.

My recollection of having drunk it several years back does not extend beyond "Ooh! This stuff is amber and tasty." so there was this sense of tasting it for the first time all over again.

The big tan head of loose foam that topped my pour lasted a goodly amount of time so you are able to see it in my photograph. The beer was clear and had a deep amber hue. Lots of bubbles were to be seen inside. Oh mama, did I smell the smoke! Others seem to describe every rauchbier they encounter as smelling and tasting like bacon. Yet no one seems to describe smoked beef brisket as smelling or tasting like bacon. Who among us thinks smoked cheddar has any bacon-like qualities? Does anyone add smoked paprika to their food thinking it will add the aroma and flavor of bacon?

It's just this beer piety that most people accept and generally ends further attempts to really dig into what the malt is laying down for your palate.

Here the smokiness is distinctly unbaconlike and more akin to smoked Swiss cheese. There was also plum in the aroma as well as a herbal hoppiness.

This stuff had a really nice fizziness and a big dose of rauch caressed my tongue into a smoky bliss. I also tasted a bit of caramel, though this was not a particularly sweet brew, some mild stone fruit, and a bit of bread. Oh, and those herbal hops added a nice bit of balance.

The smokiness lingered on the finish a bit before a wave of hops came in to provide what I thought was a moderate bitterness and slightly more dryness. This is not a particularly hoppy beer but there was enough to balance all those malt flavors and I liked how they came in and washed the smoke away.

Sehr schön! The smoky taste was the star of the show here with a clean, sharp flavor not dulled by sweetness. My hypothesis is that sweetness makes for a heavier taste that mimics fat in some way and gives rise to comparisons to bacon. Without the sweetness, the smoke flavor is cleaner and more woody and leans towards the fuliginous.

And thus ends my hypothesizing for today.

But, in truth, I loved all the malty flavors, especially that bit of bread. I wouldn't have minded a little more hoppiness but, as it is, they offered balance and a nice herbal-spicy flavor. The bitterness was nice on the finish too. Just a great mix of flavors.

Junk food pairing: Bleu cheese is the perfect pairing for your Rauchbier and I recommend grabbing a bag of Buffalo Blue Cheese Combos. The spicy heat complements the hops while the creamy, earthy taste of the cheese brings out new, albeit subtle, dimensions to the smoke.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 117 - Postlude: Holy crap, there's a marzipan museum!

(Don't forget to read entry #117.)

Some fine Netflix recommendations

I tuned into Netflix for the first time in a week or 2 and I got some fine recommendations first thing on my home screen.

The Corona Diaries 1: The Best Laid Plans

Back in August I started my Corona Diaries - a series of missives sent to family & friends who live out of state. I am adapting and expanding them for the blog.

Late August 2020

2020 started off well enough.

I have been hoping to visit Germany for a while so I enrolled in a non-credit adult enrichment German language course thinking the time was nigh. The Frau and I were looking forward to drinking Rauchbier in Bamberg and seeing what else Germany had to offer a couple of American tourists. Perhaps the Altstadt in Heidelberg as well. Or Berlin. How can you go wrong with Berlin? I could see the sights I've only read about in the Gereon Rath novels. Ever since learning that my German ancestry goes back to my great-great-great grandfather Heinrich who hailed from Hannover, I've had a desire to drink a Breyhan (a beer style native to Hannover and very popular from the 16th-19th century) and to visit the city from which I get my German blood. The first ur-drops, anyway.

I took German in college and actually became fairly proficient for a short time. One of my roommates had taken German in high school and was majoring in German literature so I was able to come home and practice with him. It got to the point that I started to dream in German. The next year my friend went to study in Germany for a year and so there went my tutor and conversation partner. (Accompanying him was Scott Manning of Vintage Brewing. I believe that Scottie's Schwarzbier, Schwarzfahren, was named in honor of one of their adventures.)

It wasn't long before I found that I recalled much more than I thought I would. Over the years I've always used a bit of German here and there, e.g. – yelling "Achtung!" at the kids when they were little.

Speaking of my stepsons, they are doing well overall. The oldest turns 25(?!) in the autumn. He lives very close to where we lived before buying our house – on the isthmus not too far from downtown. His girlfriend moved in with him when the stay at home orders came down in March. He was doing some acting as well as teaching when the pandemic struck. I am very proud of him as he has gotten his stuff together and become quite responsible. It's as if he's an adult or something.

The youngest turned 21 this summer. Instead of volunteering to buy beer for his stepfather so he doesn't have to venture out to the Covid-laced liquor store, he is moving to Eau Claire at the end of this month or early September. As young men often do, he is following a woman - his girlfriend is returning to school there.

Having an interest in medieval history, I took another class last winter called "The Art of the Medieval Book." I learned the difference between parchment and vellum and how they're made, about medieval inks, and so on. Plus, I was excited to handle a codex for the very first time!

Being a big fan of The Name of the Rose – the novel, film, and TV series – it was thrilling to actually touch and leaf through some codices. To be able to feel the parchment, look at the detail in the illuminations with my own eyes, and whatnot was really neat. Luckily my fingers and tongue did not turn black.

2020 was also supposed to have included other travel plans beyond a potential trip to the Fatherland. I had carried a week of vacation time over from last year and had plans aplenty. The spring was to have involved a trip to New Orleans to visit The National WWII Museum with friends, a couple of whom I got to know through my brother and were, like him, big World War II history buffs.

My father was a huge WWII history buff and passed this down to my brother. I couldn't help but develop some interest in the subject and recall writing a paper on the day that will live in infamy at Pearl Harbor when I was in 4th or 5th grade. But I never came close to the devotion to the subject that they had. For instance, they'd be able to watch a WWII movie and point out that the Panzer Mk III onscreen was not yet in service at the time of the events the movie is portraying. I can still picture my father sitting before our TV in back of the house with mentholated smoke streaming from his nose and curling around his head as he gleefully watched Kelly's Heroes or Tora! Tora! Tora! for the 40th time.

After my brother died, I felt strangely obligated to keep the family interest in WWII alive so I started reading about it. I inherited some of their books but I've also been buying my own. Rather than retreading the well-worn, I've been trying to avoid the battles and aspects of the war that the likes of Steven Spielberg have made into blockbuster movies so that means no D-Day, no Pearl Harbor, no Holocaust, and no Battle of the Bulge. Instead I've read about the Rape of Nanking, the Battle of Stalingrad, the North African theater, and about Europe in the immediate aftermath of the war's end. 

Here are my latest purchases:

I've not yet read the book on the invasion of Poland but reading about The Battle of Okinawa sure makes life during the pandemic look like a cakewalk, I can tell you.

I had hoped to visit The National WWII Museum with my brother at some point – perhaps also head over to the National Museum of the Pacific War outside of San Antonio with him since we'd be down south. We'd check out the exhibits, he could lecture me about the war, and we'd reminisce about the old man. Much to my dismay, that never happened. So, I had a crew of friends lined up to board an Amtrak train for a spring trek to New Orleans…

Those plans fell through when The Frau announced she needed surgery. I moved the New Orleans trip to the autumn so I could be around for her recovery. (All went well and she has recovered fully.) In addition, she wanted to go to London for her X0th birthday in the summer. I had applied for my passport in December and it arrived in February.

And then came COVID-19. All these plans were shelved along with my annual trek to Indianapolis for the Gencon gaming convention; the gaming convention here in Madison, Gamehole Con, was soon canceled too and, most recently, so was the Doctor Who convention held out in Lombard, IL on Thanksgiving weekend, Chicago TARDIS. It's depressing to see my virgin passport and be reminded of all the plans I had. I really need to stow that somewhere out of sight.

Instead of venturing far and wide, I have spent the past five months working on short trips. Yesterday the Frau and I visited our favorite dairy, Sassy Cow. The farm and creamery are only about 20 miles north of Madison. We were there several years ago when the creamery opened but haven't been back since. That trip is notable in our minds for the cow who was in labor.

I had recently read an article about the plight of dairy farmers here in Wisconsin and thought visiting a farm would be a fun, if short, getaway.

Sassy Cow is not an industrial farm – more like a large family farm. The tour is only about 30 minutes but it's always nice to get out to the country. The smell of a cow barn never fails to take me back to living up north by Eau Claire while in high school. We left after having spent more money than I had hoped and are now very well stocked with ice cream, half & half, cheese, and yoghurt.

What-Ifs, Maybes, and Might-Have-Beens: First Bavarian Pale Ale by Apostelbräu

What-Ifs, Maybes, and Might-Have-Beens: First Bavarian Pale Ale by Apostelbräu

I'm in media res of clearing out the beer in my basement. Now, I don't mean the big brews aging on a shelf in the corner but rather the other ones on the floor. Occasionally I'll run across a real gem that escaped my mind. It is rescued in the nick of time and a fine gustatory experience is had. At other times I run into beers have eluded me for just too long and they've taken a turn for the worse. What follows is one of these latter cases. Sadly.



A pale ale brewed in Germany?! Yes, you read that right. Note also how Apostelbräu brands itself as a craft brewery. Rudolf Hirz of Apostelbräu is a bit of a maverick, apparently. I read that he also innovated in the late 1980s by brewing spelt beer, spelt being a variety of wheat. The grain also features in First Bavarian Pale Ale. It seems that the grain is more common in Germany than it is here in the States where it's generally considered a specialty grain.

The first thing I ponder when seeing a beer from Germany such as a pale ale or one that departs markedly from the Rheinheitsgebot is whether or not the brew is export-only. It's one thing for German brewers to brew English pale ale and to add things like quince, spruce, and rhubarb to their beers; but, if these are just going to be exported never to touch the lips of German drinkers, exactly how much has changed? Luckily it seems that First Bavarian Pale Ale is available in Germany as well as at Binny's in suburban Chicago.

The beer poured a nice gold, as you can see. It was naturtrüb - naturally hazy. From what I've read, spelt has more protein than the other more common varieties of wheat so I am left to wonder if spelt beers are hazier than normal wheat brews. My pour produced a fine head that was white and pillowy and which dissipated rather slowly. There were rather few bubbles in the liquid itself.

The aroma was rather sweet with the malt having a caramel scent. This is likely due to the age of the beer but there was also grassy hops to be had so I assume that the beer wasn't quite senescent yet but rather middle aged. On the tongue the sweetness all but disappeared which again leads me to believe that the beer, while not fresh, wasn't ready for the old beer home. It had a mellow malt flavor which was bready while the grassy hop flavor returned. It didn't have much in the way of fruitiness which I presume was the result of its, shall we say, extended aging.

It finished a bit watery with a moderate spicy hop bitterness.

This brew wasn't as far gone as either the Roggen Gold or Uerige Alt that I've had recently. Or at least I don't think it was judging by the hop flavor and the lack of sweetness on the tongue. Still, this was not a fresh beer.

It should go without saying that I'd love to try a fresh(er) bottle of First Bavarian Pale Ale. It tastes like Apostelbräu used a Noble hop here instead of…well, what do the English generally use in their pale ales? Fuggles? Goldings? From what I've been able to gather, Apostelbräu was one of the first breweries in Germany to try their hand at an English pale ale. I wonder if this was inspired by beers from England or by the American craft beer boom or…? The use of spelt here gives a Teutonic slant on the style and, if Noble hops were used, then all the more so. Another one to look out for the next time I'm at Binny's. Has anyone seen this here in Madison?

The German Love of Beer Has Ancient Roots

I've been reading of bit of Tacitus lately, specifically Germania which dates from the first century C.E. In it the historian describes the Germanic tribes encountered by the Romans. This passage stood out:

A liquor for drinking bearing a certain resemblance to wine is made by the process of fermentation from barley or other grain.

And people thought of them as barbarians. It is surely a sign of an advanced and highly civilized culture that they brewed beer.

500 Fairy Tales Unearthed in Germany

A stash of previously unknown fairy tales collected in the 19th century have recently been uncovered.

A whole new world of magic animals, brave young princes and evil witches has come to light with the discovery of 500 new fairytales, which were locked away in an archive in Regensburg, Germany for over 150 years. The tales are part of a collection of myths, legends and fairytales, gathered by the local historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth (1810–1886) in the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz at about the same time as the Grimm brothers were collecting the fairytales that have since charmed adults and children around the world.

No collection of fine Teutonic fairy tales is complete without some ultra-violence.

For example, there is the tale of a maiden who escapes a witch by transforming herself into a pond. The witch then lies on her stomach and drinks all the water, swallowing the young girl, who uses a knife to cut her way out of the witch.

You can read one of the tales, "The Turnip Princess", here.


("King Golden Hair")