Caraway Brews' Moment in the Sun

It seems that caraway is having a moment with brewers in southern Wisconsin. First it was MobCraft's Fish Fry Rye, a rye lager with the venerable seed and then a few days ago I discovered Pumpernickel Porter over at Vintage.

It had your expected dark malt flavors of coffee and bitter chocolate, a bit of stone fruit sweetness, spicy rye, a little sour like sourdough bread (or perhaps 19th century porters), and caraway. Liquid bread indeed! Will a caraway IPA be next?

Baby I'm-a Want Rye: Fish Fry Rye by MobCraft Beer

It has been several years since I've had a MobCraft beer. Started in 2012 here in Madison, they embraced the novelty of brewing beer recipes that were suggested by and voted upon by the hoi polloi. And via this crowdsourcing method, we got such beers as a pils brewed with durians & cashews and a Berliner Weisse made to taste like our unofficial state cocktail, the Old Fashioned. I found their brews to be hit or miss, frankly. Some were tasty while others leaned towards Archie McPhee novelty and away from beer.

Mobcraft moved to Milwaukee in 2016 and I seem to recall that a more stable line-up of less goofy beers began to coalesce shortly thereafter. They started brewing a Kölsch-style ale year-round, for instance. It was also around this time that I stopped paying much attention to MobCraft. I tired of the novelty brews and found their quality to be inconsistent. It seemed that some of their beers were just not brewed well or, at least, not to my liking. A beer or 2 was watery or I had a lager that tasted like someone had lagered a beer for the first time in their life or that balance of flavors was just a foreign concept. To my taste, things started tasting like mediocre homebrew.

And then earlier this spring I heard tell of a MobCraft rye lager brewed with caraway called Fish Fry Rye, an appeal to the traditional Wisconsin Friday night meal and the bread that comes with it at many establishments. The Wisconsin fish fry as we know it today originated during Prohibition when taverns began selling fish, something we have in abundance in our many lakes here. Large swaths of these customers were Catholics of German and Polish ancestry who were under papal injunction not to eat meat on Fridays.

In addition to fried fish, your plate comes with a potato of some kind, cole slaw, and a piece of bread or dinner roll. The smart crowd knows that a slice of rye bread is the way to go.

Well, I like rye. I like lagers. I just had to try it.

Fish Fry Rye looks quite appetizing. It's a perfectly clear, brilliant amber. The small white head in my glass went away quickly but a fair number of bubbles were to be seen inside the liquid. Taking a whiff, my nose got a big dose of grain - not quite bready and more like a hearty cracker. Just a hint of caraway lurked in the background while a small dose of spicy-herbal hops was to be had as well.

Taking a sip revealed a light body with a fine medium bit of fizziness. The grain taste was on the mild side and there was a little caramel sweetness too. It had more of spicy rye kind of taste and less of a sweeter, slightly nutty barley one. Other than being labeled a lager, I don't know if MobCraft considers this an American amber lager, a Vienna lager, a Märzen, or who. Caraway was noticeable but not prominent. Some herbal hops kept things balanced and crisp.

On the swallow, the grain faded allowing the piney-citrus caraway flavor to get a little more potent as those hops took on a white peppery taste and provided a gentle bitterness and a little dryness to go with it.

This was a good beer. I wish it had a slightly heavier body and Great Divide made a breadier tasting amber rye lager but this was still enjoyable stuff. MobCraft certainly spiced it right as I felt it had just the perfect amount of caraway. As the beer warmed a little, it got a tad sweeter but not a whole lot. A fine accompaniment to what is perhaps the quintessential Wisconsin meal.

Junk food pairing: Even if it's not Friday, head down to your favorite Oriental market and grab a bag of Lay's Roasted Fish Flavor potato chips and wash them down with a Fish Fry Rye. It's the next best thing to the genuine article.

Better Late Than Never: Helles Ginger Bock by MobCraft Beer

I was going to begin by saying something akin to "blah blah blah Madison's MobCraft" when I recalled that the brewery has moved to Milwaukee. But being slightly behind the times is par for the course for this review as MobCraft's Helles Ginger Bock came out earlier this spring. In addition, my quaffing occurred a month or so ago. Tempus fugit.

MobCraft and I have – not a love/hate relationship – more like an on-again/off-again relationship. I have a great deal of respect for what they do. Polling the teeming millions and then brewing an everything but the kitchen sink beer cannot be easy. But I have found that often times their brews are better in a theoretical kind of way as described on their website than they are when encountered by my tongue.

Despite this, there are still times when I'm simply a sucker for novelty, something MobCraft brews up in spades. Helles Ginger Bock appears to have been a brewer's choice as I see no evidence that the style/flavor was crowdsourced from the unwashed masses.

In addition to precipitation, procreation, and verdancy ascendant, the spring time is also flush with pale bocks. Spring bocks are lighter in color and a bit more hoppy than the bock biers that help keep the winter at bay. The pungent zestiness of ginger was thought by practitioners of medieval medicine to be hot and wet and so the root is an ideal addition to a spring bock as it can add an aromatic, sanguine complexion to the bier.

MobCraft's vernal brew was a lovely golden hue. Its sparkling clarity revealed a surfeit of bubbles tucked underneath an inch or so of off-white foam.

The smell was dominated by fresh ginger and its wonderful floral-citrus-pepper pungency. There was a little bit of bread to be had in the background as well. This combination held fast into the taste where that zesty ginger took pride of place. A moderate dose of carbonation and a hint of bready sweetness fooled part of my tongue into thinking it was drinking the ginger beer with which I was down my jerk pork whenever I frequent the Jamerica food cart.

Some grassy hops were revealed as the ginger faded on the finish. Bitterness was moderate but the denouement was surprisingly rather dry. Not much Schaumhaftvermoegen to be had aside from a few random foamy spots.

It should be said that Helles Ginger Bock has a great fresh ginger aroma and taste and it truly reminded me of a good ginger soda. To a point. I found this bier to be lacking in the malt department. It was 7.1% A.B.V. but had a fairly light body. There wasn't much bready taste nor malt sweetness. I have no problem with the style's hoppiness being supplanted by the ginger, for the most part, but the paucity of grainy goodness made the bier quite one dimensional.

Junk food pairing: Pair any remaining Helles Ginger Bock with a fine, warm processed cheese food sauce. Dip thick cut/kettle chips in the gooey mess to your heart's content.

You Got Beer in My Cocktail: Old Fashioned Berliner Weisse by MobCraft Brewing

Madison’s (soon to be Milwaukee’s) MobCraft Brewing is famous for pioneering the crowdsourcing of beer recipes. My experiences with their brews have been very hit or miss but I don't mind trying out one of their brews every so often that sounds interesting.

And of one their brews that sounded interesting was Old Fashioned Berline Weisse. Just as the name indicates, it's a Berliner Weisse flavored with various spices and aged in either bourbon or brandy barrels in order to turn an unsuspecting bier into a simulacrum of Wisconsin's unofficial cocktail, the Old Fashioned.

In addition to not knowing much about beer, I also don't know much about cocktails. So I've gleaned from the Interwebs that the ur-Old Fashioned was made by muddling sugar and bitters and then adding whiskey. The concoction was then garnished with an orange slice. Cheeseheads, however, tweaked the recipe at some point lost in the mists of time to use brandy instead of whiskey and added a splash of soda or sour mix. It also gained a maraschino cherry for additional garnish. This article by Rachel Fell seems as good an introduction to Wisconsin's version of the drink as any. And it comports with what I've always heard about the state's love affair with brandy, namely, that it began at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago after some visitors from north of the border fell in love with Korbel and returned home to spread the gospel.

I recently tasted the brandy barrel aged variation of Old Fashioned Berline Weisse. The brew was released back in July 2014. While not fresh, my bottle has been stowed away in my cellar so it's been kept relatively cool and out of light.

Old Fashioned Berliner Weisse pours a gold hue which was rather darker than I expected. While my initial pour was clear, my last one was totally turbid. This was an extremely effervescent bier as befitting a "champagne of the north". Foam rushed out of the bottle upon de-capping. In my haste to put the cap into my bottle cap recycling can, I didn't notice the frothy ejaculate and, like Onan, some of it ended up on the floor. Once decanted, my glass had a large off-white head that proved to be in no hurry to depart as well as a country ton of bubbles in the bier itself moving on up.

As I noted above, Old Fashioned is brewed with various spices and they are meant to mimic bitters. On the nose I could smell the cardamom and star anise, but not the juniper. There was also the scent of the oranges. Everything on the aroma reappeared in the taste. And again, I could not taste juniper. Joining those spices and the fruit was brandy. The barrel aging was done with a relatively light touch so, while you cannot miss its flavor, it doesn't overpower the other components. Being a Berliner Weisse, this is a sour beer courtesy of lactic acid. And Old Fashioned has an assertive sour flavor, though it isn't particularly lemony or citrus-tasting as is usually the case.

This is something I've wondered about since I've started drinking sour beers. Why is it that some lactic acid sour beers have that lemon flavor whereas others do not? Does that taste fade with age, perhaps? Something to investigate.

Lastly, I shall note that the carbonation is prominent. Not only is the Berliner Weisse a fizzy and vivacious style, but all those bubbles help imitate the soda or sour that is used in the Wisconsin iteration of the cocktail.

For the finish those spices lingered a bit until finally fading which allowed the lactic acid to prevail for a sour, dry finale. Schaumhaftvermoegen was sparse as the vast majority slid down into the bier. However, there were a few spots of foam to be had.

While I don't indulge in Old Fashioneds and it's been several months since I stole a sip from one, MobCraft's tribute to my state's favorite cocktail tasted very much like how I remembered its namesake tasting. My frau, who indulges in an Old Fashioned much more frequently than me, gave it the thumbs up saying that it tasted just like the cocktail. It was as if our dining room had been transformed into a supper club.

Beyond the whole mimicry element, Old Fashioned is a tasty brew. It has a light body and is all fizzy and bubbly yet it also boasts a plethora of flavors from spices, fruit, barrel aging, and bold bacteria. I was quite impressed with just how much I could taste the brandy considering the bier is only 5% A.B.V.

Junk food pairing: If you should have any Old Fashioned left, begin by pairing it with the fried equivalent of a relish tray. Grab some dill pickle potato chips and some vegetable chips. Once you've polished those off, go for Meijer Prime Rib & Horseradish Wavy Potato Chips.

This Bier Has Been Censored: Cranberry Alvarez by MobCraft Beer

I was a bit hesitant buying this bier, I must admit. MobCraft is one for two on the weizen front to my taste. Don't get me wrong, Batshit Crazy is a very tasty beer, in my humble opinion - the folks at MobCraft are not untalented. And that the other beers of theirs that I've had range from awful to good is not a hanging offense. But none of their brews really jump out at me as having that special, ineffable something that makes any of them extraordinary. Sometimes I get the impression that the brewery spends too much time brewing the often novelty crowd-sourced beers that they're known for.

Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that MobCraft quit fielding ideas for beers from the unwashed masses. You gotta dance with the one that brung ya, after all. However, I do feel that MobCraft's beers are largely middle-of-the-road and sometimes I wonder what would happen if they were forced to brew straight-up beers. I am going to review a hefeweizen here. Can MobCraft brew a good hefeweizen without tea, fruit, or elements of a gose? I don't know and MobCraft don't seem eager to try. With most of their beers being very hoppy, barrel-aged, having coffee, vanilla, fruit, and so on, it's hard to gauge the level of talent that MobCraft has. 

Let's move onto Cranberry Alvarez which was renamed Cranberry Censored for reasons unknown to me. Presumably Barry Alvarez or another bigwig at the UW was unamused.

Cranberry Alvarez pours a dull light red. The dullness is the result of the bier's cloudiness which, in turn, is the result of proteins from the wheat. I got a big pink head on my pour. It was one of those stiffies – a rigid head that you get a little bit of with each sip but there will be a bit of left when all the liquid is gone. There were oodles of bubbles coming up from the bottom of the glass. I thought it was a nice looking bier.

Wisconsin leads the nation in growing cranberries and I'm going to assume that MobCraft used native fruit in this bier. If this is the case, then Cranberry Alvarez's aroma smacks of Wisconsin with a wonderful tart cranberry bouquet accompanied by some wheat/bread in there too. The hefeweizen is often a well-carbonated bier and Cranberry Alvarez is no exception. It's a light and bubbly bier with some nice cranberry tartness hitting the spot. But I could taste only a little grain and even less of the trademark yeast flavors which here was a shade of banana. Overall the bier was thin. As it warmed some grapefruit hop flavor came out (the Mosaic hops, I presume).

The finish was quite dry with the lingering cranberry tartness joined by the carbonation and moderate grassy hop flavor and a fair amount of bitterness. My glass was lined with webs of Schaumhaftvermoegen which made for a pretty ending.

While I liked the cranberry in Cranberry Alvarez, the bier was watery. There was very little of the expected phenolic flavors, although I give them a modicum of credit for using yeast that gave more pungent banana flavors than clove ones. If not tasting much like a hefeweizen is this bier's cardinal sin, then its venial one is being overly hoppy, especially on the finish. To me, hops in a hefeweizen should basically be also-rans. The style is about a wheat/malt stage to showcase the flavors born of the yeast. Even lacking the latter, I think the hoppiness present would have interfered with a fully armed and operationa hefeweizen.

Junk food pairing: Pair Cranberry Alvarez with some trail mix. A little salt to help bring out the subdued grain taste and some dried fruit sweetness to make up for the lackluster yeast flavors.

A New World of Flavor That Got a Bit Too Old: Don Durio's Filthy Mustachio by MobCraft

Don Durio's Filthy Mustochio was MobCraft's 14th crowdsourced brew. It won in November of last year and even came with a tale of an apocryphal Spanish 16th century Spanish explorer. The beer made it to shelves in January. It was brewed with cashews and durian, a southeast Asian fruit renowned for its malodorous aroma. When I bought this beer I figured that the recipe won the vote purely on novelty terms with voters keen on seeing a stinky fruit having its 15 minutes of fame. This coupled with my understanding that MobCraft had precious little, if any, experience making lagers did not give me high hopes for Filthy Mustachio.

The beer poured a nice dark straw color and was clear. I got a decent white, frothy head that disappeared fairly quickly. It did, however, have the requisite bubbles going up the glass. A very pretty beer. Too bad the head went away with such celerity. I'm not sure if this was because of the age of the beer or if the head dissipated that fast when fresh as well.

With the durian's reputation, I was rather worried that I'd sniff the beer and inhale a miasma. Instead my nose was greeted mainly with a biscuity/grainy aroma. When I inhaled extra deeply I caught an odd, musky fruit scent which I took to be the durian. It was by no means unpleasant but it was also rather faint. Although I was relieved that my nose was not assaulted by the fruit, I was a bit worried that my tongue would not be so lucky.

My fears were allayed quickly as Filthy Mustachio yielded primarily the moderately sweet taste of malt and cracker with a high dose of carbonation. The cashews were present but offered a subtle nuttiness. Also in the background was a bit of sweet fruitiness. Never having tasted a durian I had no idea what to expect them to taste like. I tasted something fig-like here which was pleasant enough.

The brew finished just this side of dry with the carbonation and a touch of spicy hops attempting to keep some maltiness at bay.

It's difficult for me to judge Filthy Mustachio since I drank it somewhere around six months late. I'm not sure if the fruit and nut flavors would have dulled over this amount of time. As it was I'd have liked them to have been just a bit stronger, a bit more up front instead of adding to an overall flavor which I found to be un-pilsner-like. Not bad, mind you, just not clean. I was hoping for a nice clean pilsner base upon which the durian and cashew were layered upon. Plus I tasted no hops. I've had pilsners that were this old and, while they certainly had lost hop flavor, they did not lack the presence of lupulin as did this beer. I'd wager that most of the imported pilsners on store shelves are roughly this old.

One thing that I really liked about Filthy Mustachio was the use of cashews. I am intrigued by the use of nuts in beer. Lazy Magnolia did a fine job utilizing pecans in their Southern Pecan Nut Brown, for instance. The cashews work well here but I wonder how they tasted in Filthy Mustachio when it was fresh. I'd imagine that a pistachio would be a more suitable companion to the clean, crisp flavors of a pils.

Junk food pairing: While drinking Filthy Mustachio eat Cheez-It Duoz Sharp Cheddar and Parmesan. The latter especially have a bit more salt than the average cracker and help highlight the cashew and durian in the beer.

The Brew of Dr. Moreau: Orange You Glad? by MobCraft Beer

It's been a while since I've even tasted a beer by MobCraft. The Madison brewery is famous for crowdsourcing recipe ideas that often times transgress more style boundaries than Lady Gaga and involve so many herbs, spices, nuts, twigs, berries, and fruits that Rheinheitsgebot proponents are sent into apoplectic fits by merely contemplating the existence of such beers. I've had some MobCraft brews that I thought were almost, but not quite, entirely unlike beer. Others have been quite tasty. They say that absence makes the liver heart grow fonder so I was rather keen on trying some MobCraft after a hiatus.

Orange You Glad? won the vote back in February of this year and, I presume, was released in the spring. Described on the label as a "sour hefeweizen", it is really a Moreauvian concoction with a gose having been grafted onto a hefeweizen that is the half-sibling of a San Pellegrino. Its original name was apparently "Orange You Glad You Weren't Beat Up By a Banana?" with the orange on the label giving that right hook to a banana. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, the federal folks that approve beer labels, nixed the initial one so the beer was rechristened and the banana was replaced by a door (?!) - kind of like how Stanley Kubrick CGI'd a bunch of shadowy voyeurs into the big orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut.

Orange You Glad? pours a very cloudy yellow. There were even some bits of sediment floating around in my glass. I'm not sure what they were but I have lived to tell the tale so, whatever they may have been, deleterious to one's health they were not. I got a goodly sized white head that looked like it belonged to a glass of 7-Up. The bubbles were large and POOF! Gone in a few seconds. There were also lots of bubbles in the beer itself going upwards and onwards.

On the nose I caught a moderate amount of lemony sour from the lactic acid bacteria, a lovely bit of blood orange fragrance, and some doughy/honey malt sweetness. On my first sip my tongue was accosted by the carbonation. It then latched onto a mild lemony tartness from the lacto and wheat. Faint but still discernable were orange zest, coriander, and some of the trademark hefeweizen esters that taste like banana. It was light and refreshing but merely passable with the carbonation almost overpowering the other flavors, none of which was particularly prominent.

I discovered that the secret here is to let the beer warm up a bit. This did not take too long in the 85° heat, I can assure you. It was like drinking a whole different beer. The carbonation struggled against the other flavors that had a newfound potency. Most pronounced was the revivified lactic sour which took on mouth puckering proportions. The fruity esters took their rightful place near the top of the flavor heap with the orange zest receiving a boost as well. Perhaps most tasteful to me was that the coriander went from being barely discernible to glaringly obvious. I enjoy coriander very much and thought it was in harmony here with the sourness and fruity flavors.

The beer finished dry with the sour trailing off leaving a slight blood orange tartness behind to meld with some mild Noble hop spiciness. Considering that the beer's head disappeared in no time flat, I was unsurprised that my glass was left ohne Schaumhaftvermoegen. Perhaps citric acid inhibits protein foam building. Or some such thing.

Once Orange You Glad? warms up a bit and reaches beerlibrium, it is a light, refreshing (5.4% A.B.V.) blend of fruity flavors complemented by sour and some spice. It's just a really nice mix. I do wish that I was able to taste the grains more, however. The emphasis here is clearly not on the malt but I do think it would have benefitted from a bit more of a bready base. Still, this was a rather tasty brew.

Junk food pairing: Orange You Glad? has a lot going on. Ergo you are going to want a junk food that is up to the test. I recommend some Cheez-It Extra Toasty crackers smothered in Sharp Cheddar Easy Cheese. I love the surplus Maillard reaction toasty goodness of the crackers and you get extra processed cheese food product to pierce the cornucopia of flavors in the beer.

If You Listen to Fools: Blood Orange Tea Weizen from Mobcraft

Madison's Mobcraft bills itself as the world's first crowdsourced beer company. Giotto Troia, Henry Schwartz, and Andrew Gierczak started Mobcraft with the Internet-age idea of having customer submit recipes or ideas for beers. After the wheat is separated from the chaff, those that remain are put up for a vote via social media sites and the winner is brewed. These crowdsourced beers are released once per month and brewed over at House of Brews by brewmaster Page Buchanan.

I recently found a bottle of crowdsourced batch #2, Blood Orange Tea Weizen, over at Trixie's Liquor and figured I'd give it a go. I like weizens and blood orange and tea sounded like interesting additions.

My beer photos are usually pretty crappy and this review will be no exception. The usual spot for my photographic disgraces, the dining room table, was occupied by two cats so it was off to the kitchen where harsh white was the order of the day making it look like I took the snap at a hospital. The beer looked really nice – take my word on this. It was clear a deep amber, perhaps more of a golden brown. My pour didn't produce much of a crown and the beer didn't have much in the way of bubbles either.

A caveat here: my nose was fairly stuffy when I drank this beer. That aside, I mainly smelled grass and citrus when I took a whiff. There was just a bit of sweetness in there as well which was bready to my stuffy proboscis.

I found the taste to be very similar to the nose. On the tongue, this beer is very smooth – almost velvety – with a medium body. The blood orange comes first followed by a bit of the grassy tea flavor. I didn't taste much carbonation but did catch a faint hint of what I thought was bubblegum. The beer got a bit sweeter as it warmed up, mainly citrus-tinged sweetness. The finish was grassy and bitter. I believe that the tea became a bit more discernible and that there was a bit of hops in there as well.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the lack of a nice, pillowy head, a trademark of hefeweizens, was due to something brought in by the tea or fruit. Not really a big deal. The beer wasn't cloudy like a traditional hefeweizen nor was it as light on the tongue. Again, not a big deal. What is a big deal, however, is that I couldn't taste much of a hefeweizen here. It really tasted like blood orange iced tea but with more body than tea delivers. Aside from a fleeting hint of what I think was bubblegum, there's none of the phenols or esters giving the typical banana and cloves flavors. Hefeweizens generally have a lemon-like flavor to them and I thought the blood orange would complement that. Similarly, the style is not usually very bitter but green tea can add a little grassy bitterness to the proceedings. It's not that this is a bad beer but I was expecting/hoping for the citrus and tea to complement the flavors I enjoy in a hefeweizen instead of beating them into submission.

Junk food pairing: Munch on some lime chili tortilla chips with this stuff.