Spam, Eggs, Gotländsdricka, and Spam: Visby by Old Irving Brewing Co.

Last month I spent a few days in Chicago attending some performances of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. And of course a polar vortex descended upon the city as I was driving south and held the city in its icy tendrils as it blew frigid blasts of wind through Chicago's street grid the whole time I was there. My walks to the theaters were quite brisk, I can tell you. Luckily one was only about 3 blocks away. While I was bundled up with all 13' of my Doctor Who scarf, gaggles of young women walked out of smart restaurants on Halsted dressed for a pleasant autumn evening and then observed with a whine, "It's so cold out!"

I returned to Madison on the day the vortex began to lift but not before stopping to meet a cousin for a fine Polish lunch at Opolska Restaurant in Schaumburg. She informed me that right across the street from the restaurant was a Polish grocery store, Deli 4 You. I was pleasantly surprised to see shelves of Polish goodies and bought more sweets than I perhaps should have. And, since it was close, I also went to the local Binny's outpost.

Not surprisingly, there was a decent selection of Polish beers and I bought a couple. Unfortunately, they were both skunk and I have vowed to only buy Polish beer at Polish stores. Well, except for pale lagers as I think that Okacim and its ilk sell alright. But craft brews, nope.

My eyes became strained and I grew bored scanning the shelves for non-IPAs when I saw a label that read "Smoke * Kviek * Spruce Tips * Juniper".

They had me at smoke.

The style was listed as "Gotländsdricka" which was somehow familiar to me. It took me about halfway to Madison to recall that New Glarus had brewed a beer with a similar name. When I finally got home, I looked it up and found that it was Gotlandic, one of their R&D brews from several years back that I recall enjoying.

This brew was called Visby, named after a port on the island of Gotland which is out in the middle of the Baltic Sea east of Sweden. And it was brewed by Old Irving Brewing back in my old neighborhood. I enjoyed their bock, Lifeblood, and was happy to find another of their brews that held appeal for me. Another mark in the beer's favor was diacritical - that umlaut. The ingredient list plus that umlaut surely meant that this was a Nordic style. And Nordic peoples live near the Arctic Circle (most do, anyway) where they must get polar vortices daily so this stuff had to be suitable for winter, if not entirely appropriate.

I think I can count the number of times I've drunk a beer fermented with kviek yeast on one finger so I figured this would be interesting.

My pour produced a nice, big, frothy head of just off-white foam that sat atop a brew that was a slightly hazy gold. For some reason I thought it would be darker. Firstly, I seemed to recall that New Glarus' take on the style was dark and, besides, if this was what the Vikings drank, shouldn't it be Stygian? I mean, wasn't Viking society all dark, grey, and sooty? Didn't these people see The Northman?

Inside I saw a smattering of bubbles.

As expected a sniff revealed a healthy dose of pine. Unexpected, however, was an even healthier dose of pineapple aroma.

"Well, that's kviek for ya," I reasoned.

Taking a sip, I found that it had a medium-light body - not as heavy as I thought it would be - and had a very nice fizziness. That kvieky pineapple was right up front and was accented by a hint of citrus. And there was that resiny/piney flavor. Missing was any smokiness. Even after I let the beer warm I still failed to discern much smoke. As best I could taste, any fuliginous goodness was mellow to begin with and was overshadowed by the resiny one-two punch of spruce tips and juniper.

The pineapple taste lingered on the finish for a spell before being overcome by all that pine flavor which boosted the dryness and let a little bitterness through.

Despite the absence/paucity of smokiness, I really enjoyed this brew. There is just something about how my tongue tasted the pineapple first and then made the shift over to pine that I found intriguing and delicious. Maybe it's because both flavors have "pine". There didn't seem to be a lot of malty sweetness which I appreciated. The grain flavors and what I suspect is a modicum of hops weren't readily tasted and instead seemed to be keeping the more prominent flavors from becoming overwhelming.

Despite a fairly light body, Visby is 6.5% A.B.V. so it definitely helped keep the cold at bay on a recent night as the mercury was taking a dive to below 0.

Junk food pairing: Pair your Visby with a big bag of Crunchy Cheddar Jalapeño Cheetos. The jalapeño adds another sharp taste to complement all that pine. And who doesn't like cheese?

A Beer Fit for Carl Schurz Himself: Lifesblood by Old Irving Brewing Company

When Old Irving Brewing Company opened in 2016, I was elated. Well, not elated. But I did think it was rather neat as I grew up in Irving Park, the larger community area of which the Old Irving Park neighborhood is a part of. I still have family in Old Irving and it is a neighborhood dear to my heart. Besides being famous as my old stomping grounds, I believe Irving Park is home to Wilco’s recording studio, The Loft. And so the neighborhood deserves a nice brewery.

Trying their beer was put on my Chicago to-do list – along with more than a few other things that are still on that list. The way I recall it, whenever I saw their brews for sale, it was always an IPA or a fruited sour. And, truthfully, I just couldn’t care less about these styles. Do you think Gustave Brand was supping on beer that tasted like fruit punch when he was painting the murals at Schurz?! Of course he wasn’t. He quenched his thirst from a hard day of laying portraiture on the library’s spandrels with a beer that tasted of malt and Noble hops.

And so I bided my time until I could find something from Old Irving that was less trendy and less fruity. Now, while it may have taken 6 years, I can finally say that I have sampled one of their brews.

I found it at a suburban Binny’s, Binny’s being a Chicagoland chain of gigantic warehouse liquor stores. Their local beer selection is enormous as there are a lot of breweries down there. Perusing the shelves gets very tedious very quickly. It’s IPA after IPA after fruited sour after fruited sour. Occasionally you run into a farmhouse ale whose label is adorned with an apocryphal tale about the style’s history replete with idyllic imagery of the French countryside and the farmers’ daughters who wander the fields running their hands along the top of the grass like in a Terrance Malick movie pining for a bearded hipster from the American Midwest.

I then run into the Dovetail section and find that it’s all the stuff that I can get here in Madison.

Recommence scanning.

Metropolitan. Ooh! Arc Welder! Ooh! Grab a six pack of that.

After a few dozen more variations from the Simcoe-Citra-Mosaic Empire, I stumbled upon Old Irving’s Lifesblood, a dark bock. It was late November. Bock weather. Perfect because not many breweries in these parts brew a bock. Sure, they have a doppelbock ready in January with some clever pun-ator name, but a regular bock for late fall instead of Arctic vortex weather is a bit hard to come by. New Glarus brews one off and on – Honey Bock, Back 40, or Uff Da. You’d think Capital would have more than one (Mindblock) but they favor doppelbocks. (Capital did have another regular bock bock back in 2020 but that was taproom only.)

So I grabbed a 4-pack of Lifesblood and sat down one chilly night to sample.

I was dumbfounded that I actually got a decent pour as my glass was blessed with a big head of firm, tan foam that had staying power. Lifesblood was a deep reddish brown and clear. I spied a goodly number of bubbles inside. Caramel and roasty grain aromas were strong but I also smelled a little honey, some milk chocolate, and a hint of hop spiciness.

On my first sip, I noticed the beer's medium body along with a nice, mellow fizziness pulsing through its veins. While I tasted sweet things such as plum, milk chocolate, and caramel, it wasn’t extremely sweet, which I appreciated. There was a bit of bread hiding in the background too. Grassy hops helped keep the flavors in balance.

After swallowing, I found that the sweetness faded slowly out while the grassy hops slowly faded in allowing for some medium-light bitterness and dryness.

This is a very good beer. I really liked the milk chocolate flavor and how the moderate fizz allowed for a nice smoothness. Although it had plenty of flavors associated with sweetness, Lifesblood wasn’t cloying. The emphasis was squarely on the malt but it had certain lightness to it that kept it from becoming a big, heavy brew. Perfect for a chilly, but not freezing late fall night.

Junk food pairing: Lifesblood is a fine dunkel bock and should be paired with hearty junk food. I recommend a bag of Lay’s Kobe Beef potato chips.