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.

Citra? Simcoe? Mosaic? What are those?

A couple recent beers that I've had.

Sláinte Mhath: Swamp Thang by Oliphant Brewing

The fine folks at Oliphant up in Somerset have heard the siren call of the Summer of Rauch 2016 and given us a smoky twofer. First there was a rauch Vienna lager and now I have Swamp Thang, their "smokier scotch ale".

It seems that American craft brewers know one and only one Scottish beer – the scotch ale or wee heavy. I don't recall seeing a Scottish ale or a Caledonian Stout or a Pict Pale Ale or anything that isn't a wee heavy. It's like there's this stereotype that all Scottish beer styles are big, dark, and malty. Surely not every Scotsperson has the temperament of Inspector Rebus and hangs out catching a cool breeze on the Isle of Skye needing a heady brew at all times. Don't the Scots have a lighter, fizzier brew for those times when the sun shines as couples traverse the Royal Mile?

I don't know enough about the brews of Scotland to even make an attempt at commentary although I'm sure that, if there were other Scottish styles then an American microbrewer somewhere must surely have given it a go. I just haven't seen them and big Scotch ales represent the land of Sean Connery...Now that I look at Oliphant's beer list, I see that Swamp Thing, Swamp Thang's smaller sibling, is called a "smoked Scottish ale". Harumph.

Swamp Thang (I'm not sure if it should be capitalized or not as the folks at Oliphant seem to be devotees of ee cummings.) pours a lovely deep mahogany. Up to the light the beer was revealed to be clear with an abundance of bubbles. Up top was a big, light tan heid that was rather loose and lasted a fair while.

The smoke greeted my nose with a hearty olfactory handshake. It smelled beech-woody – but not bacony! Joining the smoke was a nice bit of caramel sweetness along with booze. The beer smelled quite a bit like whiskey.

A big blast of smoky goodness started my sips. Again, no bacon here just simple smoke which sat atop more of that caramel and a little malted sweetness which was redolent of dried fruits like apricot. My tongue also caught something that was earthy in a woody, tabaccoy kind of way. While there may have been a lot of bubbles in the beer, I didn't taste that many. Still there was some carbonation to help cut the malt. And of course there was an alcohol burn.

While the smoke faded at the end, the malt sweetness lingered on. It was joined by some grassy hop flavor and some bitterness too which managed to eek out a decent bit of dryness for a nice contrast to all of the malty flavors. Swamp Thang is 8.2% and so there was more booziness to be had on the finish. My glass was left with foam everywhere – loads of webbing all around.

Oliphant has gone 2/2, in my book, this Summer of Rauch. I absolutely loved the smokiness here and I'm sure Robert Burns would have written a poem about it were he still alive and living in Wisconsin. ("Wee, heavy smokie...") There's enough smoke flavor here to satisfy the most ardent fans of the fuliginous but this is a big brew and the other flavors pull though just fine. Indeed, I thoroughly enjoyed how the smoke melded with the other, sweeter malt flavors. Despite being a big beer, it had a medium-heavy body that fended off chewiness. And the hops did a yeoman's job here chasing the malt away for a nice dry finish.

If I knew more about crowlers and Oliphant's filling prowess, I'd buy more and put them in the cellar for the cooler weather of the Autumn of Rauch.

Junk food pairing: Go full Scot and pair Swamp Thang with a bag of Haggis & Cracked Pepper potato chips. Er, crisps.

Yippee-ki-yay!: hans macgruber by Oliphant Brewing

When I saw the name of this bier, it was instantly familiar. Hans MacGruber, Hans MacGruber...nope. I just couldn't place it. I DuckDuckGoed it and it turns out that Hans Gruber is the villain from Die Hard played by the late and much lamented Alan Rickman. "MacGruber" is the name of a Saturday Night Live sketch that parodies MacGyver.

In addition to the teasingly familiar name, I was happy to see that Oliphant had decided to join the Summer of Rauch '16 by brewing a smoked Vienna-style lager.

The Vienna lager is one of my favorite styles of beer. I suppose it (or variants thereof) was one of the first microbrew styles I encountered back in the early 1990s with the amber lagers of both Capital and Sprecher. Its flavor of toasted grain imbued with a bit of malt sweetness and balanced by Noble hoppy goodness really appealed to me then and continues to do so now.

The style dates back to 1840 and was introduced by Anton Dreher, an Austrian brewer who had studied in both Munich and the United Kingdom where his head became filled with thoughts of pale malts and lagering. And he merged the two in his Schwechater Lagerbier, the ur-Vienna lager. Dreher had a veritable brewing empire - a lager baron, if you will. If I ever meet Ron Pattinson, I think I'll ask him if he likes Wire and then his opinion on Dreher. This should get him discoursing for hours. (If you read this, Ron, and want to return to Wisconsin, I'd be happy to attempt to host.)

Curiously enough, Dreher's son had plans at one point to open a brewery in Milwaukee.

Nothing against Oliphant but I am usually a little apprehensive when drinking lagers from small brewpubs/breweries. It's just that these outfits have less space to dedicate to aging a lager for 4-8 weeks. When I talk to brewers, they generally acknowledge that brewing a lager is tough - there's less margin for error than with an ale. Again, I'm not taking a shot at Oliphant but there are breweries out there that make 100% ales and then one day decide to brew a lager because pilsners are trendy or simply for shits and giggles and they come up with a completely mediocre beer.

Despite, or perhaps because of, all this, I was rooting for Oliphant to pull through here. Not only had they gone through the trouble of brewing a lager but also a rauchbier. I wasn't expecting Schlenkerla quality here but I was also hoping that they weren't merely cycling through styles until an eyepah was on the docket again.

My hans macgruber poured a lovely golden brown. It was plenty clear so I could see a bounty of bubbles inside the bier. Perched atop my glass was a big, light tan head that lasted a fair while. Visually, Oliphant had produced a stunner.

The aroma was heavenly and it was as if there were cherubs perched on clouds of smoke around my glass, joining me as I took in the mild smokiness which suggested, but did not smell like, bacon. There was also a luscious roasty malt sweetness.

Smoke flavor in beer is very polarizing. I have argued previously that the smell and taste of bacon in rauchbiers is largely a mass hallucination. Drinkers who've never tasted a smoke beer hear that they taste like bacon and thusly are predisposed to tasting the meat from that wonderful, magical animal. This taste also seems to be most commonly attributed to malts smoked with beech wood.

In hans macgruber the smoke is rather modest in contrast to your archetypal rauchbier, a Schlenkerla Märzen. While not very strong, it is certainly more than a mere accent. It tasted like Beech wood smoke to me but mine is an amateur palate when it comes to smoke. The Vienna lager came through loud and clear with some roasted grain flavor as well as a honeyed malt sweetness which was just a touch bigger than the smoke. To round things off was a little grassy hop flavor around the edge which tag-teamed with the carbonation to add a little sharpness, a little dryness.

Eventually the malt sweetness fades leaving the smokiness to welcome a heightened hoppiness which was a bit spicy and boosted the dryness a tad. But the finish wasn't extreme with only moderate bitterness. There was a fair amount of Schaumhaftvermoegen left in my glass with a few scattered patches accompanied by the odd foamy streak.

Although hans macgruber doesn't have quite the crispness that I find in the Vienna-style lagers from established lager breweries, I think they did a damn fine job. The smoked and unsmoked malts are like Yin and Yang – (more or less) in balanced. And not only did the smoke come in moderate doses, it also didn't evoke bacon very much. It tasted like smoke. I also thoroughly enjoyed how the carbonation and hops worked together to add some counterpoint to the maltiness. Everything finds harmony in hans.

A most worthy entry in the Summer of Rauch 2016.

Junk food pairing: With medium malty body and 5.4% A.B.V., hans macgruber is no lawnmower beer. But it is happy to be paired with food. Go with some Old Dutch Ripples Bacon Cheeseburger Sliders potato chips.

a spicy, hopless concoction from up nort: groot by oliphant brewing

Oliphant Brewing is one of Wisconsin's newest microbreweries. It lies in downtown Somerset - up nort in St. Croix County, within spitting distance of the Mississippi River, and not far from the Twin Cities. Proprietors Matt Wallace and Trevor Wirtanen caught the homebrewing bug and decided to open a brewery back in 2011. Their dream was realized last year when their 3 bbl brewhouse opened.

I found some crowlers of Oliphant at Riley's last month. Since I'd not seen them before nor have I since, it seems likely that they did a bit of self-distribution when they were here for The Great Taste of the Midwest. There were three flavors, if I recall correctly, and I went for their gruit/grut, groot.

groot pours a lovely, deep mahogany – a nice break in the line of yellow beers that I've been drinking lately. My initial glass was clear but there was sediment at the bottom of the crowler which ended up in the terminal pour. I got a nice, big tan head which lasted for a while and there were some bubbles making their way upwards from the bottom of the glass.

The aroma had a doughy sweetness but I also smelled clove, vanilla, and cinnamon. I couldn't help but think of gingerbread cookies with this completely – in a good way - unexpected scent. The taste was very similar with a bready malt sweetness and clove being the most prominent flavors. There was a sense of drinking gingerbread cookies here but ones that were from Jamaica. This was not liquid cookies as there was also bit of an earthy, woody flavor present too. I later emailed the brewery to ask what botanicals were in groot and was told that there were clove, caraway, juniper, and rainbow peppercorns. I couldn't detect the caraway so it must have become part of the gruit's botanical gestalt but I can see that the juniper and peppercorns were likely the primary contributors to that earthy flavor I tasted underneath the gingerbread.

groot was rather dry on the finish owing to the carbonation with the clove lingering until the next sip. My glass was, sadly, left without any lacing.

This was a most surprising beer. The usual gruit botanicals like bog myrtle, yarrow, and mugwort are nowhere to be seen so Oliphant gets points from me for taking the path less traveled. I also appreciate that they brewed a gruit that didn't attempt use a bitter tasting plant to as a hop substitute. There is no bitterness here at all. The spices are really about complementing the malt rather than playing against it. It should also be noted that I am not the biggest fan of clove. I don't dislike it but I prefer it be part of a larger seasoning regimen. It's a prominent flavor here but I drank a couple glasses or more of groot. The Dulcinea and my medieval Fretourys of Applys batter got the rest.

Aside from the spices, groot had an easy-going medium-light body and was very smooth. It's 6% A.B.V. so you'll want to share your crowler and/or, like me, use some in a historical recipe. Hopheads will likely avoid groot and I am sure many others will as well with a crowler costing $8.99. Not cheap, although cheaper by the ounce than most bombers but more expensive than growlers. Plus the can is not reusable. Crowlers are the craft beer equivalent of the vortex bottle.

Junk food pairing: Pair groot with a bag of Lay's Greektown Gyro potato chips. These chips have some kind of magical lamb dust on them which will go well with the earthy, woody spices in groot.