R.I.P. Valkyrie Brewing

Valkyrie Brewing is no more. Last call was on the 6th and Ryan Urban was there.

Saturday’s farewell event featured many of the elements of a Saturday at the brewery. Games of cribbage were going on at nearly every table, game after game was played at the vintage pinball machine, friends and strangers alike conversed with enthusiasm and laughter, and there was music—for this occasion, by Kaptain Karl and the Dirty White Boy Band. Many people brought flowers and gifts for the Lees, and there was a cake, which they cut together with a sword, of course.

I am going to miss stopping in there on my treks up north for some muscle relaxant (Whispering Embers...mmm...) after a hike and those Jethro Tull-inspired beer names.

Goodbye Valkyrie Brewing

My last bottle of Valkyrie beer. Ever. They close in less than a month. Ha det bra!

And then there were fewer

News came out recently that a couple of Wisconsin breweries are closing or changing owners, at least.

Last week Robin Shepard reported in Isthmus that Madison's Parched Eagle was for sale. 

Co-owner and brewmaster Jim Goronson says he’s had a good run “but it’s time to move on.”

Goronson took a full-time job outside of brewing in August and has since been brewing periodically while looking for a buyer. He’s hoping a new owner will take over the brewery and continue the Parched Eagle brands; however he’s open to selling off equipment as a last resort.

A real shame. The tap room was the coziest in town.

And then yesterday I read that Valkyrie Brewing up in the northwest part of the state was closing in January.

The owners of Valkyrie Brewing Company in Dallas have announced their retirement and closure of the brewery in January.

This message was posted on the Valkyrie Facebook page on Monday: “As we have entered our 30th year in business, it is with heavy heart that we have to announce that Randy and I (Ann Lee) are going to retire and will suspend operations at the brewery while we wait for a buyer.”

It'll be sad to see these places go, if that is their fate. I will miss going on hikes and having a couple fine muscle relaxants at the brewery in the great Nordic/Viking atmosphere.

The Honeymoon Is Over: HoneyMoon Brackett by Viking Brewing Company

Has anyone out there ever tried aging brackett, a.k.a. - braggot? I have, and let me tell you, it was an utter failure.

Brackett/braggot is a beverage that is reputed to have originated in medieval times and is either mead made with malt or beer made with honey. Either way you're getting fermentable sugars from a mix of honey and malt. But I suppose you can just add finished mead to finished ale and have brackett too. How much beer should you taste in a brackett? How much mead? Everything I've found to read on the subject leans towards bracket being an art rather than a science. Does it taste like mead and beer simultaneously? If so, then you've got a brackett.

I recently opened a bottle of HoneyMoon, a brackett from the Viking Brewing Company which is now Valkyrie Brewing Company. If you look at the old Viking website, it says that HoneyMoon "Ages well for years". Perhaps two years. My bottle was purchased in 2009, I believe, and I figured that I'd try aging a 10% A.B.V. wine-like brew/brew-like wine. Tempus fugit and here we are seven or so years later.

HoneyMoon poured a lovely light gold – even if the photograph doesn't portray this. It was quite clear. I didn't get much of a head when I poured it into my glass. But there was no small number of bubbles in the elixir. Are fresh bracketts effervescent? Meads comes bubbly and non-bubbly so you'd think brackett could very well be stillish. I think the last time I had a fresh brackett outside of The Great Taste was about 11 years ago when I had some from White Winter Winery so I remain unsure.

The brackett definitely had a mead-like smell – that dry honey scent – but the aroma also had a rather prominent vinous smell too. There really wasn't anything beery here.

Taking my first sip, I didn't have high hopes. The brackett had a light body and I caught a little carbonation as well as some really nice honey taste. However, that vinous quality was here in spades. It tasted a lot like vermouth to me. As my HoneyMoon warmed up, it took on a strong boozy heat - 10% may have been on the low side – and a pronounced astringent flavor.

The finish had what must have been the very last remnants of hop flavor with a faint grassiness just barely perceptible and more of that vermouth flavor. My glass had no lacing.

Well, my little aging experiment was a failure and you can blame it on me. (We're just sugar mice in the rain.) I should have consumed this bottle years ago. Live and learn. This just means that I need more bracketts to make up for my failing.