The Art of Drinking: Blue Plume by Working Draft Beer Co.

  

As I was contemplating writing this review, I had something of a revelation. It occurred to me that I had lost my interest in craft beer. I don't think of it as having been a sudden change but rather the result of the accumulated disappointment of many frustrating trips down the liquor store aisles. A man does not recover from such shopping trips -- he becomes a different drinker and, eventually, the new drinker finds new things to care about. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy drinking beer and I continue to support people I know in the business, but I don't keep up with new breweries that come along and only look for new releases occasionally and only from select brewers.

It's a bit sad for me as I'd been trying to keep up with the Madison and Wisconsin beer scenes for a long time. At least since 2007. Some locals may recall madison.com's attempts to capitalize on the blogging craze by publishing highlights from the Madison blogosphere in a weekly paper called POST. Here's a beer release round-up from yours truly that dates to the spring of 2007.

I love how the editor noted that my post was "edited considerably" in an attempt to deal with my prolix prose.

Perusing store shelves means wading through hundreds of American IPA's (and other beers) that taste like Hawaiian Punch and oodles of imperial stouts that have lived in multiple types of spirit barrels that I couldn't care less about. Well, if it's gonna be that kind of party, I'm gonna stick my dick in the mashed potatoes.

There's a coterie of breweries and brewpubs that I follow and look for in stores. When I go out of town, I drink the local brew, if possible, as long as it's not an IPA. And I can always get my Rauchbier fix with some Schlenkerla.

My next project is to pare down my beer bottle/can collection. So, if anyone wants some Wisconsin packaged beer vessels, let me know.

Despite dropping out of the craft beer world, I still read about it occasionally in Isthmus which carries Robin Shepard's beer column. In a recent one, he noted that Madison's Working Draft Beer had a smoked wild rice beer called Blue Plume available. I like smoke beers; I like wild rice beers. Ergo I just had to try it.

Blue Plume poured a crystal clear yellow. My glass got a big, white head that had staying power. Lots of bubbles were seen inside. This was a very pretty beer and not at all surprising since Working Draft brewmaster Clint Lohman is a master at brewing beers that look great and tempt you to pour some in your maw based on appearance alone. The aroma was similarly enticing with a generic berry-like fruitiness leading a sudsy ménage à trois along with a wisp of smokiness and some fresh grassy hops.

Taking a sip I found the brew to have a light-medium body. That is, it was fuller than any of the many pilsners that Lohman brews but not by much. Tasting behind the very fizzy curtain I found a prominent blueberry flavor - the "blue" in Blue Plume - from the wild rice joined by a nutty taste from those same seeds, a gentle maltiness, a hint of smoke, and a firm dose of hops that lent a brisk herbal bitterness. The wild rice flavors eased off on the swallow allowing those hops to step up. They, along with the generous fizz made for a rather dry and bitter finish to sweep away those wild rice blues.

As a smoke beer lover, I must say that Blue Plume needs a larger plume. The smoke here is like the wallflower at the dance. It looks on from the side as the wild rice flavors dance the night away. Still, I'll take a little smoke over no smoke. I'm of two minds on the grains. On the one hand, I really do like the wild rice flavors here, especially the nuttiness. But on the other, I miss the malt. A light lager seems to be the base for the wild rice and didn't contribute that much to the flavor. One thing I love unequivocally here is the hoppiness. The strong green-herbal taste and bitterness provide a great counterpoint to the fruity-nutty thing that the wild rice has going on.

All the ingredients are here; I would probably put the emphasis elsewhere, if I were brewing it. But I am not. Regardless, a tasty brew that I hope to drink again.

Junk food pairing: Pair your Blue Plume with a bag of Chili Cheese Fritos.

When your beer wanna get bock-wild: Bock Wild by Wisconsin Brewing Company

I recently discovered that The Beer Temple Insiders Roundtable podcast had been resurrected as The Beer Temple Podcast. Roundtabling has taken a back seat in this pandemic age, I guess. Instead of assembling a coterie of industry pros every week, Chris Quinn and Mike Schallau hold court and pontificate on various craft beer topics although guests do join them now & then. One episode features an extended discussion on IPA (well, a lot of them seem to, actually) and Quinn was talking about the evolution of the style during which he mentioned West Coast and New England varieties before mentioning the Midwest IPA.

What's a Midwest IPA?

While I think it had to do with the style's maltiness, I don't recall exactly.

Now, I realize that there are people on the coasts who think of everything between California and New York as this big, nebulous wasteland that is "Flyover Country". With such an attitude, I suspect that a fair number of journalists would be on the dole if unable to pen articles for all the sophistos that read the New York Times about their surprise at discovering we Midwesterners have coffee shops, fancy restaurants, hot yoga studios, and the other hallmarks of civilization.

But the Midwest is a sizable chunk of land. Chicago is a metropolis that dwarfs any other city in the region (and most others in the country) while elsewhere vast tracts of land are given over to corn. Surely being in close proximity to a Great Lake makes for a different ortgeist than what you find if you're smack dab in the middle of the Great Plains. Thinking (yet again) about regional beer specialties, I have to wonder if the Midwest is just too large for there to be a Midwestern style of beer.

Whether or not there is such a thing, I do feel that it's easier to make a case for Upper Midwestern beer specialties. And since I live in Wisconsin, I approach this issue with a distinct bias and people in Minnesota and Michigan and whatever else counts as the Upper Midwest will likely have some areas of disagreement with me. For my tongue, there are a few types of beers that just seem emblematic of the Upper Midwest generally and very Wisconsinesque specifically.

First there are cranberry beers. To the best of my knowledge, Wisconsin still leads the nation in cranberry production which gives New Glarus' Cran-bic and Cranberry Gose by Third Space a rather distinct Wisconsin identity and authenticity. Next are beers made with maple syrup. Yeah, those folks in the Northeast boil a lot more sap than we do but Wisconsin and Michigan still produce a fair amount of the arboreal treat. These brews seem to come and go and I am unaware of any Wisconsin breweries that produce a maple syrup beer with any regularity. The only brew of this kind that comes readily to mind is Lake Louie's Maple Surple, a brown ale with maple syrup. However, I recall O'so having brewed something with maple sap at some point in the not too distant past.

A hundred years ago Wisconsin led the nation in hemp production and so I think of hemp beers as being something of a regional specialty. Smokin' Hemp Porter by La Crosse's Pearl Street Brewery is the only one that I have encountered but it's tasty. I would suggest that there should be more hemp beer brewed in Wisconsin.

Lastly and most relevant to this post is wild rice beer. While some wild rice is produced here in Wisconsin, Minnesota rules the roost when it comes to cultivating this food. Wild rice it is not really rice, but rather a distant cousin of the stuff that we get in mass quantities when we order Chinese food. Botanists call it Zizania palustris and tell me that it is native to the Great Lakes area of the Upper Midwest. You just can't get any more regional specialty than that.

When I was developing a taste for microbrews back in the day, Capital brewmaster Kirby Nelson would make a wild rice lager every so often and I immediately adored this brew from the first sip. And then it seemed that ever more time would go by between appearances of this tasty elixir. He brewed it in 2009 and within a few short years he was at Wisconsin Brewing Company and I never heard of him brewing with wild rice at his new home until just recently. Doing a bit of internet sleuthing reveals that WBC has, in fact, brewed at least a couple wild rice beers - including a bock with Working Draft Brewing - but they appear to have been very limited releases and were never canned/bottled.

In November, WBC released their Bock Wild, a wild rice bock. This, as you can see, was canned but I have only seen it at one retail outlet – Brennan's Market. Perhaps it is slowly making its way through distribution channels as I haven't seen it Woodman's East and a friend saw neither hide nor hair of it at Woodman's West. Harumph.

Bock Wild is a lovely beer. It's a clear amber and my glass had a big head of loose, off-white foam atop it that lasted quite a while. There was a good smattering of bubbles inside. I could smell this stuff from several inches away which I believe is due to all of that effervescence. And it smelled just dandy! There was a large dose of that nuttiness that is the hallmark of wild rice plus sweet malt and an indistinct berry aroma.

The can's label notes that this fruity component comes from the additive here. I don't recall any of Capital's wild rice beers having a fruitiness like this nor any other such beers I've drunk having it either. Wild rice is known for its nutty aroma and flavor which are created during the parching (i.e. – roasting) process. The freshly harvested seeds are also left in piles to ripen and they are also cured so between these three processes, I suppose various aromas and flavors can be brought out of the rice including ones that are redolent of berries. Who knows. Perhaps the flavor here is just the result of some fine Minnesota terroir.

My tongue was greeted by a nice, medium fizziness upon first sip. There was a big berry-like flavor right up front with a herbal/peppery kind of hop taste there too. That nutty flavor that I crave so much came in mid-palate, I guess you'd say. (i.e. - I didn't notice it right away.) Some malt sweetness lurked underneath everything and gave it a medium body. And the fizz produced a moderate astringency.

The malt and wild rice flavors faded at the end leaving a not insignificant herbal hoppiness which lent the finish a firm bitterness and similar dose of dryness.

This is a really tasty beer. That berry fruitiness threw me off, at first, because I simply adore the nutty flavor of the wild rice so much and expect it to stand out. But as I continued to sip, the berry mixed with the malty tastes letting that toasted, nutty flavor stand out more. The rather dry finish made for a nice contrast with the grain and grass.

Junk food pairing: Bock Wild is a special treat for this season so pair it with something equally special. Grab some Nut-Thins and apply Cheddar Easy Cheese liberally.

Manoominale: Wild Brunette by Barley John's Brewery Company

There were two Minnesotans came out of the West,
Their brews with many a fan,
And these two folks made a solemn vow:
Barley John's must can.

Barley John's Brew Pub was founded in 2000 in New Brighton, Minnesota, a northeastern suburb of Minneapolis, by Laura Subak and John Moore. Fast forward ten years or so and they are keen to expand their business by packaging their beers for resale. Unfortunately their plans ran afoul of Minnesota laws which restrict the sale of beer brewed at a brewpub – it had to be purchased on premises – as well as disqualifying a brewpub from owing a packaging brewery. And so the couple were forced to riven their ownership scheme in twain: Subak became sole owner of the brewpub while Moore opened the packaging brewery across the St. Croix River in New Richmond, Wisconsin last year.

My understanding is that this arrangement is sadly ironic for, while Cheeseheads will have Barley John's beers available in cans, Minnesotans will not. This is Minnesota we're talking about here. They still have Blue Laws. Minnesotans keen on buying cans will have to drive over to Hudson to get it on their regular treks to buy New Glarus. We Cheeseheads are able to enjoy four flavors of Barley John's brews which began appearing on store shelves here in Madison back in mid-February: an IPA called 6 Knot, Old 8 Porter, Little Barley Session Ale, and Wild Brunette, a brown ale made with wild rice. I was attracted to Wild Brunette as I like wild rice and cut my microbrew teeth drinking Capital's Wild Rice lager, amongst other beers.

I took advantage of the longer days to bring my Wild Brunette outside where it almost the magic hour. Not that this helped my poor photography skills very much, but I was able to get a good look at the beers beautiful reddish brown hue. While you may not be able to tell that it is clear, you can certainly see the large ecru head that my pour produced. It lasted a good, long while too.

The aroma was no less tantalizing with the woody, earthy, nutty wild rice right there to greet my nose. The malt added more nuttiness in addition to roasted grain. There was a little grassy/herbal hop scent to be had as well.

That Minnesota grown wild rice came through in the taste and was the first thing I tasted. Perhaps this can be attributed to my brain actively desiring to taste the delectable grass seeds. Although there was a goodly amount of it, the malt flavors were more prominent with more nuttiness and a big sweetness that was redolent of plum and toffee. Lurking underneath was some chocolate. Carbonation abetted the hops in balancing the big, rich malt flavors. Some Willamette greens added a nice, mellow herbal flavor while Warrior gave a sharper, spicier, and somewhat citrusy flavor and some bitterness too.

A swelling wave of spicy/peppery hop flavor and some bitterness swept away the lingering sweetness and earthy wild rice flavor making for a rather dry finish. My glass was covered in lacing with big bands of foam up and down the side.

Wild Brunette is 7.2% A.B.V. and so it is no small beer. It has fairly heavy body and combined with the sweetness could make for a rather cloying flavor. But the wild rice, carbonation, and hops all act in concert to bring the malt to a more manageable level. And I really enjoyed the wild rice here. It dominates the aroma and is no slouch on the tongue either. Plus I just like to see Upper Midwesterners utilizing native bounty instead of trying to emulate the West Coast. I also want to note how much I enjoyed the hops which offer grassy/herbal as well as spicy and citrus flavors.

Everything just blends harmoniously for a tasty, beery gestalt.

Junk food pairing: Wild Brunette is a pretty big beer and will stand up to pretty much any food you care to throw at it. I'd pair it with either some wild rice snack sticks to keep the wild theme going or a bag of Funyons with their roasty onion flavor.