Last weekend I was pleased to discover that my bicycle's tires could still hold air as I inflated them for the first time in many a moon. While I'd taken a ride last summer, I believe, it had been a while since I rode with any sort of frequency and I was looking to get back into the swing of things. My first venture on two wheels of 2026 would be to the Harry Whitehorse International Wood Sculpture Festival over at San Damiano in Monona. I'd attended back in 2024 and now realize that I never wrote about my visit.
Harry Whitehorse was born up in Black River Falls in 1927. He served in the Navy during World War II and settled in the Madison area afterwards. He ran an auto body shop in Monona and pursued his passion for creating art, including wood sculpture.
The festival involves artists from around the globe each being given a ginormous log and transforming it into a sculpture over the course of several days on the shores of Lake Monona. This year they came from such faraway places as Poland, Puerto Rico, Germany, Argentina, Green Bay, and Madison. The theme for 2026 is dancing and I am keen to see what these artists come up with.
Here are some scenes from the opening day of sculpting. Chainsaws were the order of the day as the artists were doing the rough shaping of the logs. The finer, more detailed work would come later.
The sculptors had eye protection but we observers didn't. More than once a breeze off the lake blew the sawdust into my face.
I was surprised to see a face emerging already on this log.
It was a lovely day out with plenty of sun and not too hot. There were craft vendors and food trucks.
As I did back in 2024, I bought some cards by Christopher Sweet, a Ho-Chunk artist from Baraboo.
Here the artist from Germany contemplates how best to discover and uncover the statue in the log.
I was told that this was this fellow's first time sculpting from wood of this size. Until now he'd done only small-scale stuff. Oh, he's from Green Bay.
Some of the sculptures from the 2024 festival were put on display at Olbrich Gardens, Garver Feed Mill, and perhaps elsewhere. I'm not sure if these are permanent displays or not. One of the pieces from a couple years back was on display Saturday at the park.
And here's one that I spied at Garver back in the spring.
I hope that they get put on display around town and become fixtures like Sid Boyum's works are.
After grabbing a bite to eat, I head over to Working Draft Beer to sample their rauch hefeweizen. I also had a small pour (I was biking) of their English summer ale.
It was very tasty and reminded me of the Wainwright Gold I had in the UK last year. And here is that lovely beer which I had with my Sunday roast at The Old Crown in Birmingham. It's an inn that supposedly dates back to 1368 and I had two wonderful meals there in the warm, medievalish atmosphere.
The folks at Working Draft did a really nice job in capturing that light, doughy malt taste that predominated in the beers I had over there. Not a 100% exact match but really gosh darn close. Thank you Clint and company.
Having been refreshed by the power of delicious beer, I met a friend at the garden plot that she co-works with a friend of hers.
Swiss chard, basil, tomatoes, and more. I went home with a bundles of fresh dill. Mmm...
I hope to make a return trip to San Damiano this weekend to see the sculptures in their final form.
Last week I discovered that one of my downstairs neighbors works for Working Draft and I was inspired to stop in over the weekend after a nice bike ride.
It was lovely out on the patio. I was delighted to find that they still had the rauch hefeweizen on tap so you know I ordered that first thing.
It was delicious! More bubble gum and banana than clove, which is my preference. With its light body, it was most refreshing after my first bike ride in ages on a sunny day.
A woman whom I had befriended on the bus had organized a crack Buckthorn Removal Squad and invited me to join her and the rest of the squad for a late-morning cull out at Token Creek Park.
One afternoon she noticed me reading Thoreau's Walden on our bus rides home and asked me what I thought of it. This was the first of many chats about nature writing that we've had. She introduced me to Sigurd Olson and I Ben Logan to her. Having a B.A. in philosophy, she was able to help me understand Aristotle when I was reading him. We share a joy of spending time in non-man-made environments as well as laying importance upon not despoiling them. Our conversations have been great fun and quite enlightening.
The invitation for some oak prairie restoration came after I had sent her an email lamenting that I would no longer see her on the bus as I had moved and was taking a different route to work.
My venture in Stoughton having taken a bit longer than expected, I would be late. I held out hope that it wouldn't be a problem or hold anything up. So, upon returning home, I hastily put on my boots and scrambled to find my gloves which were exactly where I had put them.
Much to my shame I have to admit that I'd never been to Token Creek Park before yesterday. At least I have no recollection of having done so. Better late than never. I found the meeting spot where my bus book buddy and her boyfriend were waiting. Not having seen her in a while, it was wonderful to see her and meet her beau.
We grabbed our equipment - a saw, pruner-snipper thingies, gloves, etc. - and headed down the trail to where we'd be working.
The area was littered with heaps of brush and our task that day was to cut the felled buckthorn into burnable size and stack the pieces into burn piles. My bus buddy gave her boyfriend and me a lecture on how to identify buckthorn and an overview of the restoration process. She'd been at it for a year and a half and had cleared a not insignificant area of invasive species. I was tasked with being the sawyer and so grabbed the saw and got to work on a pile of trees.
Kneeling on the ground, I cut the small trees into three foot lengths and piled up the logs. Despite the din of Highway 51 in the distance, it was lovely outside in the woods, er, prairie. The oaks had donated their leaves to the the ground and every step produced an autumnal crunch. I think the sawing was good for my back as it mimicked the physical therapy exercises I've been doing to get various muscles loosened up and run through their paces. In addition, I enjoyed feeling the cool air on my face and smelling the prairie as it prepared for winter.
When her boyfriend took over sawyering duties, my buddy and I went around to deal with buckthorn stumps. I trimmed them of new growth while she applied herbicide. We chatted as we worked. I told her of my visit to Walden Pond and she of hers to Yellowstone.
We called it a day at the noon whistle. For my part, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. A little exercise, a little banter, and a couple hours spent in Nature - just perfect.
The crack Buckthorn Removal Squad meets again next month on or near the solstice. It was our hope that there would be snow on the ground as this would be the perfect accompaniment to burning the brush piles.
When I got home Piper knew I had been out of the city as she gave me a thorough sniffing.
I removed my boots and prepared to go shopping with a friend. We went to buy picture frames and groceries. In typical fashion, I forgot to bring my list which had needed comestibles and the dimensions of needed frames. This wasn't too big an impediment as I recalled the size of one of the frames I needed and consulted the internet for the other.
As we drove to the supermarket, my friend and I chatted about Christmas. She noted that, from her experiences in Europe, Christmas there is about lights and food and good company versus the endless sales and materialism that characterize the holiday here in the States. I think this was prompted by my observation at the frame store that they had a Black Friday sale going despite being almost a week out from the dreaded shopping day.
Not being a Christian, I don't celebrate Christmas and I am rather ambivalent about it these days. It used to be fun watching my stepsons open their gifts when they were young but they somehow grew up into men. And my divorce has riven the family my wife and I had into splinters, a process that began back in 2016 or 2017, to be honest. After that, Christmas no longer meant getting together with the kids. Then at some point my wife became uninterested in joining me to visit my family in the Chicago area and Christmas devolved into me visiting my family while she visited friends or family. We would convene at some point so I could give her gifts and that was that.
Sadly, I found the last 3 Christmases at home to be rather depressing. I loved spending time with my family in the Chicago area but giving my wife gifts had become rote and largely devoid of meaning for me. I felt as if I was simply feeding her lust for more things and do not recall just being together for any time beyond the opening of gifts. Sharing a meal, perhaps?
I am not expecting to begin any new traditions this Christmas but do expect to miss the days when it was a joyous time spent with the woman I loved. However, it will be nice to not feel any anxiety over finding the right gifts and right number of gifts for a woman from whom I was becoming ever more disaffected. I shall enjoy my trek to Chicagoland followed by some time spent with Piper on the couch. Not particularly celebratory, perhaps, but less stressful than in years past. Maybe my youngest stepson can find some time to spend with his stepfather. Or maybe I shall take a walk in the woods.
Diversion over.
Grocery shopping was a similar experience to that at the frame store as I recalled most of what was on the list and then just improvised. Thanksgiving is approaching and I would be going to two people's homes to overindulge and then I am off to Chicagoland the next day so I didn't really need a whole lot. But I enjoyed being in the company of my friend as she pondered the possibility of rye dinner rolls at Thanksgiving and we engaged in supermarket badinage.
I got home, put away my things, and prepared for my next venture: seeing For Heaven's Sake downtown.
For Heaven's Sake was being screened at the Overture Center's Duck Soup Cinema. A comedy from 1926, it stars Harold Lloyd as J. Harold Manners, a wealthy, if bumbling, man about town.
Duck Soup Cinema is more than just the screening of a silent film. We were treated to the strains of a vintage Grand Barton Organ courtesy of Clark Wilson. He played before the show began as well as providing the soundtrack to the film. The organ at the Capitol Theater dates to 1927 and was built by the Bartola Musical Instrument Company up in Oshkosh. It is one of only three of such organs that remain unaltered from their original manufacture.
The show began with the emcee, Joe Thompson, making some dad jokes to his co-hostess, Alanna Medearis who works for the OC. They introduced Duke Otherwise who played some fun and funny tunes on guitar. He brought up a couple people onstage for one song and invited audience participation for another, asking people to shout out animals to be included in the tune he was performing.
Somehow I had missed Wayne the Wizard elsewhere in the building performing magic tricks for patrons. DSC spares no expense for patrons!
For Heaven's Sake was great fun. It's only my second Harold Lloyd film after Safety Last!. Although Manners has the wealth of Croesus and enjoys being a dandy, he is a good man at heart. And so when he accidentally sets a charity cart afire, he pays the owner, Brother Paul, enough for the man of God to start a mission. One day Manners is aghast that Brother Paul has named the mission after him so he goes down there to correct the situation only to become enamored of the churchman's daughter, Hope.
Their decision to marry draws the ire of the city's elite who kidnap Manners. However, he is rescued by some drunken groomsmen who are denizens of the mission. A long stretch of physical comedy follows as Manners' attempts to get the intoxicated groomsmen back to the mission are foiled by their random behavior including abandoning the driver's seat of a double-decker bus in motion.
For Heaven's Sake was great fun and, just as yesterday's visit to Token Creek Park was my first, I do believe this was my first time at Duck Soup Cinema. But not my last!
On my way out I ran into one of the ladies from the Polish Heritage Club who made some of that nalewka that I sampled earlier in the month along with her beau. We chatted briefly and was told that I would be invited out with them on their next trivia outing. We PHC members take care of our own, doncha know.
The ride home was uneventful despite the bus being well-populated on a Saturday night. When I got to my door, I found that the Beer Fairy has stopped by.
Earlier this week I had dinner with friends at Longtable Beer Cafe. It had been a while since I'd been there.
I began with a can of McFleshman's English Pale in preparation for flying across the ocean and enjoying pints of cellar temperature ales.
It was quite tasty with herbal-floral notes from the hops instead of tasting like Hawaiian Punch.
The brisket salad was good.
The brisket was tasty but needed more smokiness. More jalapeno would have been nice too.
My second brew was a fine rauchbier.
The beer cheddar soup was good too. Tasted from scratch instead of from Cisco.
One of my companions had a German-style pils from Working Draft, Hindsight. I love the stuff and his discerning palate enjoyed it.
Tasty food & beer plus bonus points for having Schlenkerla rauchbier on offer and additional bonus points for having not 1, not 2, but 3 flavors of Schlenkerla. Plus the company was great.
And now Robin Shepard informs me that Wisconsin Brewing Company's brewmaster Kirby Nelson has a barleywine and a wild rice doppelbock (Manoomator Mk II?) coming later this month.
Czech beers are having their moment in the sun or had it recently, anyway. Breweries happy to churn out IPA after IPA suddenly had to figure out how to put diacritical marks on their labels. Tmavé pivo seemed to be everywhere. OK, not really but it did pop up in places both predictable and unexpected in a nano-trend. Here in Madison, I don't think a genuine Czech dark lager has ever been on a store shelf. It's Pilsner Urquell and maybe Staropramen but that's it and I think that's the case in most of this country. Heck, the style is fairly rare in its homeland. I guess all those craft brewers went to The Czech Republic and learned the mad tmavé pivo brewing skillz.
If, as Evan Rail claims (see link above), "[tmavé pivo] should be brewed with a traditional decoction mash", then most American takes on it lack a big chunk of authenticity. However, I think we've been lucky here in Madison as both Next Door and Working Draft have brewed the style and, to the best of my knowledge, both breweries also decocted, at least while Next Door wasn't just a brand. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed their takes on the style. Same for Lazy Monk's. Brewmaster Leos Frank is Czech so he may have had some first-hand experience with tmavé pivo back in its homeland to bring to his brew kettle.
When I was down in Chicagoland last month, I made my annual autumnal stop at Binny's and found a Czech-style dark lager from Chicago's Dovetail Brewery. Those people - I don't think there's an Old World brewing technique they don't practice. From what I've heard, Dovetail's brewers have weird dreams involving old brewhouses. My undercover contact there surreptitiously recorded the following, a recounting of one of these dreams by brewer Jenny Pfäfflin:
I was in a brewery I did not know, which had two storeys. It was "my brewery". I found myself in the upper storey, where there were sacks of Citra and Simcoe. On the walls hung a number of charts about hopping rates. I wondered if this was really my brewery and thought, "Ewww!" But then it occurred to me that I did not know what the lower floor looked like. Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor. There everything was much older. I realized that this part of the brewery must date from the 19th century. There were piles of malt scattered around, the floors were of red brick. Everywhere it was rather dark. I went from one room to another, thinking, "Now I really must explore the whole brewery." I came upon a heavy door and opened it. Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into a cellar. Descending again, I found myself in a beautifully vaulted room. There were several copper kettles - more than enough for decoction - and horizontal lagering tanks. I looked behind a mash tun and discovered two steinkrugs, obviously very old, and half disintegrated. Then I awoke.
A beer hall
Some barley malt
It joins all
Dovetail Brewery
Dovetail lists their Czech-Style Dark Lager as a seasonal but they don't note which season. I hope it's a fall seasonal for goodness sake. The brewery's seasonals are not easy to find here in Madison. Or maybe they are and I just always miss them as if I were Gordon to their Mr. Snuffleupagus. Ms. Pfäfflin and the rest of the Dovetail Brewers probably decoct in their spare time for fun so I presumed Czech Dark Lager got the treatment. Every Dovetail brew I've had has been exceptional and I expected no less with this brew.
My pour produced a small head of loose, tan foam that didn't stick around. Putting my glass up to the light, I saw that the brew was amber hued and looked clear, from what I could tell, with a smattering of bubbles inside. Never having had a genuine tmavé pivo, I am unsure if this is what the style is supposed to look like or not. Regardless, it was pretty. Taking a whiff, I smelled some caramel, a general roastiness, a dash of dark chocolate, and a plum-like fruitiness.
That first sip revealed a medium-light body that perhaps was a bit more on the light side. A healthy level of fizz oversaw a medley a fine flavors - roastiness, coffee, bread, and a touch of caramel or more, if I was tasting from the back of my tongue. For all of the malt taste here, it wasn't very sweet. All of those roasty/coffee flavors faded on the swallow leaving some spicy hops to step to the fore. My tongue was not inundated with a flood of Saaz or anything but the hops dried things out and added a firm bitterness.
Is this beer anything like the tmavé pivo you get in the Czech Republic? I dunno. But this stuff is excellent. I love how the coffee and bread flavors lead the charge here and I also adore how that brisk wave of hops acts both in counterpoint to the bread/caramel flavors yet complements that vaguely bitter coffee taste. Plus, this pivo has a fairly light body yet is chock full of malty goodness.
As a big fan of the Dunkel and Schwarzbier, I suppose it's time to add the tmavé pivo to this Axis of Darkness.The only thing left is for Dovetail to make this stuff in a Rauchbier version or whatever you call a smoke beer in Czech.
Junk food pairing: With all the malty flavors here you'll need to pair it with something that is up to the task of being able to cut through them to stand on its own yet also harmonize with the pivo. That food, ladies and gentlemen, is Jays Hot Stuff potato chips. With roots in Chicago, their spicy paprika flavor lends an earthy, Central European goodness that complements both the roastiness of the malt but also the sprightly taste of the hops.
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.
I got a chance to taste Working Draft Beer's 5th anniversary brew, Fünf, a pilsner. Having enjoyed their Czech, German, and French takes on the style, I was looking forward to it.
Turns out it was hopped with fruity nouveau hops. This stuff was just too fruity for my taste. I should have known better after the ill omen of a cracked glass.
I did not wear a beret for this review. I did, however, listen to some Ravel because who doesn’t like “Bolero”?
The Bohemians invented the pilsner and then the Germans appropriated it, making the beer a lighter affair in the process. A bunch of Germans emigrated to the United States and a new variation arose which, as near as I can tell, involved a more muscular, adjunct-laden malt flavor than that of their homeland with more hops too. Then in the mid-1990s an Italian brewer named Agostino Arioli invented, by accident, apparently, the Italian pilsner. This Italian mutation is characterized by the dry-hopping process used in its creation. I think so, anyway.
And now Madison’s Working Draft Beer Company offers Le Pils, a French-style pilsner. So what stylings make a pilsner French? Are baguettes part of the malt bill? Is it filtered through a beret? Lagered on a bed of escargot? Maybe the brewers simply need to wear striped shirts and read Sartre.
Looking at the can, it seems that being brewed with Strisselsplat hops is what does the trick. I found an article stating that these hops are from the Alsace region of France. Personally, I find it odd to think of the French growing hops and brewing beer because all they drink is wine, right? A quick look at a map reveals that Alsace borders Germany and surely the region was at some point part of a German kingdom/state or ruled with ruthless efficiency by Prussians. Alsace’s location explains the hop’s Teutonic sounding name. It’s an old hop and the region has proudly loosed another variety called Mistral on the world. New Glarus brewed a tasty pilsner with it a few years back.
I perused the archives and found that I have tasted a beer brewed with these Strisselsplat hops before: Nooner Pilsner (R.I.P) by Sierra Nevada from back when that venerable brewery brewed beers other than IPAs. Strisselsplat was just one of the hop varieties used in that beer and that, combined with several years distance, means I cannot give you an accurate description of this hop’s flavor. However, it appears to be the lone hop here.
Now that I think about it, I am certain that I had this beer last summer at the brewery. I recall the trepidation I felt as I glanced at the beer menu. Was it merely an excuse to make another fruity beer? Should I go with one of their Czech styles instead?
Le Pils poured a lovely gold color which seemed more in line with a Czech pilsner than its German cousin. The stuff was as clear as day and allowed me to see some bubbles inside working their way up to a generous head of fairly loose white foam. The head went away rather slowly. Although my photography doesn’t do it justice, this was a fine-looking and very alluring beer.
While it had a Czech-like appearance, it smelled more German at first with a light, crackery malt scent coupled with some grassy hops. Then I caught a bit of fruitiness in there – something like berries.
A sip revealed a really nice fizziness complementing a medium-light body with a prominent biscuit flavor that had a very mild sweetness. The hops tasted herbal but also fruity with something redolent of melon. This fruitiness wasn’t extreme or dominating. Instead, it harmonized with the other flavors well. Upon swallowing, the hoppy herbal-melon pas de deux danced on my tongue leaving a gentle bitterness and a lightly dry finish.
Le Pils is excellente! It has a great malt flavor that is probably stronger than you’d find in a German pils but weaker than a Czech one. Those Strisselspalt hops add classic green herbal flavors and, thankfully, have a light touch when it comes to the fruity ones. This stuff also has the parfait fizz. You can taste it and feel it on your tongue but the effervescence never becomes an obstacle to getting at the malt and hops. Flavors can be gentle and more subtle because they needn’t worry about being overrun by a bunch of marauding bubbles leaving a sharp acidulousness in their wake.
Having now had Working Draft’s German, Czech, and French takes on this style, I can say that they are the premiere purveyors of pilsner in Madison.
Junk food pairing: For a Frankish beer like this, you'll want to pair it with only the finest haute junk food. Le Pils will pair well with brie & cranberry potato chips.
While this piwo from Working Draft Beer Company was probably a year and a half old or thereabouts, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to drink a Grodziskie. Despite its age, it was tasty. Light, fizzy, and smoky. With a dash of citrus taste in there too.
There is no better antidote to happiness, no greater engine of grief, nothing better able to transform a calm and peaceful demeanor into a fight or flight response than Twitter. It is a wicked place. Virtual bands of brigands roam the site hurling insults at any and everyone. Iniquitous toads lie in wait to vent their spleens at the innocent like lambs to the slaughter. Perfidious keyboard warriors don the cloak of anonymity and revel in being the nemesis of people who merely want to look at cat pictures. Dante himself could never have conceived a circle of Hell that approaches the sheer evil that is Twitter.
The latest trespass against my pure heart came the other day when I was happily scrolling along and Twitter’s algorithm – talk about banality of evil – showed me some tweets by a total stranger who was vacationing in Germany.
“Oh, look! Here I am on the shore of the river Regnitz!” one proudly announced. “Check out the lovely old town hall!” said another. “Here I am in the alt stadt!”
Of Bamberg. The guy was smack dab in the middle of Rauchbier paradise and I was not.
I could feel the anger build inside of me. Jealousy seethed through my veins and if I’d just been given an injection of malice. Why was I not in Bamberg enjoying a fine Rauchbier or 10?! Who was this guy to have all the fun?! I want to go to the Schlenkerla brewery and drink a Rauchbier while dining on a Bamberg Onion yet there I was, sitting at home leading a life of quiet desperation.
Someday I will go there and I too shall walk along the river Regnitz. I too shall stroll the alt stadt and stop in at Schlenkerla where I will suckle at the oaken teat of life, to be nourished by its Rauchbier. But until that day comes, I must make do with the Rauchbier presented to me.
In Bamberg, I believe there are 2 breweries that specialize in Rauchbier: the aforementioned Schlenkerla and Spezial. It is my understanding that some of the other breweries in town also brew one although they make a variety of other styles that lack smokiness. Here in Madison we have zero breweries that specialize in Rauchbier but, thankfully, there are brewers around that will occasionally deviate from the hazy, fruity norm and whip up a batch of smoky beer.
One such brewery is Working Draft. It seems like they brew a smoke beer of some kind 2 or 3 times a year. While I’ve seen their Rauch Helles mentioned before, I’d never actually tried it until recently. One time Isthmus beer scribe Robin Shepard even tweeted at me that it was on tap and I dutifully put it on my to-do list but, sadly, never got around to heading down to the brewery to give it a go. My suspicion is that it’s made in fairly small batches and that the brewers at Working Draft drink most of it. I mean, if Clint Lohman, his minions, and a few epicurean customers weren’t the only ones enjoying it, you’d think it'd be brewed more often.
The most recent batch was canned. I am unsure if previous batches were but I suspect not. This made things easier for me and I was totally unsurprised to find several 4-packs in the cooler as if I was the first to purchase the stuff. The bottom of the can noted that the beer was canned on 6/15/22 so it was quite fresh.
Smoked Helles poured a gorgeous light gold. (Or was it a deep yellow?) It was clear as day and topped with a modest head of loose, white foam that lasted what I think of as an average amount of time. There was a smattering of bubbles inside. The aroma got me drooling with its luscious smokiness which was accompanied by bread, a faint honeyed sweetness, and just a hint of spicy hops.
That first sip revealed a good, firm fizz before my tongue was awash in a sea of smoke. I am not sure, but it tasted like the traditional German beechwood smoke. The medium-light body also had some tasty bread flavor with spicy hops underneath. It had a firm astringency which gave it some bite. On the finish, the bready taste faded quickly but the smokiness lingered a short time before the hops added more of that spiciness with green notes that made for a firm bitterness and a pretty dry finish.
A friend of mine who has been making beer in the craft beer industry for a long time has sung the praises of Working Draft's lagering capabilities. "If you see their lager, you know it's going to be good," he once remarked. I agree. They have an excellent Rauchbier on their hands. There's smokiness in spades yet the bready and hoppy tastes get their due. It's clean and crisp and the savory malt flavors take center stage. My only gripe here is that I wish it was a little more smooth with less of an acidic bite. But this does not diminish the beer's deliciousness.
The light body is perfect for our summer weather so, when autumn arrives and it gets cooler outside, methinks we deserve a Rauch Festbier.
Junk food pairing: At 4.7% A.B.V, this is a fairly sessionable beer and I suggest pairing it with your 3 course junk food meal. Start with a bag of sour plum potato chips for your Vorspeise. The main course will be pork rinds with a bacon horseradish dip. (Heluva Good! makes a fine dip of this flavor.) For dessert, serve up a big slice of Dr. Pepper cake. You will find that Smoked Helles is the perfect complement to every one of these fine comestibles.
It wasn't all that long ago that there was snow on the ground and I was reviewing another Baltic porter. But that one had vanilla in it. Too much, in fact, for my taste. Well, today we have another big, dark lager just like you'd find in the all the taverns and inns of Tallinn, but without any vanilla added.
This one is a collaboration between two relative newcomers here in Madison: Giant Jones Brewing Co. and Working Draft Beer Company. As the bottle notes, both breweries opened in the same year, 2018, and, since they are located only about two blocks from one another, a collaboration was inevitable.
I will refer the reader to my review of Lakefront's vanilla Baltic porter for more but the abbreviated story behind the style is thus: the Poles got hooked on English porter in the 18th century and started brewing it themselves. A hundred years or so later, lager brewing was in vogue so they applied it to their beloved porter and voila! They ended up with Baltic porter, although the Poles didn't call it that. They probably just called it "porter". It was some late-20th century beer nerd with a taxonomy fetish who gave it the appellation we have today.
Most, if not all, brewing collaborations I've witnessed or been given the behind the scenes scuttlebutt by a participant consist of the brewmasters standing around drinking while brewing minions of the host brewery do all of the work. Once that's done, the brewers join their superiors in the quaffing. I have absolutely no idea what the collaboration here consisted of but, since I don't think Giant Jones has much capacity for lagering whereas Working Draft does as they release a new pilsner every week, it seems, these days, my guess is that brewmaster Jessica Jones and her crew walked down the street to Working Draft on brew day.**
While most of the press Giant Jones garners centers around the fact that the brewery is owned by women, the really neat aspect for me is that Giant Jones is an organic brewery. As CEO Erika Jones explained, "All our ingredients and anything that has the potential to come into contact with our beer (such as no-rinse sanitizers) must be approved under the National Organic Program." Add in that GJ's beers are all 7%+ A.B.V. and you've got yourself some very niche products.
Organic beer hasn't taken off in the way other organic foods have. Go into your local food co-op and you're spoiled for choice when it comes to organic junk food. Organic cheese puffs? They've got them coming out of their tattooed, lobe gauged ears. Organic beer? Not so much. From what I've read, organic barley and hops are fairly rare. Still, Giant Jones offers a wide variety of beers at prices that are not ungodly so that situation may not be as dire as the articles I've read make it seem.
In an age when cans rule the packaging roost and hard seltzers and non-alcoholic beers are ascendant, Giant Jones with their big, organic brews in half liter bottles appear to be swimming against the tide. Let us hope they don't get eaten by a bear. You know, like some horny salmon do while swimming upstream.
My cat Grabby looked on as the loose, tan head atop my pour dissipated quickly leaving a glass of deep brown liquid with a red tint. The beer was clear! Still, it was too dark to discern any bubbles floating about inside. Cats have very good olfactory senses but, since she cannot speak Human, I have no idea what she was able to smell. For my part, I caught plum, malty sweetness, dark chocolate, and something like carob.
My first sip revealed a medium-heavy body with a sturdy fizziness. It didn't taste as sugary as the aroma hinted that it might be but there was some caramel sweetness from the malt. Chocolate, carob, and a rather strong stone fruit flavor were present as was a touch of roasty malt taste. On the finish, most of those flavors faded away and a little coffee, which I expected to taste earlier, faded in. Spicy hop flavors made themselves known at last and helped make for a very dry finish. There was that boozy heat to help the dryness cause as well. The beer is 8.2%, which is fairly substantial, but not deadly, yet my mouth had this strong astringent feeling and I felt as if I could breathe fire.
This was not what I expected. The coffee and chocolate flavors which I had anticipated to be more prominent were instead relegated to supporting roles. For me, coffee and bitter chocolate flavors should be at equal or greater strength than fruity ones in this style. Otherwise it had a clean lagery taste. Admittedly, it had been a while since I'd had a Baltic porter that was brewed anywhere near the Baltic Sea so perhaps I was misremembering...? Plus, there's more than one way to brew a Baltic porter, right?
However close this beer is or is not to, say, a Polish take on the style, it's got too prominent a fruity taste for my, er, taste. It should be a co-equal flavor to coffee and dark chocolate, not its superior. Still, this is by no means an awful brew and, if you are, say, a big fan of Placek ze Śliwkami, then I recommend this one for you. For me, my half a snifter above was enough.
Junk food pairing: Pair your Giant Jones/Working Draft Baltic porter with a bag of Kettle Brand Korean Barbeque potato chips. Their sweet-salt combo goes perfectly with this beer.
Considering the widespread addiction to Girl Scouts Thin
Mints cookies, I am somewhat surprised that mint isn't used more often in beer,
especially dark beers which contain malted grains that add the taste of dark/bitter chocolate such as, say, the porter. It seems a no-brainer. However,
I don’t recall ever having drunk a mint-laced beer that wasn't homebrewed. And
that was but a single occasion.
The person who brewed the mint beer I was given - a porter! - remarked to
me, "When you're sick of drinking the stuff, make ice cream floats out of
it." This isn't surprising considering that mint is generally used to
flavor sweet foods (and, yes, the beer did make a fine float). Think the above Thin Mints, gum, ice cream, and so on. I once had a
co-worker from Morocco who told me about the tea that he drank at home. It was
full of fresh mint leaves – and no small amount of sugar. Other drinks made with mint are
also laden with sugar – see the mint julep and the mojito. What do you eat with
the leg of lamb on Easter? Mint jelly. I suppose our tastebuds like a little something
to dull the sharp pungency of mint.
But mint isn't always paired with something that is replete with
sweetness. I recall having a meal at Kabul here in Madison which was minty yet
not sweet. So mint gets in on the savory action too, though rarely, it seems.
Fairly recently, my Frau expressed a rather substantial preference
for peppermint over spearmint, the two most common varieties of mint. Or was it
spearmint over peppermint? I cannot recall. Regardless, I never knew she had
strong feelings on this matter and the revelation made me consider the herbs.
I mean, I don’t think I'd ever given much consideration as to how peppermint
and spearmint differ beyond the color of the gum wrappers. It seems the biggest difference is that peppermint
contains menthol whereas spearmint does not. Hence the former tasting like
cold. (Think Ralph Wiggum, "It tastes like coldness!")
There are many varieties of mint including watermint, which
is a parent of peppermint that I'd never heard of until just now. Another type
of mint is calamintha (nepeta), which, in addition to being raised in areas
around the Mediterranean, is also grown
just a few blocks from my home at Olbrich Botanical Gardens and that is how it
found its way into a porter brewed by Working Draft Beer Company called Olbrich
Porter.
In addition to calamintha, the brew was also made with birch
sap from the Gardens. Neither of these ingredients were familiar to me and so my
curiosity was piqued. (Plus, proceeds from the sale of Olbrich Porter go to OBG,
a worthy cause.)
While I was unfamiliar with some of the ingredients, it
looked just like the porters I've known. My glass had a big, tan head that was comprised of large bubbles
that reminded me of those you get with root beer. And they were loud. The liquid
was a Stygian reddish brown. Tilting my glass just right, I saw that it looked slightly
hazy. On first sniff, I caught a big wave of mint – shocking, I know – along
with a pungent whiff of anise and a hint of the portery things like bitter
chocolate and roasted grain. Upon taking a bigger sniff, the calamintha gave
off an aroma like oregano. It wasn't strong, mind you, but it was there lurking
in the background.
On first sip, I tasted a mellow fizz set against a very pleasant
smoothness. Overall, the beer had a medium-light body. Like the aroma, mint was
most prominent followed by anise with some faint dark chocolate and roasted
grain flavors playing supporting roles. There was also a hint of sweetness but
I am unsure how much of it was from malt and how much from the birch sap. I've
never had birch sap (nor birch syrup) but apparently it has less sugar than its
maple counterpart so I am guessing that either the sweetness was a combination of
malt and birch sap or a lot of sap was used in making this beer with much of
the water having been boiled off.
On the finish, those mint and anise flavors endured and were
joined by the gentle bitterness and herbal flavors of some Brewer's Gold hops.
I also tasted a little dark chocolate here.
Overall, I enjoyed this beer. I liked the minty sweetness
and, as it warmed, the chocolate notes from the grains which got stronger pushing it
closer into Thin Mint territory. But I am not the biggest fan of anise so this
was not a beer I would care to drink all night long. Having said this, I do wish
more brewers would explore the non-hoppy offerings of the botanical world.
Hopefully Working Draft will root around Olbrich Botanical Gardens again for
more interesting flavor combinations.
Junk food pairing: go to your local Asian or Indian grocer and get some curry flavored potato chips to go with your Olbrich Porter. At the last one I was at, they had a couple different curry flavored chips that Frito Lay dare not sell in mainstream American stores.
