North to...Onalaska?: Northwoods Invasion by Lake Louie Brewing

Tempus fugit!

It's been two and a half years since it was announced that Arena's Lake Louie Brewing was to be acquired by Wisconsin Brewing Company. At the time, one of the advantages of the alliance would be that Lake Louie could take advantage of WBC's much larger facilities in Verona and perhaps brew some beers they'd not been able to back in Arena. Or, as WBC CEO Carl Nolen said in corporatespeak, "This new collaboration will allow us to utilize our scale to expand and enhance the Lake Louie portfolio."

Exactly what has been expanded and/or enhanced is unknown to me. However, Lake Louie does have a new summer seasonal called Northwoods Invasion. Now, exactly where Wisconsin's northwoods, a.k.a. – "up north", starts is a matter of some contention. For many Chicago folks, crossing the state line into Wisconsin means they're up north. But this is simply a lack of perspective on their part. Portage, a mere 30 or so miles north of Madison, bills itself as the "Gateway to the North". While there's some lovely country up there in Columbia County, it's still very much in the southern part of the state.

The two main contenders for the marker that signals the true start of the northwoods are highways 29 and 8. Highway 29 begins at Green Bay in the east, heads west-northwest to Wausau, where it tacks to the west until it gets to River Falls which is within spitting distance of the Mississippi. Highway 8 runs 45 miles or so north of 29. I think of Highway 29 as being the start of up north. Once you go north of it, there are no cities of any appreciable size nor any interstate highways. I mean, how can you tell me with a straight face that Chetek is not in the northwoods?

Regardless of where you feel up north actually begins, Northwoods Invasion is just the latest member of a series of Wisconsin pale lagers that trades on the reputation of "up north". I suppose Leinenkugel was ahead of the curve with their Northwoods Lager back in the day. Then there was Capital's recently departed Lake House Helles. More recently, One Barrel Brewing released Up North Wisconsin Lager while Lake Louie's parent company, WBC, has Wisconsin Vacation with a label featuring a cabin up by Barnes, a fish, and a buck. Well, it may not be a lengthy series but what can you do?

Oh, and you can add just about every beer from Northwoods Brewpub.

There. That's better.

So about this Northwoods Invasion. It's a pale lager and at 4% A.B.V., it's aims to be a summer thirst quencher. Although it may have been a brewery exclusive or something similar in past years, this is the first time it's been packaged, as far as I can tell.

As the visuals go, Northwoods Invasion was a beauty. I managed a better pour this time around and got a big, white head. It was a brilliant white and stuck around for a while so it made things look nice. The beer was a clear yellow with some bubbles making their way upwards. It smelled like a modern American beer with a prominent citrus scent along with something more floral and a big dose of sweetness.

Taking my first sip, I found that it had a medium-light body that leaned towards the lighter side, which is unsurprising here. That floral bit that my nose encountered was also keen on meeting my tongue with citrus flavors coming in a distant second. Lots of flavor from the hops but very little bitterness. Also, very little grain flavor – just a touch of cracker. A mild bitterness emerged on the finish and lingered, which I appreciated. Those floral and citrus tastes stuck around, albeit in diminished quantities, too.

It wasn't until I had already drunk the beer that I read that it was dry hopped with Citra and Nelson Sauvin hops. Dry hopping is the addition of hops after the boiling is done so you add aroma and flavors but very little bitterness. Now, I presume the Citra adds citrus flavors and that the Nelson Sauvin hops would add something vinous or grape-like, given what I've read about them. But I didn't taste anything wine-like here. Instead, I got that floral taste which reminded me of Central Waters' Summarillo, a dry hopped summer lager from several years ago.

I really liked Northwoods Invasion. The aroma was an enchanting blend of citrus and floral. The taste too had this combination and, while I do wish it had a little more bitterness, a firm fizz helped keep it from being cloying. It was light and refreshing, perfect for a hot summer's day.

Just as the head made for a lovely sight after having filled my glass, the lacing made for a pretty sight after I had emptied it.

Junk food pairing: A bag of white cheddar lefse chips is the ideal companion for your Northwoods Invasion.

Pumpkin Beers Ain't That Bad, Baby: Pumpkin Lager by Lakefront Brewery

I will be upfront with you: I hate the phrase "pumpkin spice". Who among us eats a cinnamon roll or a bratwurst and thinks, "I love the pumpkin spice in this!"

While I am probably wrong, I attribute the contemporary inundation of store shelves every late summer/autumn with products made with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and clove (maybe even mace) to Starbucks and their Pumpkin Spice Latte which they unleashed upon us earlier this century sometime. "Pumpkin spice" foods just seemed to go apeshit in its wake.

Of course, the spices themselves have rich culinary histories that long predate Europeans pairing them with a particular winter squash native to North America. Aside from allspice, which is indigenous to the Caribbean, they all come from the East Indies which are probably not called that anymore. But that was their moniker back when Christopher Columbus figured that the spice must flow and he consequently sailed west in search of them so he could get in on the spice trade which was quite profitable. Indonesians were cooking with these spices before any white people knew what pumpkins and coffee were.

Back in the Middle Ages, European cooks had various spice blends in their repertoire. Amongst the most popular was Powder Douce, a mellow one and, while recipes for it certainly varied, it was commonly made of ginger, cinnamon, clove, sugar, and nutmeg. It's stronger cousin, Powder Forte, was often a mix of ginger, cinnamon, clove, cubebs, grains of paradise, and black pepper. Look familiar? I honestly don't know if the blend of spices commonly used to season pumpkin derives from these medieval concoctions but I'd bet it does.

I remember seeing jars of McCormick Pumpkin Pie Spice mix when I was a kid and the internet tells me the term "pumpkin spice" dates back to 1936. But it is ubiquitous this time of year these days in a way that it wasn't, say, 20 or more ago. There just weren't pumpkin spice lattes, cookies, breakfast cereals, pretzels, artificial coffee creamers, yoghurt, popcorn, kale chips, margarine, cream cheese, almonds, and so on. And there were a lot fewer pumpkin beers.

Which leads me nicely to the subject of this blog post, Lakefront's Pumpkin Lager.

I am not sure when Lakefront started brewing it, but I think they've being doing so for a while now.** Lakefront throws in everything including the kitchen sink here. It is brewed with pumpkin and not just the associated spices. Plus, they don't skimp on those spices. They use them all: cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, clove, and mace. Most pumpkin beers are ales but, as the names indicates, this is a lager.

This was another very pretty beer. On top was a lovely just off-white head that was a bit on the firm side. The liquid was a gorgeous light amber and clear. I could see a smattering of bubbles inside. Taking a sniff, I caught basically all of the spices listed on the label. Nutmeg/mace came first and was most prominent. This was followed by ginger and cinnamon. Bringing up the rear were fainter traces of clove and allspice.

It being a fall beer, Pumpkin Lager is medium bodied. I caught a hint of fizz amidst the spices which take pride of place here. Nutmeg/mace and cinnamon were the leaders of the pack. Pumpkin doesn't, as far as I can tell, add much flavor to beer. To my tastebuds, it gives a slight starchy smoothness to the beer as well as a mellow earthy flavor that is easily hidden by all of the spices. Finally, I tasted a hint of grain underneath it all.

On the finish, some bitterness emerged and I could taste hops for the first time. There was a peppery flavor that lingered which I think was the hops and perhaps some ginger in combination. The nutmeg/clove/cinnamon thing was relegated to the back of the line here.

This is an excellent beer. There's very little sweetness which is why I think of it as not aspiring to mimic pumpkin pie like so many pumpkin beers do. Instead, it tastes like a beer with spices. It had a pleasing smoothness to it and I loved the peppery zing on the finish. At 6.1% A.B.V., it's a tasty bulwark against the encroaching cool of autumn. 

Junk food pairing: You can't go wrong by washing down a tube of Pringles Rotisserie Chicken crisps with some Pumpkin Lager.

** I emailed Lakefront about this and a marketing person replied, "I believe the first time we made the lager was in 1989".

A Salt & Vinegar Miscellany IV

 

These weren't bad but not great either. Vinegar tang was middle of the road but they both had a starchy mealiness to them. The cassava root chips didn't crumble like the bean chips dip or salsa was applied and their smaller size kept the mealy texture at bay on a per bite basis.

The Pome of Dan: Pear 21 by New Glarus Brewing

The humble pear doesn't get the attention that its cousin the apple does. What do people know about them beyond that partridges in their trees make nice Christmas gifts? It wasn't a pear that Eve ate which led to the downfall of Man, it was an apple. (Well, hypothetically.) And when the pear does come up for consideration, it gets thrown into phrases denoting negative things such as "go pear shaped". Poor fruit. Less infamously, note that Anheuser-Busch didn't decide to make Busch Light Pear, they went with Busch Light Apple.

"If the mega-breweries won't make pear beer, we will!" cried Dan Carey to the lead brewer above the din of the Spotted Cow bottling line, and the assistant brewers darted forward to the brew kettle.

And so they did. Pear 21 came out in August.

From my admittedly very limited view of the Wisconsin beer scene, Pear 21 seems to have been a flop. I did not see much attention given to it unlike its fruity predecessor, Lots o' Peach 21. I found that beer to be cloyingly sweet and had high hopes that Pear 21 wouldn't be a fructosian punch to the pancreas when I bought a 4-pack of it.

New Glarus is being a bit cagey about the exact nature of Pear 21. Their website merely says that it tastes like pear and offers the noncommittal "Inspired by Berliner Weisse styles of brewing". It's not that New Glarus needs to brew according to strict style guidelines or within the bounds prescribed by tradition, it's that I'd like to have more of an idea of what the beer is like beyond the fruit in the name. Oh well.

Seeing Berliner Weisse mentioned in the description, I sought out a fancy glass. Alas, I found neither a champagne flute nor a stemmed wine glass in the kitchen so it was the unstemmed wine glass for me. My pour produced a small, loose, white head that went away quickly. The beer was a light gold and a little hazy. There was a modicum of bubbles visible inside. Presumably it was not inspired by the traditional level of carbonation of the Berliner Weisse as it did not have the ebullient fizz of even New Glarus' own takes on the style.

The aroma was absolutely wonderful – it was indeed lots o' pear. The only other scent I caught was a hint of citrus.

Don't be overly sweet! Don't Be Overly Sweet! DON'T BE OVERLY SWEET!

I took a sip and found that it tasted a lot like it smelled: positively pomaceous! But it was very sweet. The beer didn't feel particularly treacly on my tongue yet it tasted rather syrupy. All of the tartness that I had expected from the Berliner Weisse reference on the label was buried underneath the sweetness just like the bass on …And Justice For All. You could discern it but only if you swished the beer around in your mouth and really, really concentrated. As with the aroma, there was a faint citrus flavor in the background. On the finish the fruity sweetness lost some of its power and its retreat meant that a tad of sourness was able to peek through.

Like its peach predecessor, this stuff tasted like a Libby nectar to me. It was just too sweet, too syrupy. On the plus side, the pear flavor was simply delicious. It genuinely tasted like fresh pear. I am curious to know how this beer became so sweet. Was it really that full of malty sugars? Was sweetened pear juice added? Either it needs to have the sweetness lessened greatly or the fizz and tartness boosted by orders of magnitude.

What do you do with such a cloying beer? Maybe cut it with some club soda? I can definitely see braising pork with it.

Junk food pairing: Pair your Pear 21 with something to cut through the sweetness like salt & vinegar pork rinds.

A Limnological Pilsner: Lager of the Lakes by Bell's Brewery

Likely because I don’t drink much beer from Michigan, I get Bell’s Brewery confused with Founders Brewing. I have to stop and think, “OK, now which one am I supposed to avoid because it was sued for racial discrimination or whatever it was?” That was Founders which was sued by a former employee who claimed that he was called n***er and otherwise discriminated against. Bell’s to my knowledge has never been sued for such a thing.

With its genesis in the mid-80s, Bell’s is surely the granddaddy of microbrewers in Michigan. If Stroh, which is long gone and exists only on paper in a trademark office, is like the Miller of Michigan, is there an old regional brewery? Like their equivalent of Point or Leinenkugel?

…

That appears to be Frankenmuth Brewery which opened in 1862.

Still, Bell’s is a relative veteran in the beer game. When I hear the brewery’s name mentioned, visions of Oberon dance in my head. In addition to their much ballyhooed wheat ale, I also tend to think of Two Hearted, an IPA, Hopslam, a double IPA, and Expedition Stout, an imperial stout. Bell’s is generally highly regarded and I tend to regard them highly too. They don’t discriminate against black employees, the company is family owned and not a subsidiary of AB-InBev or Molson Coors, theirs is a reputation for brewing high quality beers, and they’re fellow denizens of the Upper Midwest. It’s just that I don’t drink them very often. Rarely, in fact.

American IPAs are not my thing while American wheat ales and Russian Imperial stouts are styles that I rarely seek out and quaff only once in a blue moon. Of course, they brew other styles as you can tell from the title of this post. I ran into Lager of the Lakes recently and it rang a bell, pun intended. I believe I’ve had it before but couldn’t say when. After doing a bit of research, I felt a bit silly when I read that A) it’s brewed year-round and B) it has been around since 2003. Surely I’ve drunk it previously. Why am I only now giving it some attention?

Bell’s calls this beer a Bohemian style pilsner. You may recall back in June when I was a ball of confusion over the differences between German and Czech pilsners. Well, because I approach these posts about beers with the utmost seriousness, I brought home some Pilsner Urquell fairly recently so that I might become thoroughly acquainted with the Bohemian pilsner. I failed in that endeavor but nonetheless I am ready to take on another Ameri-piwo that a domestic brewer would like you to think could have come from Pilsen itself.

My Lager of the Lakes poured from a wonderful can celebrating the Great Lakes generally and Michigan more specifically. A lot of the label’s decoration surrounding a map of the region is equally applicable to Wisconsin and pretty much anywhere in the Upper Midwest: a fish, a pine tree, a maple leaf, etc.

The beer was a lovely light yellow hue and clear. On top was a big, frothy head that had staying power. Lots of bubbles were visible inside heading on up. A very pretty beer. And it smelled nice too with an enchanting grassy hop aroma along with cracker, just a touch of malt sweetness, and a faint lemon scent to boot.

A nice, firm fizziness kept a mix of biscuit and grassy/herbal hop flavors in line. There was a hint of malt sweetness but that was all so the beer's body was rather light. It was lagered to perfection - clean and crisp. The finish was quite dry with the hops taking on a peppery taste. There was a wee bit of lingering malt as well as a similar amount of astringency.

I really enjoyed the fizz and the dry finish here. Well, I really enjoyed this beer as a whole. Those tasty Noble hop flavors shone through although the less prominent malt flavors were no less delicious. It was a wonderful brew that seemed like a German style pils to me yet the label purports that the can contains a pilsner of the Bohemian variety. I suppose one can argue that Bohemia was part of Germany from 1939-45 but that's cheating.

Since the last time I ran into the old Czech vs. German pilsner conundrum, I've had some Pilsner Urquell. It was decidedly not light yellow - more of a deep gold or light amber. And the malt taste was much more prominent. When I look at pictures of Budvar and Staropramen, they too are much darker than Lager of the Lakes.

Regardless of the taxonomy, this a great beer.

Junk food pairing: Pork rinds! Plain or spicy.

Towards a New Madison Metro Transit: Cui Bono?

It's an exciting and, perhaps, anxious time for public transit users here in the Madison area. The city is engaged in a two-pronged strategy for improving Metro Transit's bus service. First is a total redesign of the bus network and second is the implementation of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). With new census numbers showing that Madison is now a city of around 270,000 in a county of well over half a million, there are many more people who need to travel within the metro area than there ever has been. With the city being centered on a fairly narrow isthmus, some roads leading to downtown cannot be widened so we contend with a capacity issue. Plus, there are additional concerns such as increasing air and noise pollution, more greenhouse gases, social justice, etc.

The quality of Madison Metro's current service is definitely one of those your mileage may vary things. It works well for many people who commute to and from downtown or campus on a typical weekday. But, the farther you get from the downtown and campus, the spottier bus service gets. Many low-income people on the periphery of the city face either very long commutes, sometimes with multiple transfers, or find that Madison Metro is simply unable to accommodate their transit requirements. Service on the weekend often means longer waits and/or that the convenient route that ran on Friday doesn't run on Saturday.

I give Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway a lot of credit for doing what her predecessors failed to do: stop kicking the public transit can down the road. Despite the bus system's long-standing limitations and the city's ever-growing population, previous mayors did little beyond raising fares. Paul Soglin showed zero leadership during his last 2 terms as mayor on this issue. Both he and my former alder David Ahrens simply rolled over and played dead on the issue. They were quick to blame dwindling federal funds and a Republican state government that was and remains genuinely hostile towards Madison (and public transit) rather than roll up their sleeves and tackle the problem as best they could given the circumstances.

Being a transit user, I am extremely pleased to see that we as a city are moving forward with improving bus service. Because of Covid, I no longer commute to the office 5 days a week but I do ride the bus on the 2 days I am required to be at my desk instead of at home with my cats to keep me company and point their butts at the webcam during meetings. I own a car and ride my bike during good weather so my bus rides outside of the workday commute have been sporadic lately, though I expect to be on the bus more often as winter approaches.

Personally, I rate Metro's service as decent to good, depending on the day. It gets me to and from my 9-5 job fine. By and large it also does well getting me downtown and to campus for movies, grabbing a bite to eat, and whatnot. It is rather less effective at getting me to the cinemas on the west side and cannot accommodate midnight movies. Taking a bus to the homes of friends is a mixed bag as well.

But things will certainly change if and when BRT and the network redesign happen. The BRT project seems to have most of the details in place including the route and station placement. When there are online meetings about it, they seem to be more informational at this point rather than inquisitive. On the other hand, the network redesign process is still very much in the early stages and subject to significant change. Indeed, Madison Metro is actively soliciting input.

We Madisonians have to collectively decide what the new bus network will be like. The people we've hired to help us with this, Jarrett Walker and Associates, have put forward two demonstration networks for our consideration. There's a ridership network:

And there's the coverage network:

The ridership option has the fewest routes but they traverse the densest and most job-rich areas in the city and have the highest frequency which means a lot of riders. The coverage option, as the name implies, offers service to a larger area but with less frequency. So now it's up to us to use these scenarios to figure out which direction we want Metro to move in. Note that these maps are not the two choices from which we in Madison must choose but rather they illustrate the two opposing transit objectives that we must contend with.

The latest survey was crafted to tease out our preferences in the matter. Honestly, I answered "I don’t know" a lot on it. The only time I made something resembling a firm decision between the two options was when I was offered a slider. Moving it one way indicated you are more partial towards coverage and sliding it in the opposite direction put you somewhere in the ridership camp. There were degrees of preference, however, not just wholehearted endorsement of one or the other. I came down leaning slightly towards ridership.

It's a tough decision. When I look at the demo maps above, I see advantages for me in both of them. Having a bus that runs every 15 minutes close to home would be nice but being able to bus it to more places would also be great. And that is what the survey asked: which of the options was better for you and your neighborhood. But, as the Mayor reminded us in the last meeting, the project also has an equity component to it. Making bus service better for low-income folks, many of whom live in clusters closer to the Madison's periphery than to downtown, is part of the plan. Hopefully those people are able to take the surveys and give input because, if it's only Babbitt types that respond, the result may be a network skewed to their transit priorities.

So, what would be best for me and my east side neighborhood? Lots of frequent service. Given limited resources, that would mean poorer service for low-income people on the southwest side. How to choose? (I am now having a weird Rawlsian veil of ignorance flashback to a college political science course.)

One thing that came to mind was the possibility of starting off with a system that is more ridership oriented to boost numbers. With data in hand, the city could go to the transit alms givers and say, "Look at all of those riders! You must give us more funds!" Then, with the budget boost, coverage can be expanded.

Is this how it works in the real world? Probably not.

There's the rub – money. If we had state legislators that were more amenable to public transit, we'd have better bus service. And they needn't necessarily open the state coffers wider. Allowing municipalities to work together and create regional transit authorities would be very helpful.

But we don't have transit friendly legislators at the Capitol so, as Donald Rumsfeld would say if we were in charge of Metro Transit, you offer service with the resources you have, not the resources you might want or wish to have at a later time. The trick now for us is to determine how we're going to allocate the transit resources we have while working towards increasing those funds for later improvements.

The Corona Diaries Vol 31: Saved by the Madonna del Ghisallo

(mid-August 2021)

While out on a recent bike ride, I came across a real antique automobile.

My internet sleuthing leads me to believe it's a Ford Model A from the late 1920s or early 1930s. I think running boards are highly underrated and deserve a comeback.

********

The census numbers are in and they say Madison now has a population of 269,840. Or did as of the middle of last year, up from 233,209 in 2010. The county we reside in, Dane, went from 488,073 to 561,504 and this represents about a third of the population growth in the entire state. While these are not Sunbelt numbers, they're not bad for the Upper Midwest and our growth will engender many changes. For instance, from what I've read, another seat will be created in the State Assembly to accommodate the increasing population of our county while our Congressional District will have a chunk of it chopped off and merged into another District to help keep things even-steven.

Unfortunately, the Republicans in our legislature are happy to screw over Madison & Dane County whenever the opportunity presents itself. Just this summer they cut public transit funding to Madison and Milwaukee by 50% each. They justified the cuts by saying that Wisconsin's two biggest cities/Democratic strongholds were getting money from the federal pandemic relief plans. However, other transit agencies around the state are also getting federal relief money but the Legislature didn't cut state aid to them.

For now, we await the state's redistricting process which will surely end up in court. If that goes well – i.e. – fairly – we will turn bluer and theoretically have more sympathetic politicos at the Capitol.

********

I left off last entry having decided to bike east on Femrite Drive out of Madison and see what I could see since I don't think I've ever been on it east of the interstate. Femrite Drive in on the southeast side of town and the stretch of it I'd been on before is largely warehouses and industrial businesses. For instance, DuPont has a facility on it plus a coffee roaster, electric contractors, a sheet metal fabricator, and an intercity bus operator all call the street home.

Near one of the buildings, I saw a couple of turkeys taking a leisurely stroll.

East of the interstate, the area becomes less developed with more fields and fewer warehouses and offices. At one point the industry ends and it's all farmland and homes. It was absolutely gorgeous on this stretch with verdant, rolling hills and fresh smelling air.

There were some moderately creepy looking farm ruins just off the road that I stopped at.

At one intersection I spied a Trachte building in the distance to the north. I am used to seeing them in the city but I occasionally spy one out in the country.

To the south was the Dane County Landfill where all of our waste is buried.

A few months ago, I read an article about how the current landfill is running out of space and so the county is looking to expand it. Since so much of the waste that enters the landfill is food, the city is trying to convince residents to collect compostable organic waste and bring it to one of the drop-off sites in town. This would extend the life of the landfill and reduce the production of methane, a nasty greenhouse gas.

Luckily for me none of the hills were particularly steep so I was treated to a nice, easy-going ride. Well, mostly. One uphill stretch ran alongside a farm and I heard barking as I slowly pedaled my way up the slope. There was a pudgy dog that looked like an overweight foxhound standing between a barn and another outbuilding scowling at me as it sounded its canine klaxon. Then it bolted.

Crap.

It made a beeline for me and, for a hound that was a little on the portly side, it didn't take long to reach me. If it wasn't bad enough to be struggling to pedal up the hill, I now had an angry sounding hound at my ankle. Like the dog, I am overweight and out of shape to boot, so there was no way I could get up that incline quick enough to outrun my canine pursuer. I could feel its fur brushing against my ankle and its breath as well with every bark. I downshifted and gained a little more speed but not enough to outrun this creature in its dogged pursuit. I mean, it had 4 legs and I had only 2 wheels, after all.

Fortunately, the Madonna del Ghisallo was smiling upon me that day and the hound got tired and/or bored as I finally reached the top of the hill and it gave up its pursuit.

I found myself at the intersection with a couple state highways, my ankle having emerged from the encounter bite free. After crossing, I discovered that I was now on Siggelkow Road, a classic German name if there ever was one, which meant I was likely a bit east of McFarland, a town that abuts Madison to the southeast. As before, there was some absolutely lovely scenery.

The problem was that there were some rather steep hills and I could feel my heart thumping in my chest as I struggled to bike up a couple of them. "Was this what it was like for that guy in that Edgar Allan Poe story?" I asked myself between wheezes. I thought I was going to die so I dismounted and walked my bike up these monsters. When I hear my heart in my chest, I get paranoid. Heart disease is rampant in my family and I think I am just going to keel over and die like the old man did.

Despite my cardiac concerns, it was a beautiful ride and I discovered a new orchard for my trouble. Two or 3 miles later I was in McFarland on the Lower Yahara River Trail, just a few miles from downtown.

On one stretch of the trail, I ran into a muskrat – out of water.

Before long I was downtown and I was able to stop to get something to drink. Like a doofus, I had neglected to bring any liquid refreshment with me. I won't forget next time.

********

I have seen a couple movies recently. The first was Annette, a musical, albeit a very odd one.

I saw director Leos Carax's previous film, Holy Motors, so I knew I was in for something well outside of the mainstream.

It involves a raffish stand-up comedian, played by Adam Driver, who marries a charming opera singer, played by Marion Cotillard, after a whirlwind romance. They have a daughter, Annette, that is portrayed by a marionette(!!) for most of the movie. The story takes a turn towards the Sophoclean as a little uxoricide follows and the child seeks revenge on her father. 

The music was good and the movie was a lot of fun all around. I was lucky enough to see it in a theater but you can watch it on Amazon Prime.

My next cinematic experience was The Green Knight, a retelling of the 14^th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

It's been 5 years or thereabouts since I've read the poem and can recall only bits and pieces of it so I had to consult medieval historians on the differences between the two works. I did remember that Gawain is a gallant Knight of the Roundtable in the poem whereas the filmic Gawain is rather cowardly. I knew that he stopped at a castle on his way to meet the Green Knight and had an encounter with the lord's wife too. But that was about all.

Not unlike the Nixon tapes, the poem has a gap between Gawain leaving town to seek out the Green Knight and him finding the verdant cavalier. The poem doesn't specify what happened beyond our hero's little venture at the castle. The movie, however, fills in that time. Amongst other things, Gawain encounters a race of giants and has a run-in with one Saint Winifred. There was a historical Saint Winifred and she is reputed to have suffered from the same problem the one in the movie did: she lost her head.

Despite these adventures not appearing in the source material, they have a genuine medieval feel to them and don't stick out like a sore thumb as 21^st century additions to the tale.

The Green Knight is not an action movie. Instead, it is a character study. It's about Gawain becoming a good and virtuous member of Arthur's Roundtable. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

********

The bonus photo here is of one of our cats, Marilyn. She's about 13 and demands dinner by 5 o'clock, although she begins petitioning us for chow around 3:30 when she wakes up from her nap. If we get home late, she greets us in the window with a hangry look that is a mixture of sheer agony and disdain.

The Corona Diaries Vol 30: This Entry Is For the Birds

(Mid-August 2021)

I recently came across the neat map of Chicago above that has the remaining brick alleys marked on it. (The map is here.) Wanting to see what they looked like, I consulted Google Maps for one of the alleys and this is what I found.

Not many remain. I believe you can submit entries to the keepers of the map, should anyone know of others that may have escaped their attention.

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was a spot underneath the Chicago and North Western(?) rail overpass at Pulaski and Avondale where the black top would get worn away periodically to reveal a patch of the old brick street with streetcar rails. I thought it was really neat to be able to get a glimpse of the past that had been buried.

Here in Madison, you can occasionally see some rails emerging from the asphalt on the 200 block of S. Paterson.

Sometimes the past just won't stay hidden.

I have also heard tell that there are still a few wood block alleys left in the city. Jessica Mlinaric, the author of Secret Chicago, discusses them here.

********

In an earlier entry I described hiking around Edna Taylor Conservation Park but noted that I left wandering around the adjacent Aldo Leopold Nature Center grounds to another day. Well, that day came earlier this month.

I was out the door and on my bike a little after 6 one overcast, hazy morning. It didn't take too long to get there as it's only about 3.5 miles from home. Just across the street from the entrance were some Sandhill cranes strolling amongst the graves of Roselawn Memorial Park just as I did before venturing to Edna Taylor on that day last month.

It was made apparent that summer is quickly slipping away when I contemplated how low the sun was on the horizon. The scene was dreary and the air so humid that you could cut it with the wrong side of a knife. There was still 30-45 minutes to go before the sun would burn off the fog.

A path led me through a lot of tall grasses and wildflowers, none of which I could identify although I now know most of the yellow flowers to have been Brown-eyed Susans. It wasn't long before I came to a large clearing dotted with Leopold benches and spied a dock on the far side at the edge of a pond. I hadn't seen anyone else and, as I approached it, became aware of just how serene everything was - almost preternaturally so. It felt like I was in the video game Myst. 

Stepping onto the dock made a lot of unseen frogs and/or toads scatter. All I saw were several circles of water rippling outwards. In addition to the frogs, a bird emerged from its resting spot somewhere on my right and flew across the pond well away from me. I was unable to get a good look at it. This scenario would repeat itself when I stepped out of a small pine stand on the other side and onto an aluminum bridge that spanned the pond at its narrowest point. One of those birds was perched on the railing and immediately took off when I emerged from the copse. It joined a brace of its compatriots who were already hanging out on the branches of a tree not too far away.

More frogs were sent scattering as the bridge rocked gently under my feet. This time, however, one brave amphibian stood its ground. Or rather its log as it was completely unperturbed by the presence of a human.

After getting to the other side, I made my way towards the tree where those birds had congregated. I wasn’t sure what they were but my glimpses of them revealed enough to convince me that I hadn't seen them before. The colors that I was able to discern and the way they looked as they flew were quite unfamiliar to me. Lacking direct sunlight, I wasn't able to get a very good photo of them, but I did manage to get at least one that displayed their general shape and a little of their feather pattern including a crest.

This, combined with a very blurry photo that I took later which showed some color, gave me enough to go on with my newly recovered copy of Birds of Wisconsin. After careful consultation, I have concluded that these were Green Herons. They are found in most of Wisconsin during the summer while they spend the rest of their time down in South America.

I eventually found my way to the border with Edna Taylor Conservation Park which reminded me of Checkpoint Charlie as it had a sign saying "You are now leaving the Aldo Leopold Nature Center" and crossed over. This area seemed quite familiar to me as I had been on this side of that sign previously.

At first, I wandered down a path that I would have sworn I'd strolled on during my last visit but I soon discovered that this section of the park wasn't quite as familiar as I had initially thought. It wasn't long before I found myself in terra incognita. Taking the path to the right at a fork in the road, I ended up in the playground of an elementary school that had a mural of Sandhill cranes.

I re-entered the park using another path. A short distance to the east I came to an intersection that had one route blocked off with a sign noting that Native American burial mounds lay ahead and that they ought not be disturbed lest you run afoul of various state statutes. Heading down the other way, I soon found myself looking up the same hill that I saw deer having breakfast on last time. The path continued to the south and I ran into this tree bearing what I think are plums.

I forged on and came to a trail that went up the hill on the east side of the park which had recently been cut into the tall grass. As I was walking, the sun decided to peek out from behind the clouds at last and burn off the fog.

I spied some movement on a dead tree ahead just off of the trail. It was a woodpecker! I've had mediocre luck at best in the past trying to photograph these birds but Fate was smiling upon me this day as this one was thoroughly engrossed with the tree and the insects inside so it ignored the human fumbling with its camera a mere 10 yards or so away.

I think it was a Downy Woodpecker but it may have been a Hairy Woodpecker. They look very similar. When it stopped hopping around, it began pecking. Not very aggressively but luckily it was quiet enough that I could hear the gentle pecks on the wood.

As I neared the exit, I came across some bees doing what bees do.

When my walk was over, I was pleased as punch to have finally gotten a decent photograph of a woodpecker. But it was still fairly early. I was on Femrite Drive and decided to go east and find out where it would take me once it left the city.

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While I am not the biggest Anthony Bourdain fan around, I still went to the see the new documentary about him, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.

It didn't attempt to portray his whole life and instead began with the publication of his first book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, and proceeded to chronicle his rise to stardom. Having worked in a kitchen for several years, I found myself smiling and nodding a lot while reading Kitchen Confidential. It had only been a few years since I'd left the cooking trade when I read it so memories of all the madness and chicanery were still fairly fresh in my mind.

While I may not have worked at a fancy restaurant in a big city, there was plenty of drug use (it being Madison, it was largely booze and marijuana instead of cocaine) and low-level mayhem in the kitchen of the private dormitory I was at back in the 90s.

As with any place of employment, various members of the staff slept with one another. For example, I dated a couple of my coworkers. But we had a cook that would sneak off with one of the hostesses for some hanky panky amidst sacks of flour in the baker's storeroom. Tangentially, another cook was a woman who was big farm girl. And tall too. Taller than me. She never hid the fact that she and her husband were swingers. Indeed, she was happy to let you know this. One day after boasting to me and my fellow prep cook about being able to balance multiple quarters on each of her nipples, she leered in our direction and rather menacingly invited us out to her place where she would "make us into men"...

It is said that college students gain 15 pounds their freshman year, the Freshman 15. We figured that 15 just wasn't enough and endeavored to give these kids their Freshman 25. Honestly, it didn't take much as, if it came out of a fryer, the gormandizers would empty the freezer for you. However, if it was something prepared from scratch, then the students mostly avoided it like the Plague. We'd go through oodles and oodles of chicken nuggets and French fries. A nice batch of ratatouille made from scratch? The staff would end up eating some of it with the rest forming the base of a soup the following morning.

One day I was offsite feeding a bunch of very hungry athletes and we ran out of taco meat. I called back to the main kitchen and asked for more. The reply was, "Well, we're out of ground beef but you'll get your taco meat." There was something mildly threatening about that response and, when the delivery truck finally pulled up, I felt a bit like the couple at the end of "The Monkey's Paw" when there was that ominous knock at their door. I didn't want to know what was in that "taco meat". Peeling back the foil on that first pan off the truck was more than a little like that scene at the end of Kiss Me Deadly.

Ah, the bad old days.

I had the pleasure of seeing Bourdain speak here in Madison, have read a couple of his books, and have watched random episodes of his TV shows. I appreciated the curiosity he brought with him on his travels and that he didn't come across as an ugly American.

The movie has been criticized for various reasons including the use of an artificial voice. A computer was used to generate a very Bourdain-like voice that reads the transcript of a voice mail the man himself had left for a friend. Although I don't understand the aesthetic reason for doing so, I don't have a problem with it on an ethical level. Documentarians have deceived viewers for ages. Some scenes from Nanook of the North were staged. Two of my favorite documentary directors, Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, use reenactments and look for truth beyond that which a simple recitation of facts can give. This fakery may be high tech, but it's a quantitative difference, not qualitative, to my mind.

I recommend seeing Roadrunner, if you can.

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The bonus photo this time is pure Wisconsin and was seen at the VFW a few blocks from home.

They deococted the mash - It was a Ravenswood smash: Helles Lager by Dovetail Brewery

This summer I investigated the cream ale a little bit as I was looking for something to add to my repertoire of aestival brews. They were light. They had a reputation for being crisp and refreshing. Just the thing! Along the way I learned that the venerable style was invented by American brewers in response to the German and German-inspired pilsners which were beginning to dominate the American beer world back in the latter half of the 19^th century. "They want light and crisp?! Well, we'll give them light and crisp, dammit!"

And now I have learned of another brew that was invented as a response to the popularity of the pilsner. In this case, however, it was the OG pilsners of Bohemia that prompted a zymurgylogical riposte. It seems odd to me that a Czech brew would run roughshod over Germany's beer scene because, as we saw with the invention of the cream ale, it is the Germans who like to do the blitzkrieging over others.

From what I gather, Gabriel Sedlmayr II, who inherited the Spaten Brewery in Munich along with his brother Josef, devised the Helles in 1894 after he'd already come up with the Märzen. That's a 1-2 punch right up there with that of the guy who invented the hazy IPA and then followed it up with the juicy IPA.

While it's easy to find articles on the internet that maintain the Helles was the German answer to increasing Bohemian pilsner sales within its borders, I haven't found anything that gives firm numbers. Just how badly was German beer losing this Bierkampf to their neighbors to the east? And was pilsner on the rise only in the Munich area in 1894? Bavaria? The whole of Germany? We may never know. Well, not until Ron Pattinson and/or Andreas Krennmair investigate the subject and then blog about it.

However the history actually transpired, Sedlmayr's concoction is one of my favorite bier styles. It has a rich, bready grain flavor complemented by Noble hops or Noble-tasting ones, anyway. My love for the Helles started back in my freshman year of college when one of my new-found friends on my dorm floor offered to share his stash of German brews. And I don't mean a smattering of stray Beck's and St. Pauli Girl bottles he had snagged from some small town liquor store that was happy to sell to underage kids. He had spent his final semester of high school in Deutschland and smuggled some precious liquid bread back home. My memory tells me he and I drank all of the beers ourselves because everyone else to whom the offer of some fine imported suds was extended to refused on the grounds that there was still yeast in one of the bottles and that another was dark instead of light yellow like Miller and Bud.

What made me fall in love with those beers was all of the melanoidins. Those delectable molecules give beer that lightly toasted bread flavor, for want of a better way to put it. Apparently decoction is the way to create those molecules and the Germans love to decoct. Americans generally don't which is likely why I find most domestic versions of the Helles to be inferior. It's like brewers here think that if they just brew a pils but use less hops than they normally would, they've made a Helles.

I've already celebrated a few beers from Chicago's Dovetail here and I believe I noted at some point that they engage in more than a little decoction. So, when I opened my first can of their Helles, I figured that developing a fondness for this beer was a fait accompli.

As my cat Grabby looked on, I poured some in my mini-mug. I got a lovely frothy, white head that proved to be in no hurry to go away. Beneath it the beer was clear and yellow and the whole thing looked much better than my photograph portrays. Taking a whiff, I smelled fresh bread and hops that were mostly grassy but also slightly floral. Simply wonderful.

Upon taking a sip I was not disappointed. Melanoidin galore! While the beer was medium-light (leaning towards the light side) on the tongue, it had a great, rich malty taste full of toasty bread and a more general graininess. There was just a hint of sweetness. All of those malt flavors were complemented by some hops which had a slightly peppery flavor and provided a gentle bitterness. Swallowing I found that the malty flavors faded while the hoppy ones remained. The fizz dried things out just a tad making for a delightfully clement finish.

I will get down to brass tacks: this is the best American Helles I have ever tasted. Drowning in that decocted goodness on my first sip reminded me of that fateful day in the dorm when I learned what good beer tasted like. I could write an encomium to the toasty essence of the grain flavors here but I won't. Instead, I want to say that I also loved the hops. That fresh, green grassy/floral scent – oh, man! That is such a wonderful aroma. Evocative of summer and its verdant landscapes with life in full bloom.

Hopefully, as Dovetail's distribution here in Madison widens (and let us also hope it deepens with Rauchbier), their brews will be featured at a tap takeover at Olbrich Biergarten because that is how nature intended for them to be consumed. You just can't go wrong with Dovetail and the Biergarten is close to home.

Junk food pairing: With such a kickass beer decocted with ruthless German efficiency, go big on the junk food. I heartily recommend a central European theme by pairing Old Dutch Onion & Garlic potato chips (the bag is yellow just like Dovetail cans!) with Heluva Good!'s Bacon Horseradish dip.

A Salt & Vinegar Miscellany III

 

A couple more salt & vinegar snacks.

The Pringles weren't bad as they had a decent vinegar tang to them.

The Veggie Straws tasted like Pringles with that pasty reconstituted potato texture but they had some spinach or other vegetable essence added to them for a little something extra. Again, a nice middle of the road dose of vinegar.

The Corona Diaries Vol 29: And we've got to get ourselves back to the (Olbrich Bier)garden

Early August 2021

I wrote previously that I was saddened when the news came down that an old Prohibition era roadhouse here in Madison with ties to Chicago mobsters called The Wonder Bar was slated to be demolished to make way for an 18-story high rise. In a surprising turn of events, the Madison Plan Commission saved the building by denying permission to the developer. Considering that the owner was ready to sell and that the restaurant has been closed for months, I am not sure that it is out of the woods yet but at least it has been given a temporary reprieve.

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I saw this at the grocery store last week: sauerkraut in squeeze bottles from a company called Sauer Frau. I love the name and logo.

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A cousin of mine sent out an email last month with a link to a photo gallery of train stations from the days of yore. I was reminded of this missive a couple weeks ago when one of our local papers ran an article about the debate over where to build a train station should intercity passenger rail return to Madison.

The article quoted a local urban planner:

"If Madison aims high, and hires the best station architects available, then it can have a beautiful new civic icon," he said.

Our mayor wants to locate it on the north side in the former Oscar Mayer site which is in the early days of being transformed from a meat processing facility into something new that doesn't smell like hot dogs. Here's a rendering showing a train station in the lower center with a clock tower.

Personally, while I understand that transit can spur development and growth, this seems wrong to me. Transit's first job is to move people as best it can, not promote economic growth. This site is not close to downtown and is absent from all current BRT plans. Put the station where it serves passengers the best, not where you want to do a ribbon cutting in a few years. 

Of course, there's no guarantee we'll even need a station in the near future. But let us hope. Biden's infrastructure bill is working its way through the legislative process…

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Despite having been open since 2017 and being a mere 2 blocks from our house, the Frau and I had never been to the Olbrich Biergarten until a week or so ago. Located on the north shore of Lake Monona, it serves up beer, soda, pretzels, and mini-bratwurst in an idyllic setting. Well, it's idyllic when the lake doesn't smell of toxic algae slime.

I recall the controversy back in 2016 when it was first proposed. A bunch of neighborhood fuddy-duddies were against it and predicted nightly bacchanalian revelry with uncontrolled noise, drunkenness, debauchery, and mayhem. On our visit we saw mainly families and older folks. One couple brought their dog in a stroller which was funny. Bands of 21 year-olds looking to get sloshed and cause trouble on a Friday night were noticeably absent.

It seems that all of the doomsaying by the local Cassandras didn't come to pass, thankfully.

While the lake's odor held off, unfortunately, the 3 Sheeps pilsner they had on offer was not good. I double checked my tastebuds a couple days later by drinking a can of it and it was the same.

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Back in high school I read Kerouac's On the Road and Ginsberg's "Howl". It took me a while but I have finally read something by the final member of the Beat Generation holy triumvirate, William S. Burroughs. I don't know why it took me so long especially considering his brief resurgence of popularity while I was in college when he did a couple spoken word albums with the musicians Kurt Cobain and The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, respectively. It was the Beat Generation collaborating with Generation X.

While I enjoyed Burrough's writing style and his turns of phrase, I just couldn’t get into it. I was not far in when I realized I had no idea what was happening beyond a junkie was looking for his fix and before long there was an orgy and then people were being killed. I just went along for the ride, not worrying about plot. It seemed to be an impressionistic survey of the life of a junkie instead of a conventional piece of storytelling with a 3 act plot and the action being led forward by cause and effect.

After I finished reading the novel, I sought out a little more about the man and found that the radio show This American Life broadcasted a BBC Radio 4 documentary about Burroughs called "Burroughs at 100" and it can be found here. To say that the guy was a character is a vast understatement.

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Now that there's fresh, local sweetcorn to be had, I bought some at the stand just 5 or 6 blocks from us. I grilled it up fine and turned it into elote, a.k.a. – Mexican street corn. I mixed some mayo with crema (Mexican sour cream) and smeared it on liberally. Then a layer of cotija, a dry cheese that crumbles into small bits easily, followed by some chili powder, and finally plenty of lime juice. It accompanied some fresh kielbasa that was also grilled to perfection.

We also enjoyed some locally raised porcine goodness recently. I wanted to cook something German for dinner and so I stopped in at my local butcher who sliced a couple pork chops for me that were nice and thick. She even made the slits for stuffing it for me. On the menu was Gefüllte Schweinerippchen à la Holstein or Stuffed Pork Chops, Holstein style.

The stuffing included rum soaked raisins and, on the day I was to cook the chops, I got them soaking first thing. I mean it was 5 A.M. and I went to the liquor cabinet to find the rum even before turning on the coffeemaker. My morning routine normally starts with the Brewing of the Coffee followed by feeding the cats who are noisily petitioning me with meows for breakfast so you can imagine they were not happy and even a bit confused as to just what the human was up to. In addition to those raisins, the stuffing had apple slices sautéed in butter, some cinnamon sugar, and bread crumbs. The chops were braised with beer in the oven and I think they turned out pretty well.

Sadly, it looks like cooking German food, drinking German bier, and watching German films will have to suffice for a while since we are unable to make a trip over there.

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Bonus photo. I saw this on the back of a car on one of my bike rides. When they turn on the rear windshield wipers, Arnie flexes his muscles.