The Corona Diaries Vol 33: A Madison Idyll

Last winter I discovered that Madison is home to a Victorian-era garden. There's nothing surprising about some folks maintaining such a thing in town but I was confounded when I learned that it is just a stone's throw from the Capitol. And so, like the Schoenstatt Shrine from a couple entries ago, investigating this garden was added to my to-do list for warmer weather. I finally got around to it on a nice morning back in August.

I didn't know what to expect of a Victorian-era garden but, since I tend to filter life through movies, I had visions of Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract. Would it be a well-appointed greenscape dotted with mini-obelisks and privet hedges trimmed and shaped to the highest topiary standards?

It's located in the Mansion Hill district which is so named because it features many mid-19^th century homes that were built by Madison's early elite. The old governor's mansion is there and dates to roughly 1855 so it's hardly surprising that such a garden is to be found in this area. I suppose it's a bit like the SafeHouse in Milwaukee - hidden in plain sight.

Back in the days of yore as a college student, I lived a couple blocks away for a year which makes my ignorance of it even more shameful. While I've been by it many times in the decades that I have lived here, it's rarely been on foot. When I lived nearby, my perambulations usually took me away from it and towards campus. Perhaps I simply never stopped to read the sign or had simply forgotten about its existence somewhere along the way. For as long as I can recall, I've just assumed that this little patch of green belonged to a law firm or other such organization that made of one of the old mansions its home and was keen on showing off with a luscious and verdant yard.

As I have conceded previously, I am awful when it comes to identifying plants and wandering the garden I saw all kinds of wonderful flowers and shrubs but recognized only 1 or 2 varieties. Because my Frau had pointed them out to me a couple weeks before on one of our walks, I felt a small sense of pride at being able to ID the Tiger lilies.

I walked around the fountain and ran into one of the many volunteers that cares for the gardens on the opposite side. She was seated on a bench and enjoying a moment of Arcadian bliss amidst the fruits of her labors. After noticing me, we struck up a brief conversation wherein she answered my questions about a couple varieties of flowers but I think I forgot their names 5 minutes later.

You can see just how close to the Capitol Square the park is in this photo. Lake Mendota is just a couple blocks in the opposite direction.

The garden was an oasis of peace and calm as the Dane County Farmers Market raged in the distance and people were going about their day enjoying the weather and the company of others, something largely denied them at this time last year.

I had been out on my bike for a few hours at this point and was not only enchanted by all of the lovely flora, but thankful to be able to take a breather and bask in some shade.

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The weekend after my stroll through Period Garden Park, my Frau and I headed up to Manitowoc on the shores of Lake Michigan. The occasion was a concert by Son Volt, the St. Louis band I have mentioned previously in these diaries. It was a free show that was part of the town's summer music festival. Plus it would be nice to simply get out of town and be somewhere else. Joining us was our friend Arch. He was going through a spot of personal turmoil so I tried to get him out and about instead of moping at home. Plus he too is a big Son Volt fan. Thankfully, he took me up on my offer.

We rolled into town in the afternoon and immediately set out to find a late lunch. Walking towards a local brewpub, we stumbled upon an exhibit of large format prints in an alley near the hotel.

It was put on by the local branch of the University of Wisconsin System and a nearby private college.

It had been a few years since I'd last seen Son Volt perform. Plus, I think this was the first concert I'd been to since the pandemic began. The band were in fine form out touring in support of a new album that I was growing to like more and more with each listen. We were able to get up close to the stage.

The band has been around since 1994 and they played a nice set with songs from most parts of their career, although I did lament the absence of any songs from Wide Swing Tremelo. Singer/guitarist/band leader Jay Farrar – he's on the left clad in black – is generally all business live. He normally doesn't talk a whole lot to the audience beyond a "Hello" and the occasional "Thanks" but this night he was more verbose than usual and he even made a joke about bratwurst.

After the show when we were chatting about it, Arch noted a couple songs that brought tears to his eyes. Not surprising considering some of the lyrics and events that were playing out in his life.

Tears welled in my eyes when they played "Tear Stained Eye". They always do. It's from their 1^st album, Trace, released in 1995 and so I have had a 25ish year relationship with those four minutes and 21 seconds. For most of the that time, the song is a rather plaintive country shuffle. Then towards the end, Farrar sings:

Like the man said, rode hard and put away wet

Throw away the bad news, and put it to rest

If learning is living, and the truth is a state of mind

You'll find it's better at the end of the line

And a hint of hopefulness springs forth from the sadness. (But just a hint.) It's a great song that I have listened to countless times and it has seen me through a few rough patches in my life when relationships have ended. It was also part of the soundtrack of my drive home up from Louisiana after my father had died as I sped north on I55 towards St. Louis with his ashes in the back seat.

Son Volt's first album was written and recorded during a time when Farrar drove between New Orleans and Minneapolis on Highway 61 frequently. (See my entry on Dubuque.) Several of his songs reference the St. Louis area and "Tear Stained Eye" has the line "Ste. Genevieve can hold back the water". Ste. Genevieve is a town south of St. Louis (on Hwy 61!) that faced a serious threat of flooding in 1993. My understanding is that the residents were basically plugging holes in the town's dikes with their fingers as the Mississippi threatened to wash the town away.

After the more melancholy song, they followed it up with the lovely, upbeat "Windfall" with its refrain of "May the wind take your troubles away."

On a recent episode of the Political Beats podcast, one of the hosts opined that "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac had entered the Great American Songbook. Honestly, I am not qualified to debate the merits of that claim. But it was a good reminder that the Songbook isn't set in stone and that additions didn't stop in the 1950s. While, for me, "Great American Songbook" conjures up the likes of Gershwin, Ellington, and Guthrie, it should include tunes from my lifetime. I would offer that "Windfall" and "Tear Stained Eye" should be included as well, if they are not already considered a part of it by the Songbook's gatekeepers.

Many diary entries ago I recounted my trip to Manitowoc in October of last year. Not long after I got home, I realized that I had forgotten to check out the landing site of a chunk of Korabl-Sputnik 1.

Launched on 15 May 1960, Korabl-Sputnik 1 was an unmanned spacecraft that allowed the Soviets to research space flight or whatever it was they were keen on learning about. When it came time to get the part that was supposed to return to Earth on a course to terra firma, there was a malfunction and it instead went into a higher orbit. It eventually decayed and the module fell Earthwards on 6 September 1962 with the vast majority of the craft burning up in the atmosphere. However, a chunk survived reentry and landed in the middle of 8^th Street.

That piece was eventually returned to the Soviets but a couple replicas were made and here's one of them:

This momentous occasion is marked by a ring in the middle of the street just north of the intersection with Park Street.

In addition to missing the Sputnik ring last fall, I also neglected to get a photo of a silo with the Chief Oshkosh Beer logo painted on it. The silo is just north of Fond du Lac, which is about 20 miles south of Oshkosh, but across Lake Winnebago from the beer's hometown. I've read somewhere that the logo had been painted on it decades ago and that the new paint job simply replicated the old one.

Chief Oshkosh was first brewed as a non-alcoholic "near-beer" during Prohibition. When that fiasco ended, it was transformed into a real beer. It survived until the early 1970s and hasn't been brewed since but I am sure someone owns the brand copyright which means it may return someday.

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Bonus photo time. I found a Twitter feed from Chicago a few months ago that posts photographs of turrets around the city on Turret Tuesdays. I thought it was neat idea and have started taking pictures of the turrets of Madison. Here is the only pink one in town. This building is home to a Cajun restaurant and, as far as I know, it has been a restaurant or supper club since it as long as anyone can remember.

Polskee Peevo: Nostrovia Grodziskie by Wisconsin Brewing Company

As a fan of smoke beers, I implore local brewers on this very blog to make more of them because they're almost as rare as hen's teeth in these parts. Generally speaking, though, my pleading is, as the Poles say, like throwing peas onto a wall. But brewers have better things to do than read my ramblings and who can blame them?

The Poles have another saying: hope is the mother of the stupid. And so rather than sitting around with my fingers crossed as the craft beer world became overwhelmed with IPAs back in 2012, I pestered Vintage Brewing Company's brewmaster, Scott Manning, because I wanted something special to drink when the Mayan calendar ended and the world turned into a Roland Emmerich film. He eventually surrendered and brewed his Grätzer Ale. "Grätzer" is the German word for Grodziskie, a Polish beer brewed with smoked wheat. The name comes from the Polish town Grodzisk Mazowiecki which used to belong to the Prussian Empire who called it Grätz, hence Grätzer.

I emailed noted punk rock aesthete and beer historian Ron Pattinson one time asking what the Grodziskie should taste like and he kindly replied, "smoky and hoppy, very well carbonated, too." "Smoky" and "hoppy" are two words I do not usually associate with Polish beers as pale lagers and Baltic porters seem to dominate the Polish brewing enterprise. And so, my interest in the Grodziskie was piqued by Pattinson's description. While certainly allowing for variation and interpretation, I generally expect any beer labeled "Grodziskie" (or "Grätzer", for that matter) to be smoky, hoppy, and fizzy.

Scott's take on the style was, to the best of my knowledge, the last one brewed here in the Madison area until earlier this year when I heard tell of a Grodziskie made by Madison's Working Draft Brewing. Unsurprisingly, I found that it was to have limited availability and I never got myself down to the brewery to try it. Bummer. The moral here is, as the Poles like to say, when bast can be torn, then tear it. Then a couple of weeks ago I saw that Wisconsin Brewing Company was offering one called "Nostrovia Grodziskie" as a limited release only in their taproom. Not wanting to miss out on the Precious again, I heeded the words of Steve Winwood who had a saying of his own - And little Sir John and the nut-brown bowl when you see a chance, take it.

It was a rainy afternoon as I drove to the brewery where I was to meet a couple of my co-workers. I was feeling a bit giddy cruising down the road because I had noticed a Trachte shed that I'd never seen before a few seconds previously when suddenly

THUMP!

My fight or flight instinct kicked in and then I noticed a streak of red had formed on the left side of my windshield. What had I hit? Investigating a bit more closely, it appeared to be rather viscous. Ketchup. Someone in a passing car had thrown their dinner at me. As Voltaire once wrote, "We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly" and so I did and laughed it off.

I arrived at the brewery and met up with my fellow IT drones. We had a couple as we commiserated and used one another as an audience for jeremiads lamenting the capricious dictates of our tyrannical boss. I ended up going home with a crowler of the Grodziskie.

Nostrovia Grodziskie is a lovely straw color that reminded me of summer rather than the falling leaves and temperatures around us now here in Wisconsin. It was hazy too which is something I expect from wheat beers. My pour produced a lovely, frothy, white head that stuck around for a little while. There were few bubbles to be seen inside my glass. "Where is all the fizz?" I quietly asked my cat, Grabby, who was sitting on the table next to me. She had no answer beyond a big yawn of indifference to the plight of humankind so I plowed on and found that the beer had a lovely smoky aroma that wasn't quite as big as you get from a Schlenkerla beer.

The beer's paucity of bubbles belied a good, firm fizzy taste. While not to be mistaken with something from Schlenkerla, there was a nice smokiness to be had. Not overwhelming but not a token flavor relegated to a supporting role either. The beer's light body had a little wheat/grain flavor that brought with it a slight sweetness while a bit of lemony citrus held everything in check.

The smoke did a long fade on the finish while some grainy sweetness lingered. That lemony tang mixed with the fizz and a bit of herbal hoppiness to produce a mild, pleasant dryness.

Why this beer didn't see a tap until autumn is a shame. It's light body, relatively gentle smoke, and a citrus/fizz combo would have made this an ideal summer brew. Plus it's easy on the alcohol at 3.6% A.B.V. Still, I am glad that it reached my lips eventually. The server at WBC said that it was brewed by Kirby himself which was nice to hear. This doesn't seem to have been a thoroughly traditional take on the style as it did not have a big hop taste. Still, I greatly enjoyed the smokiness and its overall light touch.

Junk food pairing: Poles love their honey so grab a tube of Pringles Honey Mustard crisps to go with your Nostrovia Grodziskie.

The Corona Diaries Vol 32: Botanic Man

I love flora and appreciate its role in the ecosystem. I really do. While keeping flowers alive is a skill I do not possess, I enjoy looking at them, smelling their sweet scents. Trees. I love trees! They provide shade in the summer and leaves to clog my gutters in the autumn. Although it has been a while, I have tapped maple trees and boiled their sap until it was transmogrified into a delicious syrup. I am definitely pro-plant. I'm just not very good at identifying them.

In an attempt to remedy this situation, I went on a nature walk back in August at Owen Conservation Park on Madison's west side. I have walked it before but in the early spring and late autumn so I was looking forward to seeing the place in all of its verdant aestival glory. As a treat, there would be a naturalist leading a tour who specialized in the flora.

OK. Like an old BBC period drama, I am going to give you the ending up front: I cannot recall the names of most of the plants that the guide identified for us. I need a book or a recording of her commentary and to be tested on it so I can study for the exam and commit all of that botanical knowledge to memory.

The park was formerly the summer home & farm of a University professor named – quelle surprise! - Edward T. Owen. If you wander the western part of the park near the parking lot, you'll find the farm's root cellar and the terraces Owen had constructed. Today the fields are given over to savannah and prairie restoration.

There were yellow flowers everywhere and these I do recall the name of – Rudbeckia.

We learned that there were 3 types of this flower to be seen in the park but I cannot remember which variety this is. There were brown-eyed Susan, black-eyed Susan, and sweet brown-eyed Susan, if I recall correctly. I am not impressed with whomever came up with this bit of nomenclature as it is blatantly unhelpful to the budding floriculturist in distinguishing amongst the varieties.

Our guide pointed out some Goldenrod to the side of the trail and I think I caught a couple bugs mid coitus.

In addition to lots of yellow flowers, there was purple thistle everywhere. Its proper name escapes me but wouldn't be at all surprised if it was simply "Purple Thistle".

Apparently, the park is replete with whatever plant Monarch butterflies like to dine on because our guide noted how they can be seen every once in a while during the summer and then in greater numbers in September as they are migrating south to Mexico or wherever they go where it doesn't snow and polar vortices don't bring the temperature down to -60 degrees.

We saw some off in the distance.

Our guide noted that the park would have been inundated with Monarchs in September 30-40 years ago but today, you see more like 50, if you're lucky. I was completely unaware that their population is dwindling. That's the problem with these kinds of nature walks, you always learn about how we are carelessly destroying one habitat or another and thusly killing off creatures because we can't get enough McMansions and malls. And we get into our cars afterwards and drive off in a sulk as we exacerbate global climate change.

I have to look at the city parks calendar to see what walks are coming up. There could be a walk again through Owen but with someone who knows the fauna. Or perhaps a stroll through a different park with a mycologist who will point out all of the varieties of mushrooms and tell us which ones are edible and which ones will take you on a far-out psychedelic trip, man.

Speaking of psychedelics, I have read that it is a burgeoning area of research for treatment of psychological disorders such as depression. The university has just created the UW–Madison Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substance where they seek to help people with careful administration of magic mushrooms or at least the psylocibin found therein. There is also a private company in town called the Usona Institute doing the same kind of research.

Well, no doubt you will hear about my next nature walk in a future entry.

There is a new book out that is of special interest to Wisconsinites.

It is a biography of Mildred Harnack, a Cheesehead who joined the resistance against the Nazis in Germany.

She was born in Milwaukee and studied at UW-Madison where she met her husband, Arvid Harnack in the 1920s. Harnack hailed from Germany and the pair moved there. They witnessed the rise of Hitler and were appalled and brave enough to join the resistance movement. The Harnacks helped Jews escape Germany and relayed intelligence to the Allies. In 1943 they were captured and executed. Mildred must have been a big thorn in the Nazi's side as she was beheaded at the direct request of Hitler himself.

Some members of the Madison media are frustrated with as well as laughing at larger media outlets that are reviewing the book. Many of these newspapers – usually on the coasts, of course – are portraying Donner's book as dragging Mildred's story from the dustbin of history and ignoring the scholarship that has already been done here in Wisconsin.

Mildred Harnack is not a particularly well-known figure, I grant you, but Donner's book is hardly the first time someone has told her story. Wisconsin Public Television did a show about her back in 2011.

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Bonus photos – a then & now set. Not a perfect match but good enough.

You're gonna need a bigger stange: Doppelsticke Altbier by Giant Jones Brewing

It would have been really neat had Madison's favorite purveyor of pantagruelian brews, Giant Jones, labeled this a mere Sticke Altbier and let a whisper campaign form amongst drinkers that brewmaster Jessica Jones had been extra generous and that it was, in fact, a Doppelsticke. On the other hand, Giant Jones only brews their Doppelsticke Altbier infrequently – a September-only release – so at least it has that element of tradition going for it.

I am struggling remember to the history of the altbier. It's an Obergäriges Lagerbier or top fermenting lager beer auf Englisch. It has this hybrid ale-lager persona because…because…something about northern German ales running into new laws imposed by lager-loving Bavarians after Germany became a country in the late 19th century and the brewers of Düsseldorf splitting the difference. They weren't quite ready to give up on the old ale styles but had to tweak things to conform to new laws. Maybe? Ron Pattison noted that Cologne once had laws that banned the production of bottom-fermenting beer and I wonder if altbier brewers labored under the same or similar laws. Or am I conflating the two styles?

Being from Wisconsin, laws dictating the production of beer are almost incomprehensible to me. Brewers can brew ales or lagers; they can sell it on Sundays; they can put in their brews whatever additive or adjunct they care to; they can brew a beer with whatever A.B.V. they like; and the beer tax hasn't been raised in my lifetime. So, when I read that it was illegal to brew bottom-fermented beer or that beer taxes were based on the original gravity of the wort, well, my mind reels. It seems that not only did a lot of beer history transpire the way it did because of the ingredients that were at hand, but also because brewers were looking to get around the law or avoid the taxman.

Perhaps the altbier was simply a result of changing tastes where "lager" attracted drinkers the way "hazy" does today. I can't recall.

Regardless, Düsseldorf got its altbier. Brewers are merely human like the rest of us and sometimes they deviate from the script. When they mismeasured their ingredients and ended up with a stronger than normal altbier, regulars would strike up a whisper campaign that the new batch was an even more potent potable. "Sticke" comes from "stickum", a word in a local dialect that means "whispering" and so these bigger altbiers became known as Sticke Altbiers.

The Doppelsticke is a double/imperial version of the Sticke Alt. I do see that one of the OG altbier brewers in Düsseldorf, Uerige, brews one but it is for the American market. (I love how Google's English translation of its description is "the yummy droplet".) I've never tasted it but I presume that it's über-malty with a very generous dose of hops.

Giant Jones (my progressive rock-addled brain keeps wanting me to type "Gentle Giant") brewed their Doppelsticke Altbier for the first time last summer for an episode of Wisconsin Foodie but it has since become an annual release in September.

My bottle was dated 9-22-21 so it was good'n fresh.

Most American altbiers that I've encountered seem to have been brown or amber ales that I suspect simply had a new label slapped on them and had never seen the inside of a lagering vessel. Not for long, anyway. Still, I had faith in Gentle Giant Jones and, this being a special occasion, it merited the use of an altbier glass.

My pour looked rather nice with some loose, just off-white head that sat atop the copper liquid. Thankfully the head had some staying power and I was actually able to get a photograph showing it off a bit. The beer was slightly hazy and the odd bubble could be seen here and there. Caramel was prominent on the nose but I also sniffed out some stone fruit which was cherry-like. Plus there was just a hint of smokiness.

Considering the paucity of bubbles I saw in the glass, the beer had a nice, firm fizziness to it. There was the requisite malt sweetness but it wasn't as big or overpowering as I thought it may be considering the "doppel" and the "sticke" parts of the name. Yeah, there was a lot of malt taste here but the sweetness was balanced with dryness and some astringency. Presumably the hops, which didn't have a strong taste at this point, countered some of the sweet flavors as did that fizz. I also tasted some roasty grain flavor and a touch of that cherry that I had smelled.

On the finish, I was able to taste the spicy, Nobley hops and their bitterness was allowed to come to the fore. Like the malt, you couldn't miss the hops here but they didn't overwhelm. The bitterness gave way to dryness which mixed with the booze – it's 9.6%. I caught a trace of malty sweetness but that faded rather quickly.

This was a very tasty beer. The best part of it for me was how the fizz and hops played against all of that malt. They did their job perfectly. The beer had a rich malt taste but also a nice dryness which laid the sweetness to rest at just the right point.

Junk food pairing: With a beer fit for Gargantua himself, grab yourself one of those giant pretzels that's equivalent to a couple loaves of bread and apply nacho cheese food sauce liberally.

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.