Remembrance of Beers Past

The Great Taste not being enough, last month The Dulcinea and I headed west for the 4th Annual Potosi Brewfest. I’d never been to Potosi previously although I was sorely tempted when I found myself in Cassville for work. It’s a small town nestled in the wooded hills within spitting distance of the Mississippi River. We caught a shuttle bus which dropped us off a little before noon and, since we didn’t have V.I.P. tickets, we couldn’t get into the fest until one. Luckily the Potosi brewery was right across the street so we mosey over there.



The brewery was originally founded in 1852 and closed in 1972 at a time when lots of local and regional breweries went under. It’s resurrection began in the mid-90s and was a long process of restoration. Potosi is one of the great success stories of the Wisconsin craft beer scene. Beer is once again being brewed there and it’s some very fine stuff. Plus it is home to the National Brewery Museum.

Upon entering, we noticed that off to one side was the taproom and a restaurant. The oposite way led to a room full of Potosi breweriana from years past. And straight ahead was the gift shop. We flashed our tickets to the festival which gave us free admission to the museum that occupied the upper floors along with the brew kettles. For beer history geeks, the place is like a shrine.





The museum belongs to the American Breweriana Association and the collection is lent by members. This means that the displays change frequently and, having chatted with a docent, I was under the impression that, there are no permanent displays. You may or may not catch sight of a bottle of that beer that you remember your grandfather drinking back in the day. There are bottles, church keys, signs, &c. from all around the country so, even if you miss that chance at bringing back memories, there’ll still be something of interest.







Back in February I speculated that, despite Wisconsin’s brewing history being dominated by pale lagers, surely some German immigrants brewed ales or ale-lager hybrids like altbiers and Kölsches. I eventually e-mailed Ron Pattinson to find out what he could contribute to my theory one way or the other. He replied that lager brewing was the hip new thing in the area we now call Germany around the time Germans began emigrating to the States, although it was Munich dunkels that were in vogue in Northern Germany in the mid-19th century. Lager breweries were pretty sizable at this time while ale breweries were very small and local and on their way out. He thought it likely that the younger people who emigrated thought of top-fermenting brews as being old fashioned and that they emulated the big boys once they made it to Wisconsin.

D’oh!

OK. So there’s probably no gose bottles from a Wisconsin brewery founded by an immigrant from Leipzig. Still, Wisconsin breweries brewed more than lagers, pale or dark. As some intrepid archaeologists in Milwaukee have noted, the state’s German heritage and the abundance of wheat here led to many Wisconsin weiss biers.

As a result of this lucrative grain trade, Wisconsin breweries had a steady and high quality supply of fermentable wheat and barley. Wheat became a staple ingredient in the production of a popular German beer, Weiss /Weizen and “weiss breweries” sprung up all over the state and in particular in Milwaukee.

Nestled in amongst all the lager bottles I spied this:



And this:



An ale! I can’t find anything on what style this beer was, however. I find it ironic that they advertised their beer as being made with the apparently famous Waukesha water and now the city is in a bit of a pinch water-wise and is looking to have it pumped in from Lake Michigan.

Madison was represented by Fauerbach with a few signs and some bottles.



I had to take a picture of this Walter sign as a friend of mine drank the stuff up in Eau Claire back when he was in college.



And since I know several folks from Portage, I took a snap of this.



I also noticed this can of Black Pride beer.



The beer’s motto is "A beer as proud as its people." I found an article from the December 1969 issue of Brewers Digest about it and discovered that it was very much a product of its time.

ON MONDAY, November 24, [1969] a new beer, labeled ''Black Pride," received its initial commercial distribution on the south side of Chicago, Ill. -- an area which includes a large portion of the city's approximately 1,200,000 blacks. It is more than a new beer label that has entered the market; it is a concept that is being introduced as well and, in a sense, the particular product -- beer -- is secondary to the concept.

Black Pride, Inc., was born out of the dying embers of black hope that the man (the whites) would magnanimously provide full economic opportunity for the blacks -- embers that the founders of Black Pride, Inc., are well aware can all too easily be fanned into a vicious conflagration when despair becomes desperation or when the justification for despair gives rise to individual irresponsibility.

Curiously enough, the beer was actually brewed by the West Bend Lithia Co. which was located just north of Milwaukee and, like Potosi, went out of business in 1972 but the label has recently been revived.

There was a series of photos with Groucho Marx but I cannot recall what brewery they were taken at. Pabst? He was there as part of some kind of promotional event.



The last part of our tour was checking out the lagering cave.



If memory serves, that’s an old bottling machine there in the background.

Beer nerds are advised to check out Potosi. Although I was not born and raised in Wisconsin, my family owned property up by Stone Lake and I spent a few weeks each summer up there. I recall old Rhinelander and Chief Oshkosh signs so it was neat to see some old breweriana associated with those breweries now that I’m older and a beer drinker. I also learned that, while today we have growlers of beer, back in the day a half gallon bottle magically transformed your lager into picnic beer.

You have to wonder what all these beers tasted like. From talking to my elders, Walter’s and Potosi were just swill in their waning years. However much nostalgia and tradition there is surrounding these old breweries, I get the impression that they weren’t brewing what we’d think of as craft beer. Those people you see at Woodman’s picking up cases of Miller and Corona to go along with their brats are carrying on the tradition of Wisconsinites past who grabbed their picnic beers for a summer outing.

After the tour we went to the gift shop and then to the taproom where we shared a beer before heading back across the street for the festival.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

I’d decided to read David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas prior to hearing about the film adaptation of it but I hadn’t read it until recently when one day I saw a trailer for the movie online and figured I’d better get on it if I want to have it finished by the time the film hits theatres. I went into the book knowing nothing about it.

Cloud Atlas tells the stories of six people which take place at various times between the mid-19th century and some far off point in the future after human civilization has collapsed. The first six chapters are told chronologically. One through five tell roughly the first two-thirds of the stories of the first five characters. The sixth chapter is the whole of the last characters tale and then we move backwards in time with the other stories being finished.

The first story is “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing”. Ewing is a notary who is on the Chatham Islands in the Pacific and is making his way back to America. As the title indicates, this chapter is written in the form of a journal. It’s a sad story which introduces the reader to what is surely the main theme of the book - the cruelty of man. The natives of the Chathams are the Moriori and they are, by Ewing’s estimate, the most peaceful people of the whole of the Earth. First came the white men who kill all of the seals and then subjugate the Moriori. Then the white men bring over some of the native of New Zealand, the Maori, who promptly commit genocide on their fellow Pacific islanders. Ewing heads back to America but is taken in by a conman and nearly pays with his life.

The next story is “Letters from Zedelghem” which takes place in 1931. A young man named Robert Frobisher writes to his friend and lover, Rufus Sixsmith, about his experiences as an amanuensis to a composer named Vyvyan Ayrs who resides in Belgium. Being young, Frobisher is cocky and rather full of himself. He takes a chance and shows up on Ayrs’ doorstep offering his services and he is taken up on his offer. The two have a tempestuous relationship with the student wishing to supersede the master but the master isn’t quite ready to step down. Biding his time, Frobisher sexually services Mrs. Ayrs and also finds a copy of Ewing’s journal.

The 19th century prose and epistolary format of the first two chapters gives way to that of a cheesy thriller in “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery”. Luisa Rey is a journalist investigating claims of corruption at a nuclear power plant in California in 1975. A physicist named Rufus Sixsmith has written a report indicating that the design of the reactor is flawed and that the plant is a major meltdown waiting to happen. The plant owners have put the kibosh on the report and have a security team led by Bill Smoke that is ready and willing to deal with anyone who would dare interfere by any means necessary including murder.

“The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” concerns the titular publisher who has a hit on his hands when the author throws a reviewer off the roof of a building for having given his book a bad review. With money rolling in, the author’s brothers threaten Cavendish unless he offers the family a larger cut of the profits. Cavendish approaches his brother for help but is instead tricked into checking himself into a nursing home.

Here the book takes a turn towards speculative fiction with "An Orison of Sonmi~451". It takes place in Korea in the not-too-distant future. Sonmi~451 is a clone who works at a fast food place called Papa Song's and gets mixed up with a group of rebels who are looking to end the slavery of clones and get rid of the totalitarian government that controls all. This story is told in the form of an interview as Sonmi~451 awaits execution. Here “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” is the name of a movie.

"Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After" is the last tale and is not bifurcated like the others. This one takes place in the distant future and in a post-apocalyptic scenario. The story is told in a broken English dialect that takes a while to get used to. Zachry and his fellow tribespeople are eking out a rather primitive existence on Hawaii when he is chosen to host Meronym, a woman from a group of more technologically advanced people who occasionally trade with their less advanced cousins. Zachry's people view Sonmi as a deity while Meronym has a device with a holographic recording of Sonmi~451's interview.

Most of the main characters in each tale are reincarnations of each other as denoted by a comet-shaped birthmark on their backs. Mitchell doesn't do much with this conceit and I suppose it is more of a reminder of the continuity of humanity and all its foibles more than anything Zen. The theme here is that people have a large capacity to treat their fellow human being like crap – even to the point of killing them. All of the stories demonstrate the capacity for evil that groups commit upon individuals and other groups as well as individuals preying upon each other.

For example, in Ewing's story the Moriori fall victim to both the Europeans and the Maori. On an interpersonal level Ewing is victim of a long con perpetrated by one of his shipmates and almost dies as a result. The book has a fatalism to it with the inability of humanity to follow the Golden Rule being a part of our past and it survives well into the future even if most of the human race doesn't.

Ewing is the lynchpin here as his tale opens and closes the book. He survives his ordeal and resolves "I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must being somewhere." You see, helped a stowaway Moriori and was in turn helped by him in his hour of need. Altruism. Ewing also writes, "In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction...Is this doom written within our nature?"

Mitchell seems to answer in the affirmative as it is that selfishness which brings about what Zachry's people call "The Fall" or the end of civilization. Yet the author ends his book with Ewing's words of hope and determination to end slavery so perhaps Mitchell is ambivalent. And it should be noted that, while each story describes instances of people using other people as means to ends and not ends in themselves, there is also much altruism present throughout the book. We have Ewing but there are also the rebels in Sonmi~451's story who seek to end the slavery of clones and restore to them a sense of human dignity. While the owners of the nuclear power plant Luisa Rey is attempting to report on are ruthless in pursuit of profit, there are also whistleblowers as well as protesters. Despite The Fall, Mitchell puts Ewing's words of hope at the end of the book.

A second reading would no doubt reveal various motifs and references to the other stories. One that I found was in Frobisher's story where Ayrs says, "The better organized the state, the duller its humanity." This is a perfect description of the Korea of Sonmi~451 where clones do all the labor and people are expected to be good little consumers with a daily quota of money to be spent on shopping and dining out. There are surely tons more of these kinds of references.

While I enjoyed reading Cloud Atlas I still find myself befuddled about Mitchell's stylistic choices, namely, to A) write each story in a different style and B) split most of them in two. How do these elements reinforce the book's theme? Perhaps they were just done for fun which is not a problem as I rather like the style. Or maybe I just need to contemplate the book a bit more.

The film adaptation comes out next month and I am looking forward to it. It will be interesting to see how it navigates the multiple narratives. Will each one get a different style as in the book? The one thing that has me worried is that the trailer I've seen seems to emphasize the reincarnation element which is very minor here. But it's only a trailer so I'll just have to wait and see.

End the Drug War Now!

I found out this evening that, if you want to brew beer commercially with roasted hemp seeds, you've got to do a lab test on the seeds to show they contain no THC and provide the results to the feds.

Thanks Barack Obama for ruining the chances of two Madison brewmasters throwing together a beer with hemp seeds.

Tabbi: Eric Holder Has No Balls

Eric Holder is as useless as tits on a nun. He'll use the FBI to go after a husband and wife who lied on an application for a $560,000 loan but when it comes to working some of that diablerie on Wall Street firms whose machinations took down the world economy, well, as Matt Taibbi has said, Holder has no balls.

Last year I spent a lot of time and energy jabbering and gesticulating in public about what seemed to me the most obviously prosecutable offenses detailed in the report – the seemingly blatant perjury before congress of Lloyd Blankfein and other Goldman executives, and the almost comically long list of frauds committed by the company in its desperate effort to unload its crappy “cats and dogs” mortgage-backed inventory.

In the notorious Hudson transaction, for instance, Goldman claimed, in writing, that it was fully "aligned" with the interests of its client, Morgan Stanley, because it owned a $6 million slice of the deal. What Goldman left out is that it had a $2 billion short position against the same deal.

If that isn’t fraud, Mr. Holder, just what exactly is fraud?

Taibbi and Eliot Spitzer chatted about Holder's lack of gonadular fortitude last week.



Sadly, there's more of it. Yesterday Holder announced that there would be no prosecutions for CIA torture and the deaths of prisoners.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Thursday that no one would be prosecuted for the deaths of a prisoner in Afghanistan in 2002 and another in Iraq in 2003, eliminating the last possibility that any criminal charges will be brought as a result of the brutal interrogations carried out by the C.I.A.

The closing of the two cases means that the Obama administration’s limited effort to scrutinize the counterterrorism programs carried out under President George W. Bush has come to an end. Without elaborating, Mr. Holder suggested that the end of the criminal investigation should not be seen as a moral exoneration of those involved in the prisoners’ treatment and deaths.

“Based on the fully developed factual record concerning the two deaths, the department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt,” his statement said. It said the investigation “was not intended to, and does not resolve, broader questions regarding the propriety of the examined conduct.”

Oooh, I'm sure the CIA is just reeling from that stentorian bit of verbal fingerwagging. If I were a tinpot dictator or a Chinese foreign dignitary, you can bet your ass I'd be pointing to these instances the next time Hillary “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family” Clinton deigned to lecture me about human rights and/or the rule of law. “You assholes tie yourselves up in semantic knots to justify violating the Geneva Conventions and your Department of Justice won’t even go after those crooks on Wall Street after another part of your government handed them the evidence!”

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears

It is the year 1663 and in England the Restoration is underway with Charles II asserting the authority of the monarchy once again. Yet enmity persists between Protestants and Catholics; between supporters of the crown and those of Cromwell. At New College, Oxford, Roger Grove, a senior fellow, is found murdered. And in An Instance of the Fingerpost the reader is left to puzzle out the identity of the murderer from four different accounts of the events surrounding Grove's death. The book utilizes the unreliable narrator. While all four men agree that Grove was killed and that at the subsequent trial Sarah Blundy, whose reputation as a whore and an apostate do her no service, was found guilty, there is much contention over just about everything else.

Each man's testimony is prefaced by an Aphorism from Francis Bacon's Novus Organum which, theoretically, gives the reader some idea of the veracity of the words to follow or, perhaps an idea of the biases each narrator introduces. But the stories build upon one another with details and motives slowly teased out until a simple murder case in Oxford is shown to be part of a larger diorama within which much weightier issues are at play.

The first testimony is given by Marco da Cola, a gentleman from Venice who finds himself in England seeking to recover his family fortune which was stolen away by a dishonest business partner of his father's. In addition to relaying a chronicle of events, he also intends "to expose the lies told by those whom I once numbered, wrong, amongst my friends". Short on cash and unable to conduct his business in London, da Cola hastens to Oxford in the hope of meeting Robert Boyle who is busy inventing the field of chemistry. Having studied anatomy and gained a keen interest in blood, da Cola finds himself in good company with Boyle and his colleagues who accept him despite the fact that he is a Papist. A physician named Richard Lower becomes the closest thing da Cola has to a friend. The pair are able to indulge da Cola’s embrace of the scientific method by performing a primitive blood transfusion on Sarah Blundy’s mother who is in grave health.

Da Cola portrays himself as an innocent abroad who observes the English landscape before him. This first tale introduces us to the cast of characters that populate the rest of the book and emphasizes that the Restoration is still a work in progress. The civil war fractured families and friendships and even now there are many who are bitter.

The second testimony belongs to Jack Prescott whom we meet briefly in da Cola’s account of events. It is prefaced by one of Bacon’s aphorisms which warns against prejudice but Prescott is very prejudiced indeed. From the comfort of his mansion, he relates his tale of how he, as a young man, sought to clear the name of his father, Sir James Prescott. James was a supporter of the monarchy even as Cromwell ruled but he died having been found a traitor to the king. Jack was a student at Oxford at the time and, since youth equals impetuousness, he seeks out several reputable and powerful men to aid him in his quest for evidence that would repudiate all of the calumny brought against his father’s reputation.

Jack’s mission sees him converse with former Roundheads giving Pears a chance to expand upon the civil war and its aftermath, topics essentially only touched upon by da Cola’s account. This also brings John Wallis closer to the light. We met him in the first section of the book but we learn a bit more about his role as a cryptographer for both the crown and the Parliament. Jack also had more intimate dealings with Sarah Blundy and he plays a role in her trial.

While Marco da Cola seemed to be an affable gentleman, Jack Prescott comes across as a spoiled child who has had his toys taken from him. He is not particularly likable and I found myself smiling when he stumbled in his quest. But our third narrator is perhaps even worse.

John Wallis offers his testimony as well. A brilliant mathematician, he plied his trade as a cryptographer for both the king and for Cromwell. Wallis is a very dispassionate man, always willing to sacrifice individuals for the good of the country, no matter how cruel or misguided it may be. This über-patriot is also very paranoid. Perhaps he was involved in the cloak and dagger world for too long. He is a bit like General Buck Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove - seeing danger everywhere and, in this case, he is convinced Marco da Cola is a threat to the throne. The man is obsessed with finding a copy of a particular printing of Livy as he is convinced that it is the key to a cipher and, if he had it, he could decrypt certain documents and put an end to the danger posed by da Cola.

By the time I had finished reading Wallis’ story, I was thoroughly confused but it was a rather delightful confusion. Pears did a really great job of introducing characters, developing them, and then throwing them into doubt with contradictory stories. And so with a fourth and final bit of testimony by Anthony Wood, the truth comes out. Or does it?

Since Wood’s account of events contains a rather large revelation, I won’t go into much detail. What I will say is that what he tells us resolves lingering inconsistencies from the first three stories and directly contradicts other claims. Without meaning to give too much away yet wanting to give an example, Wood’s testimony gives us a much fuller picture of Sarah Blundy. For da Cola she was of little consequence. He pitied her because she was poor and got caught up in the Grove affair but also thought she lacked virtue, was headstrong, and simply didn’t know her place in society as a woman. By the end of the book, however, she is revealed to be much more important with her religious views and her family history being paramount to her story.

Having finished the book, I wondered whether or not Wood’s instance of a fingerpost was truthful. The book was like Rashomon with conflicting testimony all around so was Pears really telling us all via Wood or was the truth elusive? The final section is called “An Instance of the Fingerpost” and the aphorism which prefaces it says “…Instances of the Fingerpost shew the true and inviolable Way in which the Question is to be decided.” It sure seems like Pears is telling us that Wood is to be trusted. Yet, after offering his version of events, Wood says, “This is the truth, the one and only truth, manifest, complete and perfect.” That just sounds suspicious to me. How is it that Wood managed to avoid all the prejudices, pitfalls, and self-deceptions of the others? Perhaps a second reading with a highlighter will convince me otherwise, but I remain suspicious of Wood’s account.

Aside from the questions about truth which the style of the book raises, this theme is raised in another context. Marco da Cola is fond of experiment and puts his trust in its results. Boyle and confreres, however, recognize limits to science and place the discipline in the service of religious faith. And so the issue of epistemology is raised in a different way. There are other themes at play here as well. The civil war and Restoration raise questions about what makes a government legitimate, for instance. Plus there are more personal issues, with loyalty being one of them. Loyalty to a ruler (king or Parliament?), loyalty to friends (da Cola‘s has a falling out with Lower), and loyalty to truth (Wood is reluctant to step forth with his testimony in Sarah Blundy‘s trial).

I suppose many people will find An Instance of the Fingerpost to be dry reading as there is almost no action and Pears writes in a way that, while I suspect it’s not exactly how Englishmen spoke in 1663, will pass muster in creating atmosphere and placing the reader in that time and place. But the language is hardly impenetrable and the slow, methodical way in which Robert Grove‘s murder is relegated to the background and “truth” behind the lives of other characters is revealed is really a very fun brain-teaser.

Sad

I saw this Onion article this morning:



And then a short while later I ran into the real news:

Todd Akin and the Medieval Clerisy

Jacqueline Murray has a piece called "Todd Akin’s views are, literally, medieval" in which she demonstrates that Akin's view that women's bodies magically prevent pregnancy when they are raped would have fit right in with medieval views on the subject.

The notion that a woman’s body will experience different biological responses to intercourse depending on whether the sex act is consensual or coerced can be traced back to the Middle Ages. At this time the scientific and medical texts of Greek and Roman antiquity were being translated and appropriated by European doctors and philosophers, all of whom, without exception, were not only male but also members of the Roman Catholic clergy. Thus, science and medicine were given a distinctly ideological and theological spin.

The medieval roots of Mr. Akin’s comments lie in the scientific belief that a woman needed to experience sexual pleasure just as much as a man in order for conception to occur. Clearly, in a loving relationship this would be the norm. The old “Lie back and think of England” view, that suggested female sexual pleasure was unnecessary, and perhaps even unseemly, is from a much later time.

The corollary is that without female pleasure no conception would occur. Thus, according to the 12th-century philosopher William of Conches, “prostitutes who have sexual relations for money alone, and who take no pleasure during the sex act, do not conceive.” They would, however, get pregnant from sex with a lover.

Like Mr. Akin, William of Conche also considered the situation of rape, confidently asserting that there would be no offspring, unless somehow the woman “enjoyed” it. “Although in rape the act is distressing to begin with, at the end, given the weakness of the flesh, it is not without its pleasures.”

"Baltimore: Anatomy of an American City"

From Al Jazeera comes this devastating look at the effects of our drug war on Baltimore, especially it's black population. Ed Burns, co-creator of The Wire, pulls no punches here. The show is called Fault Lines and the episode is "Baltimore: Anatomy of an American City". After watching this and programs like it, I have to wonder if American inner cities will ever be able to recover as long as the federal government fights its drug war.

Curiosity Descent in HD

This is really cool. It's the descent of the Curiosity Mars rover and it's in HD. But wait. No widescreen? Forsooth!

The Automobile Takes Over the Street

Dane101 noted today that the Madison Area Bus Advocates now have a monthly column at Madison Commons. The inaugural entry is here. If you're not familiar with them, do check out their website.

As I was reading the column, I recalled an interesting bit of transportation lore that I found a few weeks ago. The 20th Congress for the New Urbanism was held back in May and there was a lecture given there that described how the streets were transformed from areas "owned" by pedestrians to being the domain of automobiles. As cars became popular, children started getting killed much more often. Prior to the advent of the car, streets were primarily pedestrian areas. Kids played in the street, for example. In his lecture, Peter Norton, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia, describes how cars took over the streets and how that process was very deliberate on the part of people promoting automobiles. Once upon a time there were no crosswalks and no jaywalkers because the streets were considered to be for pedestrians with cars being the intruders.

His lecture was called "Why Did We Stop Walking & How Do We Start Again?" and it's available on YouTube. For a summary of his ideas, go here. The lecture is based on his book Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.

Madison Lakes Don't Get No Respect

Living near Lake Monona, I rarely think about access to the lakes as I just have to walk down the street and I am there. However the notion of the public enjoying the lakes and lakeshores became an issue last month when the City Council rejected part of the masterplan for downtown which called for filling in a couple acres of Lake Monona to enlarge Law Park. I liked the idea of an expanded park with more room to enjoy the lake, a pavilion, boat slips, etc. and the plan threw into sharp relief the paucity of public spaces on our lakeshores.

A couple weeks later Michael Doyle of Chicago Carless wrote a blog post entitled "Looking for Madison" in which he described his disappointment with access to our fair lakes.

It took three hours and lots of double-backs, U-turns, and retreating out of cul-de-sacs. Ultimately, it was a depressing effort. (At least from a Chicagoan’s perspective.) We figured we would find at least a few stunning views back across one or both lakes of Madison’s Capitol-topped downtown hill. Mostly, though, we found an unbroken wall of lakefront development in the form of endless exclusive single-family homes with private docks hidden behind view-stealing privacy hedges, very occasionally broken by a handful of boat launches.

This was the rule outside of Madison, where I can recall two public lakefront parks of any size and almost no unfettered view of the isthmus that didn’t involve peering between houses. Things were better within Madison, itself, with sizeable areas of lakefront parkland–though not many–both near downtown and further out in the neighborhoods, and pocket (street-ending) lakefront access in some neighborhoods. But not much better.

It isn’t like we weren’t pulling for Madison to come through. In some neighborhoods we circled and circled, hoping a strange squiggle on Google Maps might be a new, unnamed road, or trying to get to a big stand of trees we could see just over the rooftops, only to discover they were in someone’s private back yard.

Overall, though, after three hours of exploring public lakefront access and views in a metropolitan area famed for both urban beauty and lake recreation, the Madison region seemed pretty hemmed in and cut off from its lakefronts. It was a surprise for us both, and left us feeling that in one fundamental way the urban region that many consider to be the best in Wisconsin didn’t live up to its own press, which takes pains to tout lake recreation.

It sounds like they didn't hit Olin-Turville Park but he still makes a good point here about the lakes being rather inaccessible to the public. (Thankfully he avoided noting how algae-ridden and awful-smelling the lakes are.) Beyond this, there are very few waterfront spots which act as public attractions. There are some nice parks, beaches and boat launches, but, aside from the Union Terrace, there isn't much in the way of space for public gathering that go beyond a field of grass and some picnic tables.

Madison is very Capitol Square-centric and we have nothing akin to Grant Park in Chicago or the Henry W. Maier Festival Park in Milwaukee. There are no bandshells, museums, or festival amenities on our lakeshores; only state office buildings, apartments/condos, and homes. (And the convention center.) The lakes are something of an afterthought. So rest in peace, Law Park plan.

It's been well over a year since I've heard anything about the Nolen Centennial Project. Is that effort still ongoing? I really like the idea of a "waterfront interpretative center". Perhaps if people learned just how bad the lakes are, there might be some more initiative taken in their cleaning.

On a side note, Doyle also says "Milwaukee’s poutine is better, and the lakefront urbanites on either side of the state border are much friendlier than we found Madison’s lifelong inlanders to be."

I don't know about poutine in Madison but is it really inferior to that found in Milwaukee? Any locals reading this that have gustatory experience in this area? And I have to wonder who he ran into that lacked amicability. I hear people thanking bus drivers in Madison all the time. How could we not be friendly?

Bottoms Up - Book, Exhibit, and TV Show

Bottoms Up: A Toast to Wisconsin's Historic Bars and Breweries will be released by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press next month (although I wouldn't be surprised if you can find it in the Museum store now) and to go along with it there will be an exhibit at the Wisconsin Historical Museum with the same name that runs from 25 September until 17 February 2013.

In small towns and city neighborhoods, in Northwoods taverns, working class bars and upscale tap houses, Wisconsinites gather to relax, socialize and enjoy a drink. Explore Wisconsin's tavern culture through historic photos and breweriana, and discover how the state came to dominate the brewing industry. This exhibit complements the Wisconsin Historical Society Press book and Wisconsin Public Television documentary of the same name.

Authors Jim Draeger and Mark Speltz will be doing a mini-book tour around the state promoting it. Dates and locations are here. Here's a couple early dates of interest:

Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Time: 7 pm
Location: Brocach Irish Pub and Restaurant, 7 W. Main St, Madison, WI 53703
Jim Draeger and Mark Speltz will be signing books. This bar is featured in the book.

Thursday, September 27, 2012
Time: Evening
Location: New Glarus Brewery, 2400 State Hwy 69, New Glarus, WI 53574
Catch a preview screening of the new Wisconsin Public Television documentary, "Bottoms Up," the companion to the book of the same name. Authors Jim Draeger and Mark Speltz will be available to sign books. This brewery is featured in the book.

Paul Ryan: Douchebag

Paul Ryan's handlers must be busier than a one-eyed man at a burlesque show trying to spin his comments now that he's trying to be vice-president.

He disparages the federal stimulus programs, denies requesting any cash from those programs and then, lo and behold, it comes out that he did, in fact, put his hands in that pie.

After repeated denials, Paul Ryan has admitted he requested stimulus cash even after sharply criticizing the program.

Ryan had denied doing so as recently as Wednesday, when he spoke to ABC’s Cincinnati affiliate, WCPO, in Ohio.

“I never asked for stimulus,” Mitt Romney’s new running mate said. “I don’t recall… so I really can’t comment on it. I opposed the stimulus because it doesn’t work, it didn’t work.”

But as we’ve now learned, Ryan did write letters. He did request stimulus funds.

Well of course he had to request stimulus money. His constituents were suffering from the closure of the GM plant in Janesville because of Obama's energy policy. Yes, he blames that plant closure on Obama despite the fact that it closed before Obama was president.

GM stopped production at its Janesville, Wisconsin production facility in 2008, when George W. Bush was still president, but according to Paul Ryan the person to blame is President Obama.

...Ryan told a crowd in North Canton, Ohio yesterday that the president's energy policies had led to the factory's closure in 2009. Ryan delivered the attack in personal terms, saying he had high school buddies who worked at the factory. "A lot of my high school buddies worked at that GM plant," Ryan said. "One of the reasons that plant got shut down is $4 gasoline. You see, this costs jobs. The president's terrible energy policies are costing us jobs."

But despite Ryan's emotional story, GM announced the plant's closure in June of 2008. In October of 2008, the date was accelerated from 2010 to the end of the year. And on December 23, 2008 the last SUV rolled off the line.

Now let's go back to his quote above - "I opposed the stimulus because it doesn’t work, it didn’t work." These days he's all anti-John Maynard Keynes. But that was before he was pro-John Maynard Keynes, as Chris Hayes demonstrates.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

His latest exercise in being a doofus is in claiming foreign policy experience by having voted to invade Iraq. “I voted to send people to war." Wow! There's a real resume builder.

Anonymous UK Points Out Hypocrisy of British Goverment

With the British government rattling its sabers and threatening to raid the Ecuadoran embassy to get its hands on Julian Assanage for extradition, Anonymous UK has released a video pointing the extreme hypocrisy of the threat.

The British government will not send a convicted paedophile back to the United States for punishment but is threatening to violate Ecuadoran territory to get someone who is only wanted for questioning.

Trailer for Asylum of the Daleks

The new season of Doctor Who is rumored to start next month but there's no official airdate for the premier. However, there is a new trailer out for the opener, "Asylum of the Daleks".

Surly's Bitter Brewer

I am going to round out my trio of Surly reviews with one for Bitter Brewer which is their take on the English bitter.

BB poured a nice orange-brown and was completely clear. The head was very creamy and lasted a good long while. It clung to the sides of the glass well for some nice lacing. There were a few stray bubbles making their way up the glass. During my initial whiff my nose was overwhelmed with fruity aromas from the malt, namely apricot. However, there was some very faint grassy hop in there too.

Taking a sip, I was first greeted by that fruity malt but it quickly gave way to the hops which seemed to register on every part of my tongue. Despite the name, BB isn’t a mega hop bomb that will set your lips a-puckerin’. Yes, there was certainly a goodly amount of bitterness present but what was really notable was the big, fresh grassy/floral flavor of the hops with the emphasis on the latter. To my palate, the malt was drowned out by the hops but it was still there as evidenced by the mouthfeel which never felt watery.

While it mellows as you get to the bottom of the can, Bitter Brewer is all about that floral hop flavor being in your face. One pint was enough for me. Having said this, the floral taste was a very welcome change of pace. The German, Czech, and Polish lagers I’ve been drinking lately use hops that impart more of a herbal flavor while the pale ales that have crossed my path used C-hops which emphasize citrus. And so it was great to drink something which went in a different direction. While Surly tweaked the English bitter, they get credit in my book for keeping BB at 4.1% ABV - nice and sessionable and within the range for the style - instead of making a bigger beer.

Junk food pairing: I found that Bitter Brewer went well with corn nuts. The toasted flavor helped make up for the lack of malt and made for a nice balance on my palate.

Safety Not Guaranteed

Safety Not Guaranteed takes its inspiration from a fake ad placed in Backwoods Home magazine back in 1997 which read: “Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box ... You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.” Here the same ad becomes fodder for a Seattle alternative paper reporter named Jeff who suffers from a bit of egoism. For the investigation he takes a couple interns along with him. Arnau is a socially-awkward nerd while Darius is a beautiful young woman who is also a smartass with a droll sense of humor. The movie actually opens with her epic fail at a job interview followed by a scene at home with her widowed father.

The trio drive to a town called Oceanview which not coincidentally is also the home of one of Jeff’s old flames. While he is off trying to get a piece of ass, Darius and Arnau stake out the post office and eventually watch a man check the P.O. box in the ad. He turns out to be Kenneth, a rather odd duck who works in the local supermarket. After finding out where he lives, Jeff goes to Kenneth’s house pretending to answer the ad but the time traveler sees through his ruse and sends Jeff packing. Plan B is to have Darius approach him. She does so while Kenneth at work with her wiles and a tough guy act. She is in.

One big problem here. Kenneth is paranoid that someone, perhaps the government, is watching him. He places an ad with only a P.O. box in it yet he seems remarkably nonplussed when people show up at his place of employment and his home saying they were answering the ad. This plot hole is only enlarged later in the film at times when Kenneth is convinced that the voyeurs are near and he becomes absolutely manic and flees.

Setting this aside, Darius slowly earns Kenneth’s trust and trains for the mission while Arnau presumably sits in the hotel room and surfs the Net. For his part, Jeff seeks out his ex-girlfriend, Liz. She is a divorced hairdresser who lives a rather bucolic lifestyle out in the country where she raises chickens. Liz unwittingly seduces him with her home cooked meals and multiple varieties of pie. Elsewhere Darius falls for Kenneth. Although he’s a bit off kilter, he is friendly and earnest in his time travel endeavor which he reveals to be a mission to save a lost love.

Neither of these relationships pan out. Having failed with Liz, Jeff decides to teach Arnau a hedonistic lesson on the meaning of tempus fugit with a group of young women picked up at a gas station. Darius discovers the truth about Kenneth and confronts him with it. Their relationship is riven but Darius decides that she doesn’t want to walk away. I won’t spoil the ending but will say that it managed to provide some closure while also being wonderfully ambiguous.

The title of the movie refers not only to the potential perils of time travel but also to those of opening oneself up emotionally to another person. There’s a nice contrast here between Jeff and Darius. Jeff does so but flees immediately while Darius takes a risk. While a nice sentiment, it didn’t translate for me because, of the main characters, only Kenneth was interesting. Arnau is simply wallpaper. He doesn’t do much except look exasperated and suffer Jeff’s treatment of him. Jeff is mostly defined by his puerile comments and adolescent attitudes. And Darius is just all sarcasm. Some of this was funny but was one-note for too much of the time.

I think that this initial disappointment with the characters makes it difficult for me to accept their transformations because I feel really ambivalent about how things pan out. On one hand I think the shift from light-hearted comedy to love story was pulled off well. But there’s also something nagging at me that says it was too quick and that the ending was in some way trite and too much like a fairy tale. Darius and Kenneth’s relationship reminded me of Jack and Parry in The Fisher King with two damaged people looking to be fixed. But our characters here find healing with too few trials and tribulations for it to be satisfying for me.

Still, there is fun to be had in Safety Not Guaranteed and I give the creators credit for not letting the idea of time travel get in the way of focusing on characters.

Headhunters (Hodejegerne)

Pete Townshend once sang “Communicate, communicate/Never, never hesitate!” and Roger Brown, the protagonist of Headhunters (Hodejegerne), would have done well to heed that advice.

Roger is a headhunter who recruits people for executive positions in large corporations. But his salary just isn't big enough to lead the lifestyle that he wants for himself and his wife Diana. Diana enjoys tacking Oslo's art scene and is opening an art gallery. She is also a gorgeous valkyrie who towers over Roger's comparatively short 5'6” or so frame. He has a trophy wife and is under the misguided notion that he needs to maintain a luxurious lifestyle to keep her rather than giving her what she really wants, a child. Instead, to be able to afford the nice house, car, and gallery, he steals art on the side, using his connections and interviews with clients to scope out targets. His friend Ove works for a home security firm and he is able to disengage the home security systems of Roger's victims. And, perhaps to assuage his guilt and placate a Napolean complex, he has a mistress named Lotte.

As the movie opens, Roger is recruiting for a position at a company called Pathfinder. As luck would have it, a handsome, debonair man named Clas Greve shows up at the grand opening of Diana’s gallery and he just happens to be a former executive of Pathfinder’s archrival. Roger sets up a lunch date to work his magic on the new prospect. The next day Diana casually mentions that Clas owns an extremely valuable Rubens and Roger schemes to steal it.

The heist goes well until Roger calls Diana and discovers her phone ringing from Clas’ bedroom. Incensed that he has been cuckolded, Roger abruptly ends his recruitment of Clas. But things only get worse as the movie takes on a darkly comic tone that compares well to the Coen Brothers.

It turns out that Clas is a former member of an elite army unit and is pursuing Roger. Does he wish to keep Diana for his own? Or does he know of the theft? While short is stature and not a trained killer, Roger is no dummy. He manages to elude Clas through some quick thinking as when he hides in the muck in an old outhouse. He is also lucky and so is wedged between two portly identical twin polices officers in the back seat of a car when it is pushed off a cliff by Clas.

Although there is action in Headhunters, it’s not really fair to call it an action-thriller. I mean, unless you call a frantic Roger escaping on a tractor that has the corpse of a dog impaled on the front action. The fun comes less from visceral thrills and more in the setups and the topsy turvy situations Rogers finds himself in. Plus Roger goes from a real jerk to having our sympathies.

I was surprised by the character of Diana. She doesn’t get a whole lot of screen time but she felt very genuine. Roger is defined by his actions, for the most part, while Diana comes across to us mostly in her facial expressions and tone of voice. She is very nice while her husband is a philandering jerk, at least that’s where he starts out at. Diana provides of moments of real tenderness which contrast nicely with the dark humor and death in Roger’s story.

Quote of the Day

From David Cronenberg:

"It's still Batman running around in a stupid cape. I just don't think it's elevated. Christopher Nolan's best movie is Memento, and that is an interesting movie. I don't think his Batman movies are half as interesting though they're 20 million times the expense ... A superhero movie, by definition, you know, it's comic book. It's for kids. It's adolescent in its core. That has always been its appeal, and I think people who are saying Dark Knight Rises is 'supreme cinema art,' I don't think they know what the fuck they're talking about."

Dave Weigel Investigates Progressive Rock at Slate

Political commentator Dave Weigel has begun a multi-part series about the history of progressive rock called “Prog Spring”. Two parts have been posted so far with the first being entitled “Before it was a joke, prog was the future of rock ‘n’ roll.” while the second is “The rise of prog, music never meant for ‘the average person.’”. Weigel also provides a dramatis personae for the reader. Looking at it, I was a bit disappointed to see that it’s mostly big names and mostly symphonic proggers, i.e. – the guys in Genesis, Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull, and King Crimson. Although Ton Scherpenzeel from Kayak gets a nod and does Nik Turner.

Weigel begins the series begins by suggesting (ironically?) that the death of rock’n'roll happened in 1964 when Keith Emerson bought his first Hammond organ. He briefly rehashes Emerson’s career and then says, “But if ever a form of popular music dropped dead suddenly, it was prog. Progressive rock essentially disappeared, and has remained in obscurity for 35 years, ridiculed by rock snobs, ignored by fans, its most famous artists—Yes, King Crimson, ELP, Jethro Tull—catchphrases for pretentious excess.”

Progressive rock did not drop dead suddenly. Did things change for the most well-known purveyors of the music when punk broke? Sure. But it “essentially disappeared”. This is ridiculous and sloppy. As the progenitors of the genre found themselves to be veterans facing a new world of pop music, The Enid was just getting started and Rush began to let the prog flag fly. The early 1980s saw the rise of so-called neo-prog in the UK with Marillion, IQ, Pallas, Pendragon, Solstice, Twelfth Night, and so on. Other proggy bands would rise later in the decade such as Ozric Tentacles, Djam Karet, and Porcupine Tree. In the 1990s Echolyn achieved a modicum of fame in the prog world and were even signed to Sony for a short time. Dream Theater helped pioneer progressive metal in that same decade. Opeth, Tool, Mars Volta, vonFrickle – the list goes on. Progressive rock never died. Bands continue to form – just check out District 97. Did prog rock bands at some point find themselves unable to fill stadiums? That I grant you, but the music never died.

I give Weigel credit for starting with Emerson and giving The Nice their due. He even continues in the keyboardist vein as part 2 opens. It’s more Emerson but he quickly works in Tony Banks and Rick Wakeman. After this he gives a very nebulous definition of “progressive rock”. Points for quoting Dave Stewart of Egg/National Health and for noting that Progression magazine acknowledges at least 19 sub-genres. He lists three “musical modes” which define the genre: “retrospection, trying to replace the standard American-derived influences of pop-rock with English and European influences”; “futurism, and the use of new sounds and new non-rock influences to replace the standard musical modes”; and experimentation. Still, at the end of the day, Weigel focuses on the big names and gives too much emphasis on time signatures almost to the point of fetishizing it. But what made Henry Cow different from Genesis different from Egg? It is difficult to define the genre and all the sub-genres but he basically whitewashes this whole subject and basically says that everyone loved shifting time signatures. But the differences between Slapp Happy and ELP are big and I think that looking at what they have in common and what they have in contrast beyond time signatures can go a long way in, if not exactly defining what prog is, at least in helping give a sense of some boundaries, however broad they may be.

Here’s Henry Cow:

And now here’s some ELP:

For me, emphasizing changes in time signatures doesn’t really say much about why both of these bands are considered to be progressive rock.

Lastly, the second part ends with Weigel noting:

The first time Fripp heard “Larks’ Tongues” being peddled to the masses, sort of, was when a Muzak-ish cover appeared in the opening scenes of the 1974 soft-core classic Emmanuelle. Fripp sued and got it taken out. This music was not meant to accompany scenes of French women finding themselves sexually. The listener had to focus on it and peel the layers back.

Weigel implies that Fripp objected to his music being used in a way that wasn’t serious enough. Now, I don’t have Eric Tamm’s bio of Fripp in front of me but I’d wager that Fripp sued, not because he meant the song to be appreciated in a more serious context, but rather because he hadn’t been paid for its use.

Hysterical Literature

This is a woman named Stoya (just looked her up - she's a porn star/model) reading a selection from a book called Necrophilia Variations by Supervert. The kicker is that someone is underneath the table applying a Hitachi Magic Wand to her naughty bits. She gets pretty far along before she, er, has to stop reading for a short stretch. I take it that this is the first installment of the Hysterical Literature project by Clayton Cubitt.

More from Stoya at her blog.

Great Taste of the Midwest 2012

Five hours go by quickly when there's good beer involved, especially when there are literally hundreds of different beers (and meads and braggots to boot)just waiting to be sampled. It always seems like the Great Taste goes by in a flash after waiting for 40 minutes in line for what feels like an eternity.



The weather was the nicest it's been in years, as far as I can recall. Sunny but only in the high 70s. Warm enough for lighter beers to work their magical powers of refreshment on you yet temperate enough to drink bigger beers as well. I had planned to hit the New Glarus tent immediately to sample their Aged Bourbon Barrel Kriek which was to be tapped at 13:00 but the line was out to John Nolen Drive by the time we got there. I suppose bourbon barrel fans hopped in line as well as folks who don't live in Wisconsin or near the border. And so we went off in search of shorter lines and this was my first beer of the Taste:



It's a Peach Berliner Weisse from Perennial Artisan Ales in St. Louis. It was good but I wished that it was a bit more sourness and that there was a smidge more peach. Still, it was tasty and refreshing. Here's beer nummer zwei:



This is Bubblelicious Weisse from Tenth and Blake, Miller's craft division. I've read articles by people who've been there for a meeting or conferences and who rave about the wonderful brews served there that are not for sale. In this case, they took a Berliner Weisse and added syrup bubbles a la bubble tea. This pour has mango bubbles – there were no woodruff or raspberry ones on offer. We craft drinkers may decry Miller Lite but the brewers there have the chops, I can tell you, because this was great stuff indeed. Very tart yet with a nice light body. The mango contrasted nicely with it. I grant you that there was novelty in the presentation but they made a seriously good Berliner Weisse. The D got a pour of their Jazz Hands braggot which was also excellent.


Goose Island had a tent where you could try your hand at mixing their stouts.

This was probably the best year ever for people such as myself who enjoy the less common German/Polish bier/piwo styles. I found zwei goses, vier Berliner Weisses, zwei Grätzers/ Grodziskies, and a roggenbier. I also saw a handful of Baltic porters, some fruit-flavored hefeweizens which sounded tasty, and a couple zwickels. The programs listed an alt or two, if memory serves and there were several Kölsches. Pale ales ruled the day, to be sure, but not a bad showing from the Teutonic/Slavic styles, all things considered.

I finally got a chance to try Sam Adams' Verloren gose. I simply have never seen the stuff in a liquor store here for reasons unknown. It had an incredible aroma. Tartness and coriander – ooh la la! Too bad it didn't taste as good as it smelled. Tartness was lacking as was salt. I am unsure if it was my palate or whether the beer was genuine lacking. I'd still try it again to rule out the former.


Lots of musos around. These guys drew a large crowd.

The better gose was by Destihl from downstate Illinois. This stuff had a wonderfully sour fruity aroma, like tart strawberries. It was much more sour than Verloren and the salt was present as well. Unfortunately I couldn't taste coriander. My tongue's fault? Hey, they got two out of three. Refreshing and I would definitely try it again.

Chicago's 5 Rabbit has quickly become a favorite brewery of mine. Their 5 Vulture is great and it irritates me to no end that I can never find 5 Lizard, a Latin-style witbier with passion fruit, on the northwest side when I'm in ChiTown. I only ever have it at the Great Taste. It is clean and fruity yet not overly sweet. A perfect summer beer. The D got a pour of it while I tried out their newest annual, 5 Grass. It's a hoppy ale brewed with herbs and spices including juniper, sage, and Tasmanian pepperberry. It smelled fantastic and tasted that way too. Sage and pepper were prominent and they complemented the hops very well. And it was all atop a nice malt backbone. I have three six-packs of the 5 Rabbit golden ale at home and hope to review it soon.


The crew from Metropolitan. I missed their zwickel. :(


New Holland threw a zombie prom and busted out the dry ice for the occasion.

About mid-way through the fest I ran into some former co-workers and we had the citrus IPA smackdown! We had just had Potosi's Tangerine IPA and were commenting on how tasty it was when they countered by saying that Blue Heron's Grapefruit IPA was even better so naturally we had to try it. Indeed, it was very good with a wonderful fresh grapefruit flavor. On the other hand, Potosi's variation had a sweet-bitter dichotomy that is hard to beat. Tough one.

We stopped in at the Vintage table to say hello to Scott and while I was there I had a Tippy Toboggan because it's one of the best beers in the known universe. He had his Grätzer on tap which reminded me that I had to try the Grumpy Troll's take on it. Here it is:



It was lighter that Scott's brew – only 3.7% ABV - which Scott admitted was probably more traditional. (He offered that his was an imperial Grätzer.) I liked the mellow smoke profile but, if Ron Pattinson is right, it wasn't hoppy enough. Despite this, it was tasty.

Towards the end of the day we ran into Doug from the Over Served Podcast. He led us over to Mineral Point's Brewery Creek to sample their shandies. The Frankenshandy was made with dark beer and was great. The "Another Side of Shandy" featured grapefruit and was also very tasty. A nice way to ease out of the festival.


Page hard at work.


Bell's was handing out capes to go with their comic which took up the side of their tent.



A few final tasting notes and thoughts...

I enjoyed Backpocket Scottish "Peated" Lager. The peated malt shone through yet it was crisp and not too heavy. O'so's Lemongrass Wit seemed to lack lemongrass. Maybe my tongue was just worn out by the time we made it to their booth. Arcadia's Shipwreck Porter, a Baltic porter, has only three legible words in my notepad: "could be deadly". Lafayette had two Berliner Weisses neither of which were particularly sour. Then again, it's possible some of those barrel aged Baltic porters temporarily damaged my tongue. I missed out on Flat 12 Bierwerks' Kiwi Kiwi Hefe and Kuhnhenn's chai and ginseng hefes. Anyone try these?

I'm reluctant to name a favorite brew but will say that it was nice to start the day off with goses and Berliner Weisses. Low octane but tasty. Throw in the Grätzer and some shandies to finish off the day, it was obvious that beer need not be high in alcohol to be interesting.

It seemed like I got many more "normal" 2oz. pours this year than at previous Tastes which seemed to have a lot which were 4+oz. Brought chairs for the first time. Didn't use them much but they were still nice to have. Where was the dunk tank? Somehow I missed any dirndls which were walking around but did see one guy in drag. Lastly, Rob Larson looked like he had forgotten his troubles with the Lake Mills government and looked to be in a cheerful mood.

Next beer festival is in Potosi.

Partying with The Polkaholics

After work on Friday I met The Dulcinea at the Essen Haus for their pre-Great Taste party featuring Chicago's Revolution Brewing who brought The Polkaholics along with them for their first gig in Madison in eight years. I'd never had any Revolution brew nor seen The Polkaholics live so it was a great opportunity to correct both of these highly unfortunate situations.

On the left is the Oktoberfest next to a rye stout. The Oktoberfest was good, if a bit light on the malt. I guess I'm used to Kirby's iteration of the style. The stout was also tasty. Nice'n'dry with the rye zip bringing up the rear.



The only Polkaholics album I have is Wally: A Polka-Punk Opera so I was yelling for "Division Street". Bassist Jolly James Wallace heard my plea and they played it. They even took my second request – "Caldwell Woods". At this point, The D ordered me to stop yelling requests. Not a problem as they proceeded to play lots of great tunes including "Existentialist Polka", "Who Stole the Kiska", and "Old Style Polka", among many others in their three sets. They were an absolute blast and all great fellows. James and guitarist Dandy Don Hedeker were in bands previously that had played here and James asked where O'Cayz Corral was. I pointed to the empty lot next door. The D and I also chatted with drummer Stylin’ Steve Glover and his significant other, Rosa, who was very friendly.

The owner of the Essen Haus approached the band after the first set and the plan is to have the boys return to play there in October.

The Great Taste Cometh

I now have Great Taste of the Midwest tickets in my possession and have been scouring the program for beers to drink. Too bad neither Lazy Monk nor Valkyrie will be there. I was also disappointed to see that Metropolitan won't be bringing any of their Arc Welder Rye Dunkel but such is life. On the other hand, they are bringing their zwickel. I am sorely tempted to stand outside the Vintage's spot and drink Tippy Toboggan all day but I hear that the Vintage cellar is being cleared out and it will be back on tap tomorrow. Or next Friday, I can't recall. There will be a couple goses including Sam Adams' take on the style which, for some odd reason, I cannot find here in Madison. I also noticed a couple Berliner Weisses including one from Miller's R&D brewery which sounds like a really fun novelty:

Bubblelicious Weisse: ABV 3.3%, 7.4°P, , IBU 5, Berliner Weisse. Wheat and Pale Malts. CDH (Debittered Hops). Top-fermenting wheat beer, with the quenching sourness of a lactic fermentation. This classic sour German beer is served with an Asian bubblelicious twist. This new addition is a translucent gummy ball that contains flavored juices in the center which “pops” with every bite. The bursting bubbles come in Lychee, Mango, Orange, Passion Fruit, or Strawberry.

If my plan to sample the Imperial schwartzbier and every Baltic porter comes to fruition, I may need to be carried out.

I would like to second this idea from Metropolitan:



Since it is going to be a while before this happens, I will now extend an offer to Metropolitan, New Glarus, Capital, and anyone else who brews lagers: I'd be happy to pitch a tent in my backyard to be used as a prototype. Consider it a test run (an ongoing one, if need be) until the MHTG sees the light on lagers. Obergäriges Lagerbiers will be welcome too.

News from New Glarus is that they brewed a new R&D sour brown ale in honor of the Great Taste:

Madison's Great Taste is coming up and we promised a new R and D release in it's honor. Announcing the latest R and D a Sour Brown Ale. 150 cases have been spontaneously fermenting for over two years in oak with a final finish carbonation in the bottle. This beer is funky and sour. 50 cases will be released Thursday Aug 9 at 1:00, fifty more 10:00 Saturday morning and the last fifty cases will be released Sunday morning at 10:00. Two bottle limit per person. 8.00 per bottle.

The Great Dane has started bottling. The new Un-Leashed series comes in bombers. MadTable has the straight dope.

Lastly, the label for Leinenkugel's new seasonal. Snowdrift will replace Fireside Nut Brown. How much do you want to bet this will taste like a vanilla milk shake made with beer?

Surly CynicAle

My second foray into the world of Surly beers was their CynicAle, which is something of a stylistic chameleon. It is perhaps best described as a Belgian saison-like brew or, as the brewery describes it, "a new school style". Whatever the case, it has French barley, English oats, Belgian yeast, and Slovenian hops which sounds like an interesting mix to me.

CynicAle is a mighty pretty beer with clarity and a golden/light amber color. The head was thick'n'rich with big bubbles. The smells here are quite a mix with yeasty bread commingled with grassy/floral scents and fruit, namely, raisins. On the palate, it was a similar situation. The brew was sweet at first with a bit of raw bread dough flavor and peach. But then came the hops with their spiciness that had hints of pepper. At the finish there was smoothness and some floral hoppiness. Surprisingly the mouthfeel was fairly thin. For whatever reason, I was expecting something a bit heavier. Perhaps it was the color or the sweetness of that first sip. I don't offer this as a complaint, mind you, because I think this made it all the more quaffable on a hot day.

All in all this is a very tasty beer. I really enjoyed the peppery vs. fruity dichotomy here and it was quite refreshing. However, it does weigh in at 6.7% ABV so it's not exactly suitable for extended sessions of refreshment.

Junk food pairing: CynicAle goes well with Snyder's Honey Mustard & Onion Pretzel Pieces.

A Minnesota Import: Surly's Hell

A friend of mine has, unfortunately, become a resident of Minnesota but occasionally makes his way back to Madison. This being the case, I like to encourage him to bring me Minnesota beer and I now find myself in possession of some Surly.

The first brew I tried was their summer seasonal, Hell, a zwickel. Although unfiltered, it was not hazy nor was their some tasty yeast detritus at the bottom of my glass. It was clear as day and a lovely yellow color to boot. As the photo above shows, I got a nice frothy head and the effervescent goodness made for a pretty sight in my pilsner glass. Also, it left some fairly heavy Schaumhaftvermoegen.

Taking a whiff, I caught bread dough along with some grass/straw, and a faint tinge of hops that were herbal in character. Since it was fricking hot out when I busted this stuff out, I was really looking forward to that lager crispness to cut through the heat. Lately I have found that pale ales just don't work in the heat. Recent bottles of Pearl Street's pale ale and a Moon Man went unfinished. Although I had emtpied the majority of the beer, I just couldn't finish them and still felt very thirsty afterwards. I guess you don't drink an ale for a lager's job. Hell worked well in this respect. The crispness quenched my thirst and took the edge off the heat. It has a medium malt backbone which is balanced nicely by the hops which impart a grassy flavor, not unlike the aroma. You can taste the carbonation but it was not prominent.

The problem was that, while I was enjoying the fine, balanced malt-hop thing, the flavor suddenly departed my mouth and my tongue could only register smooth velvet. I presume this was diacetyl as it is said to taste like butter and what I registered was butter without the dairy. Too bad. I don't know if this was because of bacteria invading the beer or something to do with the beer's lagering process but, regardless, it ruined a perfectly tasty brew. Once the velvety interlude had ended, the finish was clean and moderated by some hop bitterness. Oddly enough, it wasn't a particularly dry finish as I had expected.

Junk food pairing: Nothing fancy here. Just go with some good kartoffelchips.

Mmm...schnitzel sandwich

Oh man! My brother lives three blocks from Olga's Deli yet he's never taken me there, the bastard. Five bucks for a four-story chicken schnitzel sandwich. The Chicago Reader has the straight dope. Does any place in Madison serve schnitzel sandwiches?

Lovecraftian Double Feature

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society is booking double features around the country of their two films: The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness. Andrew O'Hehir of Salon recently fave the latter a good review.

If you look at the HPLHS website, you will notice that Madison does not yet have a screening booked yet Oshkosh does. Duluth does. Lame. How do I rent a theatre that sells gummy Yog-Sothoths and Cthulhu Brewing Company's Black IPA?

Madison Is Now Ground Zero of a Grodziskie/Grätzer Revival

First Scott Manning at Vintage brewed a grätzer and now his confrère Mark Knoebl of The Grumpy Troll has done the same:



Scott tells me that Knoebl's version has less bitterness than his and has a lower original gravity as well. Methinks a trek to Mt. Horeb is in order.

A couple new labels of note:





A new Oktoberfest on the scene, eh? It'll be difficult to keep me away from Capital's mellifluous take on the style but I shall have to give it a shot. I am pleased to see Leine's do a Baltic Porter, a much under-appreciated beer. Capital did one a few years ago for their Capital Square series and I loved it. I long for the day when Kirby brews it again.

Turning to the world of mead, Bos Meadery has opened its doors over at 849 E. Washington. MadTable has a nice profile of Colleen Bos and her establishment. Oddly, the article describes mead as a "medieval drink" when it then proceeds to say that it is "world's oldest fermented beverage". Using these words makes it sound like a Dogfish Head kind of thing – a beverage that people haven't made in centuries and only now is the recipe being dusted off. But mead never went away. Poles, for instance, have been drinking it for centuries even as Americans forgot about it.



The near east side can now claim to be home to a meadery, a distillery (Old Sugar), and a brewery (One Barrel). Next thing you know someone will starting making sake on the isthmus.

On a similar note, I recently noticed that there's a new outfit making sangria in Milwaukee - Lovino. Biz Times has a brief article about them.

Jaime and Erica Zdroik have launched Sangria by Lovino, a Bayview-based ready to drink bottled sangria. The Sangria has been released in 83 Roundy's locations in Wisconsin and plans for release in a few Milwaukee-area restaurants are currently underway.

The sangria is produced and bottled in Algoma, Wisconsin and shipped to more than 83 locations throughout Wisconsin.

According to Erica, the product is best served on ice and mixed with citrus fruits.

"Our product is all natural and is different than other bottled sangria on the market," Erica said. "Our sangria is 12.5 percent alcohol, compared to other sangrias which tend to be closer to 6 or 8 percent. We don't dilute the product at all."

It is now available in Madison.



Narragansett Brewing Company of Rhode Island is expanding its reach outside of the East Coast and we Cheeseheads will be the first lucky victims of their cunning plan. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know anyone who's ever tasted Gansett brews. Their line-up of a pale lager, a "light" beer, cream ale, porter, Märzen, helles bock, and golden ale doesn't have any trendy styles but I can't complain about the prospect of another helles bock next spring.



Lastly, Madison Beer Review has a comprehensive list of Great Taste pre-parties. With such a plethora of choices, I don't know where to go. Last year I sweated out much of the night at Brickhouse but not before a stop at the Capital Tap Haus where I drunkenly pleaded with Kirby to avoid the primrose path of pale ales and to instead stay with the lagers. Thankfully he didn't remember me the next day.

Cloud Atlas Trailer

I started reading Cloud Atlas recently and now see that there's an extended trailer for the film adaptation by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis.

It will be interesting to see how they pull it off. I am only 100 or so pages in but most of the story so far is epistolary so there's either going to be a lot of voice over narration or a drastic retooling.