And On the Seventh Day God Created the Baklava Sampler Platter

I was in Chicago over the weekend and of course I stopped at a grocery store. My primary goal was to get some quinces at the Produce Center since my last attempt to make a marmalade of quince ended up as a brick. The quinces were cooked just too long, much to my shame. Unfortunately there were no golden apples to be had. And so I purchased...



Whole rye bread! I'm not sure that any breadery in the Madison area makes this. Perhaps a store imports it. The best local analog I can think of is the Bavarian rye from The Bread Barn. That is a fine brot but this loaf has more rye. Also no caraway here. Ingredients are rye flour, whole rye flour, whole wheat flour, yeast, water, salt, and honey. The crust is chewy while the non-crust interior is soft and fluffy. I had a sandwich made with this stuff for lunch today and it was tastilicious.



And I just had to buy some kolaczki - raspberry and apricot. Thankfully storm clouds moved in otherwise we might have ended up at Sweet World Pastry and become the proud owners of a lot of baumkuchen.



Makowiec (poppy seed roll) is obligatory. Luckily I am not required to take a drug test. That chocolate cheese rugela on the right came from New York Bagel and Bialy. Open 24/7 to serve all of your bagel and bialy needs. Also got raspberry cheese rugelach.



Yes, I also bought bagels - egg, onion, and mish mosh, a.k.a. - everything.

Just a store front or two down from the bagel joint was what I believe is a fairly new bakery - Libanais Sweets. They had multiple sizes of baklava sampler packs.



Tasty. Very tasty indeed. One species here is made with rose hips or rose water or rose something. Mmmm...I had no idea that there were so many iterations of baklava but the bakers of the Ottoman Empire had centuries to tinker and perfect recipes so it's not surprising.

They also had a large assortment of cookies.



Cookies dipped in chocolate then dipped in diced pistachio. Fantastic! And not overly sweet which means you can eat more in a session. They're session cookies.

It's ratatouille and session sweets all week for me.

Back to the Garden 2015 Edition

The garden is doing well this year.





We've got squash, zucchini, tomatoes, and chilies. The kale was massacred by rabbits. R.I.P. The chili plants remain small with only a modicum of fruit. I blame the relatively cool weather. On the other hand, we've been harvesting toms, zukes, and squash for a while now. The plants have been extremely fecund. So much that we now have enough ratatouille to feed an army yet the produce still comes.



There must be 4 or more varieties of tomatoes out there. I never knew there was a species of tomatoes named after Paul Robeson. Must be commie tomatoes. We also have Old German, Genuwine, and others.

And here's a cat in a window.

Heute bin ich ein Berliner (Redux): Berliner Geist by Vintage Brewing

Scott Manning at Vintage traded smoke for sour this summer and brewed a Berliner Weisse instead of a grodziskie. At least we're still in the light wheat beer ballpark.

The Berliner Weisse is an old beer style. As the name implies, it's a northern German style and is a cousin of the gose and other obscure/extinct German beer styles which as a group are likely cousins of the Belgian witbier. Berlin is reputed to have had several hundred breweries churning out Berliner Weisse in the first half of the 18th century. However, as the lager became ever more popular in the second half, the Berliner Weisse and its brethren faded into obscurity. I do believe that there are a couple of breweries in Germany that still brew the style with Berliner Kindl being the most popular as far as I can tell.

Assuredly acidulous, the Berliner Weisse is imbued with lactic acid bacteria to get your lips a-puckerin' and, back in the day, picked up brettanomyces naturally for a bit of funkiness. I don't think I've run into an American take on the style that had brett but surely some microbrewer out there has made it. I also see that a German is attempting to resurrect the original brett-laden style.

Berliner Geist ("spirit of Berlin") pours a brilliant straw color. It was rather clear which I found odd as all that wheat normally makes the beer hazy. Legend has it that Napoleon dubbed Berliner Weisse the "champagne of the north" and so it should come as no surprise that I got a big white head (which settled quickly) and that the beer was quite effervescent with a lot of bubbles in my glass.

Also unsurprising was the big lemony tartness that assailed my nose when I took a whiff. It smelled mighty fine. My nose also detected graininess and some malt sweetness. The taste was very similar to the nose. On first sip you recoil from the lemony tartness. After a few sips it mellows out, however. Berliner Geist is definitely tart but I have to admit that I've tasted ones that are even more sour. I think Scotty has found a happy medium here. I also caught some grainy flavors that were bready and you can really taste the bubbles.

Berliner Geist finished with its tartness fading into a lingering bread flavor. There are German hops here but very little and certainly not enough to take the focus away from the sourness. Indeed, I didn't notice them at all.

For this review I went ohne the Schuss or syrup that often accompanies a Berliner Weisse. Apparently this practice dates back to the 1920s. Personally I prefer the Waldmeister (woodruff) but Himbeer (raspberry) is also available at Vintage. Plus you can buy both flavors at Bavaria Sausage. At 4.7% A.B.V Berliner Geist is a bit stronger than normal but that's how Scotty rolls. He never misses a chance to make his potables just a bit more potent. Still, it's not overly boozy. With its light body, citrus sourness, and all those bubbles, Berliner Geist is quite refreshing in the summer heat.

Junk food pairing: You don't want anything too heavy to go with your Berliner Geist. You can't go wrong with plain potato chips in most cases but you can get away with some Chicken in a Biskit crackers. For pairing with cheese, try some American or Cheddar Easy Cheese.

Stange, Stange on the Wall, Who's Kölsch is Fairest of Them All?: Schlafly Kölsch (-style)?

Summer has become truly hot here in Madison which means I am quaffing ever lighter brews here in the sun as I await August's welcome corn. On a fairly recently trip to Chicago I purchased some aestival-ready brews from St. Louis. One of them was Schlafly Kölsch-style beer (I don't want the keepers of the Kölsch Convention coming down on me for implying that this brew was made in Köln.)

Ah, the Kölsch. The style does a delicate balancing act with the trio of grain, fruitiness, and hops. No mere golden ale, this beer must be lagered!

My Schlafly Kölsch poured a deep straw color and was slightly hazy. I presume the haze came from the wheat. My understanding is that the style is traditionally all barley so this is a deviation from the norm. My pour produced a fine pillowy white head which stuck around for a while. There was a fair amount of effervescence with bubbles aplenty moving on up.

The aroma was lovely with cracker and that unique Kölsch fruitiness vying for my nose's attention. That fruitiness comes from the yeast and Schlafly brags that theirs comes from the Gaffel Brewery. Being in Köln, Gaffel brews a true Kölsch. After smelling the beer I think that I started drooling in anticipation of what was to come. Disappointed I was not. It was crisp with that cracker aroma translating to the taste. Plus there was that trademark fruitiness which is mellow and berry-like to my tongue. Lagering takes the edge off those esters. That light graininess eventually gives way to a bit of malty sweetness which I tend to think of as tasting a bit like corn, though not creamed corn, mind you.

The brew finishes fairly dry with biscuit flavors fading and giving way to a moderate spiciness courtesy of Perle and Hallertau hops. Most of the Schaumhaftvermoegen slid down the side of the glass but I did have a couple sizeable patches of foam that clung.

I loved this brew. It may be the best take on the Kölsch style this side of Köln, where Reissdorf rules from what I can taste. My tongue was happy to let the grainy flavors battle it out with the fruity ones for supremacy. The light, unassuming cracker flavor is one of the main reasons I drink beer. This is not to damn the fruitiness because it too is great here and in perfect proportion to the malty flavors. Once a stalemate is reached, the hops come in and clean up. This balance of flavors, a light body, and a moderate alcohol content of 4.8% A.B.V. make Schlafly Kölsch a thoroughly satisfying summer brew.

Junk food pairing: I like to pair Kölsch with milder junk foods so enjoy Schlafly with some plain potato chips or regular Cheez Its.

MIA - NaCl and Coriandrum sativum: Egon's Revenge from Next Door Brewing

I emailed Next Door Brewing a few months ago asking if they were going to brew Egon's Revenge again this year. Head Brewer Bryan Kreiter replied that he was intent on doing so and that he may switch from the use of acidulated malt to create the tartness to actually culturing some bacteria from raw grain for the job. This was good news indeed as I thoroughly enjoyed last year's batch. It was a bit heavier than I'd expect from a gose – an imperial gose, perhaps? – but it was refreshing and had goodly amounts of salt and coriander. A very tasty brew.

The gose seems to be gaining in popularity these days. Leipziger Gose is available at Riley's these days in small bottles. (I'm not sure if they are .331 liter or 12 ounces.) And U.S. craft brewers are brewing it more often. Dexter's had some Widmer Brothers Marionberry Hibiscus Gose a few years back which was exceptionally tasty and I've seen cans of gose by Destihl and Anderson Valley on Madison shelves lately. Sure, the IPA is not fearful of the competition but the gose is much more prominent now than it was just a few years ago.

When I finally saw that Egon's Revenge was again on tap I made my way to Next Door with all due haste and purchased a growler. How did this year's batch compare to last year's?

This year's Egon's Revenge pours a dark blond. (It's a beauty, eh.) Because of the wheat the beer is hazy. I believe that gose is traditionally unfiltered as well. My pour produced a lovely big, pillowy white head which lasted quite a while. There was a fair amount of effervescence with a goodly number of bubbles heading upwards.

As expected, a lemony tartness was the first thing that caught my nose. This was joined by a bit of grain or biscuit aroma and just the faintest hint of some kind of spiciness which I took to be coriander since it didn't resemble a Noble hop. It didn't have that grassy-herbal component. Also unsurprising was that the tartness was the first thing that jumped out at my tongue. No lemon taste, though, like one would get with lactic bacteria in, say, a Berliner Weisse. I thought that this year's batch was more tart than last year's which I appreciated. ER has a nice smooth medium-light body which means that I was able to catch plenty of grainy notes plus some sweeter notes akin to corn (not creamed corn). There may have been a hint of salinity in there but I suspect it might have been wishful thinking. Last year's batch was so wonderful because, unlike the ER from 2013, I could taste the salt and coriander. I struggled but could taste no coriander and I'll say there was a 50/50 chance of a patina of salt. What a disappointment.

Egon's Revenge finished smoothly with a bit of dryness from a smidge of herbal hoppiness. I believe it has somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 I.B.U.s.

What a let down. I was looking forward to some saline-coriander goodness but struggled and failed to taste it***. (See comments below.) Even as the beer warmed I couldn’t taste it. Tis a shame. Still, ER clocks in at 4.6% A.B.V. is rather light, and has some fine tartness. Ergo it really is quite refreshing. Disappointing but refreshing. Like a Berliner Weisse, it's not uncommon to drink it mit Schuss (with syrup) in Germany. While there will be no tear in my beer, there will probably be some Waldmeister in there.

Junk food pairing: Quaff your stange of Egon's Revenge with a bowl of chiwda which is Indian snack mix. This will likely have the missing coriander and salt and be very tasty to boot.

Lazing On a Sunny Afternoon

Piper lazing on the A/C unit.



Marilyn was checking out the neighborhood through the screen.



Flowers! Not sure what kind these are but they are in a pot with double impatiens. The little sign hoolie said that didn't need much light but they almost died on the porch. Once they got some southern exposure they flowered once again.



Pineapple sage. Does anyone have a recipe?



I thought this flower wasn't going to make it either but these gorgeous yellow flowers just keep blooming. The ornamental grass in the same pot, however, has been given a different fate and has gone to meet its maker.

A Little Light Beer: Where the Helles Summer? by Southern Tier

For the most part, I am a seasonal beer drinker. I enjoy headier brews when the weather goes cold and lighter ones during the warmer months. When it's 85 degrees out as it now, I just don't want to drink an imperial quad bourbon barrel aged anything. That stuff can sit in my cellar until autumn. No, when it's scorching outside I go to hell. Er, I l mean I like to reach for a helles.

"Helles" simply means "light" in German. The style is rather new having been introduced in 1894 by Spaten in Munich. From what I've read it came about because German brewers were keen to take advantage of new malting technology which could produce pale malt as well as a desire to compete with the Czech pilsner which was the bee's knees at the time. To my taste, the helles should have both malt sweetness as well a more grainy malt flavor plus some Noble hop bitterness for balance and dryness.

Earlier this year Southern Tier introduced Where the Helles Summer?, their rendition of a Munich Helles Lager. If memory serves, it started appearing on shelves in February. While the name is wholly appropriate for that month, I was still keeping the cold at bay with heartier brews like bocks and one of my favorite winter seasonals, Schell's Chimney Sweep. When the weather warmed, I pulled Where the Helles Summer? out from the cellar as a palliative.

It poured a beautiful light gold color and was moderately hazy. While I got a nice foamy white head, it didn't last very long, unfortunately. With the caveats that I'm neither a brewer – I've brewed or helped brew beer three times in my life – nor any kind of beer expert, I recall that German iterations of this style tend to have longer lasting heads. I mean, if you look at German glassware, you often see a line marking volume somewhere with space above it for head. Look at photos of servers from Oktoberfest. If you can peel your eyes away from the cleavage you'll see that those steins have plenty of foam at the top. Why do German beers seem to produce more foam that lasts longer? Is it my warped perception or do German brewers use ingredients with different properties than American brewers? Is decoction to blame? Anyway, there was a modicum of bubbles in glass moving upwards.

The nose held notes of grain and bread – that typical helles malt combo – as well as a light fruitiness that I can best describe as berry-like. The latter surprised me as it was an aroma I'd associate more with a Kölsch. Southern Tier advertises What the Helles as having been brewed with three types of malt and three types of hops. They don't specify which varieties so I'm not sure where this scent came from.

That grainy, biscuit aroma came through in the flavor as did that berry scent. The berry-like fruitiness was not very prominent but certainly noticeable. And there was also a mild grassy hop flavor as well. The hops provided some balance to the grain and fruit flavors but it was the malt that got the spotlight here. On my tongue a bready sweetness came in towards the end and gave way to a more intense grassy hop bitterness at the dry finish.

Where the Helles Summer's light body and 4.6% A.B.V. makes for a refreshing summer drink. From my admittedly limited experience with the helles I have come to prefer ones that maintain more of that toasty biscuit flavor throughout. Where the Helles is by no means bad but the finish was a bit odd going from rather sweet to rather bitter in almost no time flat. It was a jarring gustatory experience. I'd rather that it had less malt sweetness and a more consistent grainy flavor that melded with hops.

Junk food pairing: Where the Helles Summer? pairs well with milder junk foods like Cheddar Jack Cheez Its.

Aldo Leopold Invented a Bench?!

Until this summer I didn't know that famed environmentalist, UW-Madison professor, and denizen of Sauk County Aldo Leopold invented a type of bench which now bears his name. About a month ago a friend and I built one and it turned out pretty well.



I remember that most angles were cut at 60 degrees and that I moved my hand in the nick of time at one point to avoid a drill bit. It now sits in my friend's backyard in front of his chimenea. Why he does not invite me over to drink his beer and sit in front of a fire is a mystery.

That same day we smoked some brats.



Well, the duty was handed over to me so I smoked some brats. It was my first time smoking anything and I had an offset smoker at my disposal along with some hickory and charcoal. It was a good learning experience. The wurst turned out well with the cherry brats a real stand out with pork, smoke, spices, and cherry all vying for attention on the tongue. Jim's Meat Market is a fine purveyor of brats as well as other meats. Chicken wings are probably next.

Gemütlichkeit on Monroe: The Freiburg Gastropub

Yesterday The Dulcinea and I took dinner at the neu Freiburg Gastropub over on Monroe Street. I'm not sure when it opened exactly but I believe that it was earlier this month. It had a nice interior with a tin ceiling and the place smelled of freshly cut lumber.



The staff seemed to be folks in their 20s and were notably not clad in lederhosen nor dirndls. We were allowed to choose a table and chose one with a view of the outside but not at a window. Water arrived shortly after we sat as did a basket with brot und a pretzel.



The pretzel was tasty as was the brot although it was fairly plain white bread. Gastropubs are too fancy for landbrot, I guess. The brot basket also had a small hoolie of a mild senf. Every table was adorned mit a crock of senf, spicy Düsseldorf senf.



I can testify that this stuff had some kick.

And then there was the beer. FG has a goodly German beer selection plus the requisite IPAs and assorted American microbeers. As I noted yesterday, the beer menu features an alt und a Kölsch, a feat beyond the ability of the Essen Haus for reasons unknown. The D and I went with the Aecht Schlenkerla Maerzen Rauchbier. They even had Schlenkerla glasses! Monroe Street isn't exactly the altstadt in Bamberg but the glass was a nice touch nonetheless.



Mmmm…full of smoky goodness with a bit of spicy hops on the finish. Ausgezeichnet!

After devouring the brot und pretzel, we were served our Vorspeise brat stickers.



Sheer novelty, of course, but they were pretty tasty. Wonton skins filled with some bratwurst and topped with mustard and pickled onion. The wurst was good although mild by which I mean I'd have like to have tasted a bit more nutmeg and coriander.

Soon enough the rest of our meal arrived. The D had Wiener Schnitzel while I went with the Rinderbraten.





The schnitzel was pretty good but I found the breading a bit bland. Don't get me wrong, breaded and fried pork is one of mankind's greatest inventions but I do like to season my breading for schnitzel with a pinch of salt, a dash of pepper, a couple smidgens of mustard powder – just a little something to accentuate the pork. My Rinderbraten was very tasty. The beef was tender and still quite pink in the middle with mustard seeds aplenty. The only shortcoming here was the paucity of gravy. Beef roast and mashed potatoes requires at least a gallon of the stuff. About those kartoffeln…they were exquisite topped as they were with diced bacon and fried onions.

I have no explanation for the sea-change in my palate last night but I actually ate my asparagus. My father used to pick it every spring from the railroad embankment by our house in Chicago and he tried to entice me into eating it but I always resisted. The German part of me has been ashamed of this gustatory shortcoming for years. Thinking that it had been a while since I last tried asparagus I decided to give it a shot once again and found that it wasn't so bad. The preparation was overly salty to my taste but the vegetable itself wasn't disgusting. And so I learned to appreciate asparagus. If they were still alive, my father would have been proud while my brother would have said that I'd gone over to the Dark Side.

For dessert we had a slice of Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, a.k.a. – Black Forest Cake:



This was fantastic. The cherries on the perimeter were perfectly tart while the cake itself had just the right amount of sweetness, i.e. – it wasn't very sweet. A Snickers bar probably has the same amount of sugar as the entire cake from which my piece came.

Overall Freiburg Gastropub was quite impressive. There was a slip here or a difference in taste there but, on the whole, the food was excellent. We generally went with more traditional German dishes but the menu features more contemporary fare. There were also options for vegetarians and others who are crazy enough to abstain from pork. The beer selection was impressive with a rauchbier, alt, and a Kölsch on tap. They even had stangen for the Kölsch which makes me shudder at the thought of paying $7 for .2 liters of the stuff, if the menu is to be believed. Sunner is just not that good, in my opinion. I'd consider paying that price if I were a bit tipsy and the Köbes was a frau wearing a low cut blue dress with her boobs hanging out playing the role of the damsel in distress with her fully loaded kranz weighing her down. Under such circumstances I might have to be a gentleman and step in to help.

Behind the bar is a board listing beers that were coming soon. Amongst them were Leipziger Gose and a brew by Prof. Fritz Briem. A manager-type was seated at the bar and struck up a conversation with us. I asked him which Fritz Briem brew he was going to have and he said that it'd be the 1809 Berliner Weisse. He also told me that he was trying to get his hands on a rare barrel of a pine flavored gose which I assume is Freigeist Geisterzug Gose, a spruced gose. Sehr interessant! Oh, and he was trying to make the switch from Sunner to Reissdorf as well.

It was really nice to see a restaurant concede that there is worthwhile German cuisine and beer outside of Bavaria.

A Little Bamberg In Madison

My Bierkampf rant about the lack of respect accorded to smoke beers in this town must have been the subject of a tweet judging by the hits it got and the fact that Chris Drosner, a.k.a. – The Beer Baron, himself left a comment.

Luckily not everyone avoids rauchbier like the plague. The shiny new Hop Cat downtown has Aecht Schelenkerla Fastenbier on tap (I guess when you have 130 taps you've got to attach those lines to something.) while the shiny neu No comments:

George Hodgson + Pierre Celis + James Harrison = Blister in the Sun by Wisconsin Brewing Company

Blister in the Sun is Wisconsin Brewing Company's latest summer seasonal. Billed as an "India White Lager" this creation of Kirby Nelson's minion Clint Lohman takes the Belgian wit, adds more hops, and then lagers it. When I first heard of the brew I recalled that Coney Island did something similar with their Albino Python. How would this creation compare?

I got a chance to chat with Herr Lohman a few years ago when he was Scott Manning's minion at Vintage. It was either a pre-Great Taste event or a Craft Beer Week one. I found him to be a very pleasant fellow and fun to chat with so I'm happy that one of his creations has been bottled and is being distributed throughout the land. It's also nice to see WBC innovate with lagers. In some of my more officious posts here I've opined that Nelson and WBC ought to stop trying to jump on the IPA bandwagon and instead take advantage of the presence of a brewmaster whose reputation is based on 30 or more years of lager brewing. They've split the difference here with a lager whose style is prefaced with the dreaded "India".

Blister in the Sun is a spin-off of the Belgian wit. The witbier (or white beer) is a wheat ale known for being light on the hops and instead having a flavor that highlights coriander and orange peel. Lohman's creation is light gold/deep yellow in color which seems to be a bit darker than your average witbier. Blister is rather clear also unlike a traditional witbier. I presume the beer's clarity is due to the lagering process as opposed to an absence of wheat. My pour got a foamy white head which lasted for quite a while. The brew is quite effervescent with lots of bubbles going up. A very pretty beer to be sure.

The India in this India white lager was quite apparent in the nose with grapefruit bitterness from the Amarillo hops being quite prominent. There was also some coriander and a bit of bready sweetness to be had as well. With Blister being 7% A.B.V. I was expecting a fair amount of malt flavor and a body with a bit of heft. My expectations were met, for the most part. It had a medium body and there was definitely some bready malt flavor to be had but it undergirded more grapefruit hop bitterness as well as the coriander and the mellower fruitiness of the Nelson Sauvin hops. The orange peel tasted much sweeter than I anticipated as it blended with the malt to provide some contrast to the hops.

The beer finished fairly dry with the citrus hop flavor becoming more herbal and the typical clean lager taste.

I chatted with Scott Manning over at Vintage not too long and he said that Lohman had a real affinity for the Amarillo/Nelson Sauvin combination during his tenure there so he wasn't surprised by Blister in the Sun's use of these hops. They contribute lots of citrus and fruit flavors which taste quite refreshing on a hot summer day but also belie the fact that this is a fairly big beer at 7% A.B.V. You'll want to sip this stuff in the shade instead of quaffing in quantity.

Having lectured you about how and where to drink Blister in the Sun I shall say that I found it much tastier than I thought I would. India anything beers are a turn off for me because of over-hopping. While the hops are certainly prominent here, they are not completely overwhelming and do allow the other flavors of the beer to come through instead of doing a blitzkrieg attack on my tongue. I also appreciated how the coriander and grainy flavors provided contrast to the hops. Blister in the Sun is the aestival version of a barleywine in winter – a heartier beer to sip while enjoying the weather of the season.

Junk food pairing: Pair Blister in the Sun with spicy foods like Jalapeño Cheddar Chex Mix or Lay's Sriracha Potato Chips.

So Much for the "Hidden Gem" on East Washington

Earlier this year the McGrath Property Group proposed redevelopment of part of the north side of the 1200 block of East Washington. A couple of used car lots would be removed (amen!) and the Patriot Glass building, a quonset hut, would have the facade removed and the building re-purposed. Quonset huts are semi-cylindrical buildings made of steel and date from World War II when the Navy needed a lot of easy to assemble buildings. Someone at McGrath called the quonset hut at 1212 E. Washington a "hidden gem" while project architect Joseph Lee said "it would offer 'a striking appearance' and serve as 'a great space for office, retail, restaurant or a bar.'"

I recently changed jobs which necessitated taking a bus down East Washington and recently noticed that the hidden gem is gone. A couple of months after The Cap Times reported on the project McGrath filed a Letter of Intent (PDF) with the city which noted that the quonset hut would be demolished. That's too bad. I'm no Lee Bey or Blair Kamin nor do I have a great affinity for quonset huts but keeping it would have given the project something unique. As it stands now, we're going to get three storeys of "Modern Warehouse", whatever that may be.

Kirby Nelson Gets His Rocks Off

Back on 12 July Kirby Nelson, Mike McGuire, and the rest of the Wisconsin Brewing Company crew got out from behind their fancy computerized brewing equipment and put some craft into their craft beer. The occasion was Depth Charge, a new annual event at the brewery where the order of the day was to make a stein beer or “stone beer”. Cast your mind back to the plight of the medieval brewer who didn't have stainless steel steam jackets. Instead she had wooden vessels that couldn't withstand direct heat. How to boil the wort? The solution was to heat rocks and put them into the brew kettle.

A stein beer isn't a style of beer but rather descriptive of a brewing method just like the more common lagerbier/lager beer. In this case Nelson was brewing a Scotch ale. I've never had a stein beer before although Mark Duchow of Sweet Mullets Brewing Co. in Oconomowoc brewed one about three years ago. Putting red hot chunks of granite into wort is reputed to produce a brew that is smoky and sweet which seems an apt description of the Scotch ale.



McGuire told me that the plan had originally been to use curling stones but that they were unable to withstand the heat and disintegrated in a test fire. Replacements were hastily found and you can see them being heated above. It was McGuire who drove the telescopic fork lift that carried the stones to the vat-in-waiting.



I'm not sure why curling stones were originally chosen. Perhaps someone at WBC was a curler or it simply seemed a good symbol of our boreal traditions. Whatever the case some curlers from the Madison Curling Club were present with brooms in hand to keep us riff-raff away from the hot stones. And, with the object being the brewing of a Scotch ale, a group of bagpipers were also on hand to regale the stones on their journey to the wort.



Nelson, like McGuire, was clad in lederhosen but he was perched on a rising platform along with a couple of other WBC folks. And a flintlock pistol or two.



After a couple pistol shots and some admonitions to the crowd to stand back, McGuire lowered the rocks into the kettle.



No rocks exploded and no bystanders were scalded by the wort. Once the luscious brown liquid was reduced to a simmer we were allowed near the kettle. It smelled fantastic- full of smoky caramel goodness.



Patrons were allowed to reserve bombers of the finished brew for $20 a pop. They're due in October.

Depth Charge is to be an annual event and Nelson said that next year he'd be making a doppelbock steinbier. It looks to be a fun event and potentially a replacement for the bockfest that he hosted at Capital for many years. Instead of throwing chub from the roof while perched on a dinosaur, Nelson can emcee as heated stones are dropped into a brew kettle. The day also featured music with John Dee Graham taking the stage at 2.

And of course there was plenty of beer to be drunk while lounging beside the retaining pond. Blister in the Sun, their new India White Lager, was to be had along with what was touted as a special fresh batch of Big Sweet Life, Nelson's traditional maibock. The Dulcinea took a shine to the former starting at around 11:00 that morning. Inaugural Red was also on tap. If the shelves at Woodman's were anything to go by, this beer, developed by UW students, is selling well. I sure hope so because I heard a rumor that WBC had gone through five years worth of money in only two. I also hope that this is pure rumor mongering.

WBC has a nice semi-rural location and there was a goodly sized crowd on hand to witness the dropping of the stones. Many people brought their children and a few brought picnic baskets with them. While the place lacks the Old World bier garten feel of Nelson's old stomping grounds in Middleton, it certainly had that wonderful neighborly social vibe that Nelson sees his brews as being the perfect complement to.

The Beer I Should Have Reviewed Last Autumn: Schell's Fresh Hop Equinox (2014)

Schell began billing itself as a "German craft" brewer last year. I've never encountered an explanation for the rebranding effort but I've always assumed it was partly a response to the Brewers Association declaring that Schell was crafty but not a craft brewery a bit more than a year before. I also assume that Schell was trying to stake out its own territory and differentiate itself from the hordes of craft brewers out there who pump out IPAs of various colors and strengths as if they were desperately attempting to resurrect a defunct style.

This is certainly not to say that Schell is incognizant of trends. With millions of ironically mustachioed men out there gleefully calculating on their iPhones just how many moles of humulone are in a bottle of 3 Floyds Alpha King, the fetish for hops just cannot be ignored. Bowing (perhaps) to the tyranny of the minority and, I would imagine, a desire to give new ingredients a try, Schell developed the Fresh Hop series. Fresh Hop beers are pilsners brewed to showcase a particular variety of hop with the cones entering the brew kettle no more than 48 hours after they've been harvested. To date newer varieties of hops have been utilized. The initial Fresh Hop came out in 2012 and featured Citra hops with Mosaic being featured the following year. Last year's batch put Equinox hops into the spotlight.

I was unable to find out exactly when Equinox was first grown but it was given its moniker only last year when it was decided by the hoppy powers on high that "HBC 366" was not a particularly sexy name. Having read about it a bit, it seems that Equinox is like the Swiss Army knife of hops – it adds aromas and flavors that are fruity, citrusy, floral, and herbal – basically every olfactory/gustatory quality a hop can have. Well, until an entrepreneurial farmer crosses the venerable hop with a corpse flower.

Fresh Hop Equinox, as you can see from my slightly out of focus photo, pours a brilliant straw color. It is as clear as a pilsner can be. My pour resulted in a fine pillowy white head that lasted almost the livelong session. (Not sure if this is because I drank quickly or if the head lasted a long time.) Fresh Hop was an effervescent brew with lots of bubbles making their way up the glass.

Perhaps it was because my Fresh Hop wasn't particularly fresh – not that it was very old either – but my nose didn't catch everything and the kitchen sink like I expected after reading about these Equinox hops. Descriptions made it sound like I'd take one whiff and be overwhelmed by a bouquet that included notes of every tropical fruit known to man. That did not happen. I did, however, catch a bright citrus scent as well as a mellower grassy one which I felt was a rather nice combination. All of these were present in the taste. But wait! There's more!

The citrus scent became more focused and made me think of orange, more specifically, mandarin orange according to my notes. I really enjoyed the floral notes that were present here too. Schell does a good job with pilsners, to my taste, as they capture very well the biscuit kind of flavors I prize so highly. No exception here. There was also a mild and slightly sweeter malt flavor here as well – think graham crackers. The carbonation added a bit of dryness. Fresh Hop finished as you'd expect a pilsner hopped with a Nobler variety like Saaz to finish – dry with a good dose of spicy/grassy hoppiness.

My glass had minimal Schaumhaftvermoegen as the foam quickly slid down the side of the glass and into the waiting arms of the beer.

Jace Marti and the folks at Schell have done a great job here with Fresh Hop. It's medium light body and rather modest (by U.S. standards, anyway) 5% A.B.V. make it suitable for having more than one in a session but so does the array of inviting flavors here. Being a lager, the malt component is clean leaving the Equinox hops to take center stage. They offer grass and citrus in the nose and then add those plus floral notes on the tongue. For the finish they mimic a Noble hop with a bit of spiciness. Fresh Hop marries Old World subtlety with New World brashness for a brew that is at once quite approachable yet also unpredictable.

Junk food pairing: if you still have any Fresh Hop drink it now before the 2015 hop crop is reaped. And do so with a handful of Blue Diamond Wasabi & Soy Sauce almonds. Fresh Hop's finish will complement the wasabi while the myriad of other flavors in the beer will both accentuate and contrast with these little umami bombs. It's like a party in your mouth.

Brenner Is Da Bomb: Bacon Bomb by Brenner Brewing (Alliteration Is In)

Milwaukee's Brenner Brewing is a relative newcomer. If memory serves, the brewery opened in Milwaukee's Walkers Point neighborhood last year and they began distributing here in Madison only last month. Or was it May? Regardless of when Mike Brenner's brews arrived on Madison store shelves, it was a rather quiet affair from what I could tell. It doesn't seem that Brenner has a flagship beer like Spotted Cow that is widely known nor a highly sought-after IPA that gets the hop heads hotter than a whore in a cucumber patch.

I was happy to hear that Brenner would begin distribution here in Madison because they brew Bacon Bomb, a rauchbier. The poor rauchbier. Back in May during Madison Craft Beer Week I was as The Malt House chatting with owner Bill Rogers and Metropolitan's Tracy Durst. I brought up rauchbiers and Bill said that he no longer carries them as apparently I was the only person who drank them. L-A-M-E. Rauchbier just gets no love. The Wisconsin State Journal's Beer Baron, Chris Drosner, "can't stand smoked beers" while Isthmus' beer writer Robin Shepard admits "Smoky beers are not for everyone, and I'm one of those who shy away from them." L-A-M-E. And seriously Mr. Shepard, some German rauchbiers that have an overwhelming smoke flavor "can leave the impression that the wort was filtered through an ashtray"? That sounds pretty asinine to me. Granted, I've never been to Germany but none of the half dozen Schlenkerla beers I've had tasted like they were ever near an ashtray. Does Mr. Shepard ever complain about the overwhelming hoppy bitterness of IPAs that taste like they were mopped up from the floor of a malort factory? Does he ever complain about brett beers that can leave the impression that the wort was filtered through a swamp?

Don't worry, though, dear reader. I'll be your pregustator since the professionals in this locale are lame and won't help you.

On to Bacon Bomb.

Ooh la la! Just look at that deep, sexy reddish brown color! It pours clear and I got a nice tan head which dispersed rather quickly. The effervescence was on the low side with only a smattering of bubbles on the bottom of my glass. And notice how my glass has a slight, in the words of Robin Shepard, "inward taper" to focus/concentrate the smoky goodness at my proboscis. As I looked at the beer it was impossible not to smell it. In fact, I could smell the smokiness upon opening the bottle. Brenner advertises that it uses both German beechwood and Wisconsin cherrywood smoked malts in Bacon Bomb and there was a certain sweetness to the smoke aroma which may have come from the cherry. In addition to the rauch goodness there was a hint of an earthy/camphor-like scent – black pepper is added to BB.

And what would a beer named "Bacon Bomb" taste like? Bacon! Smoke! My baseline rauchbier is something by Schlenkerla and BB certainly has plenty of that smoky bacon flavor, though not as much as Schlenkerla's Märzen oder Urbock. It was right around the level of their Weizen. The pepper was in the background here though certainly noticeable. And there was a bit of bready, malty sweetness to be had as well. Brenner notes that they use a yeast strain which makes for a light body and I have to say that I was rather surprised by this. In fact, I'd rather that the beer were a bit heavier on the tongue. There is also chocolate wheat in the grain bill and I have to say that I prefer beers with smoky/roasted grain flavors to, in general, have a mouthfeel that is more towards medium than light.

Bacon Bomb finishes with some lingering smoke flavor as well as herbal/grassy hoppiness. Again, going by the touchstone of rauchbier, Schlenkerla, BB has a more prominent hop flavor. It's not very strong, mind you, but it does provide some contrast as well as some dryness to the finish.

To the best of my knowledge Bacon Bomb is brewed year-round which is fantastic news. There is a distinct paucity of smoked beers around town. BB has a goodly amount of smoke flavor and I love the addition of pepper. It is 5.3% A.B.V. and goes down quite easily. My only complaint is that the body is on the thin side. This isn't a fatal flaw – more an observation on how Bacon Bomb compares to the Platonic Ideal of a rauchbier. Along these lines I have to admit that I don't know what style BB is. It tasted closest to a Märzen but I think the addition of chocolate wheat keeps it from strictly adhering to a recognized style.

Junk food pairing: I found that Bacon Bomb went quite well with Extra Toasty Cheez-Its as well as Jalapeño Smokehouse Almonds.

The Feng Shui of Beer: Lakefront's Cherry Lager

Spring is apparently the season for cherry beers. First I tried Victory’s wunderbar Kirsch Gose and now we have Lakefront’s Cherry. Cherry is one of Lakefront’s seasonals and I believe it is their late spring offering following Lent and the brewery’s Shrovetide maibock.

Lakefront is one of the grandfathers of Wisconsin microbreweries. The venerable brewery started in 1987 just after Capital and Sprecher but it’s only been in the past several years that growth has really taken off. They innovated by brewing a gluten-free beer, New Grist, and have more recently taken the plunge into the IPA waters. Plus Lakefront simply brews some really tasty annuals with their Riverwest Stein Beer, an amber lager, being a fairly common sight on taps in Madison.

Most of the brewery's year-round beers are now ales but most of their seasonals, including Cherry, are lagers. Cherry, then is at once a nod to the German brewing traditions of Milwaukee as well as a novel pairing of beer and fruit. I suspect that most beer drinkers tend to think of Belgian kriek lambics when it comes to cherry brews and not German-style lagers. (Although German brewing traditions once included the Kirschenbier, which was apparently similar to a kriek.)

Cherry, as you can see from the photo above, is a pretty reddish brown. I got a nice pink head on my pour but it didn't last long. It was also rather effervescent as there were lots of bubbles heading upwards and onwards.

The brew's bouquet was as nice as it looked with a bready, malty sweetness and the scent of tart cherries being most prominent. I also caught a more general fruity aroma that was redolent of stone fruit. The beer's flavor mirrored the nose with the succulent sour cherry flavor from the Wisconsin Montmorency cherries hitting your tongue first. Hot on these fruity heels was the fine grainy flavor that tasted less sweet than its aroma. It was a bit like toast and reminiscent of melanoidins or whatever you call those wonderful malt flavors you get from Malliard reactions.

Cherry finished with a nice lingering cherry tartness plus a bit of spicy hop (Mt. Hood?) flavor.

Truth be told, I thoroughly enjoyed this beer. It has a fantastic fresh tart cherry flavor which is complemented by a malt-grain flavor that isn't too sweet and just a touch of hop bitterness for good measure. All of the flavors are in harmony here as if it were brewed according to feng shui. (Perhaps Lakefront's tanks point north to Door County.) I'm not sure what kind of malt or malts were used in this beer but I loved their toasty flavor. I wish more American brewers would use melanoidin-rich malts or decoct or do whatever it takes to get these flavors.

Cherry's medium body and 6% A.B.V. make for a nice spring beer – some succor for those final cool days before the summer heat descends.

Junk food pairing: Raise a glass of Cherry along with some pork rinds and/or smoked string cheese.

Several Species of Small Flowery Botanicals Gathered Together in a Vat and Brewing with a Pict: Fraoch Heather Ale by Williams Bros. Brewing

After drinking my trifecta of gruits I figured that was it. Where else was I to get a gruit in these parts? Well, a trip to my local purveyor of adult beverages induced anamnesis. Fraoch Heather Ale from Scotland's Williams Bros. Brewing Company must surely qualify as a gruit. It's not uncommon in Madison stores and I'd had it before. How could I have forgotten?

Williams Bros. likes to portray themselves as the keeper of an ancient Gaelic beer recipe and, while it makes for good copy, I'm a bit skeptical that Fraoch tastes much like the heather ales that Picts drank while groovin' in a cave back in the day. Still, I give them credit for brewing this beer regardless of how close it hews to tradition and for getting good distribution so that Fraoch didn't languish in the High Street specialty stores of Edinburgh and Glasgow. If I can get it at my grocery store down the street, they've surely done something right.

Fraoch is brewed with wheat in addition to barley malt. Aside from the titular flower, there's bog myrtle and ginger here as well as some First Gold hops which must be more prevalent in the UK than here in the States. Yeah, there's hops but they're outnumbered here by other botanicals so I see no reason to disqualify Fraoch from my gruit pursuit.

As you can see from my not-too-shabby photo Fraoch pours a beautiful light gold. It was clear and I got a pillowy white head that dissipated rather quickly. The beer wasn't particularly effervescent as there were only a few bubbles to be seen making their way up the glass. Ooh, that aroma! It was positively luscious with a wonderful floral scent along with bread and a malt sweetness that was akin to stone fruit.

Unfortunately Fraoch didn't taste as good as it looked or smelled. It began rather tastily with a brisk, slightly minty attack followed by the wonderful taste of heather. As someone whose experience with heather is confined to this beer, I am rather flummoxed as the Internet purports that heather is rather low in floral qualities. But I tasted a taste that was floral in the way people tend to think "floral" tastes. Perhaps another ingredient highlighted the floral bit or it depends on what parts of the heather plant you use. Regardless, this flavor segued into a spicy bitterness which I took to be the bog myrtle and hops in combination. There were hints of bread and malt sweetness underneath but the beer has a rather light body to the point of tasting a bit watery. This is not a cardinal sin in and of itself but the heather flavor was rather weak. I had to let the beer sit on my tongue in order to get a good dose of it. Now this is a problem. While it's admittedly been a while since I've had Fraoch, I recall the heather taste being much more prominent then than now. Since I've been on this gruit pursuit, I've come to adore floral flavors in beer and this was rather disappointing.

The beer finished a bit on the dry side with moderate spicy bitterness. My glass was adorned with just a little bit of lacing that clung to its side.

Fraoch needs more heather. The bog myrtle/hop bitterness dominated here instead of providing balance to the malt and the heather. It was as if there was a pause on my tongue where the heather should have been before the bitterness kicked in. I will also note that I couldn't taste the ginger but it may have been responsible for that bite at the beginning of my sip.

Junk food pairing: Froach pairs well with sharp cheese-food products such as Easy Cheese as well as Haggis & Black Pepper Potato Chips.

What Frederick II Drank After a Hard Day of Crusading: Prof. Briem's Grut Bier

Next on the gruit docket is Professor Fritz Briem's 13th Century Grut Bier. Who is Prof. Fritz Briem? From what I can gather, he is a big wig at the Doemens Institute in Germany which appears to be a sister organization to the Siebel Institute in Chicago where he also held a position. (The Sielbel Institute in Chicago is where one can learn to brew professionally.) Matthias Neidhart of importer/distributor B. United International approached Herr Briem about historical beer styles and the result was the Historic Signature Series. Briem developed the recipes while the beers themselves are, according to Beer Advocate, brewed at the Weihenstephan brewery. In addition to the gruit at hand, two other beers have been brewed in the series under Briem's auspices: 1809 Berliner Weisse and Grodziskie.

Unlike the other two gruits I've had recently, Briem uses neither bog myrtle nor mugwort in his brew. Instead we have bay, ginger, caraway, anise, rosemary, and gentian. Oh, and there's also pollinated wild hops. Quite an interesting mix. (I'd never heard of gentian and had to look it up. It's a flower that is used in many beverages in Alpine areas.) Can there be hops in gruit? Sure, why not? One can imagine a brewer in the High Middle Ages having hops as but one among a vast array of botanicals to flavor his or her beer before the lupulin devil took pride of place.

Briem's brew poured a light gold color and was slightly hazy which is not surprising considering that there is wheat in the grain bill in addition to barley. I got a paltry head which dissipated rather quickly. The beer was not particularly effervescent either as there was only a periodic bubble to be seen. And what did this concoction smell like? I definitely caught the ginger. There was also a floral scent in there which I presume was the gentian. A hint of pine and some malt sweetness rounded out the aroma.

The ginger returned on the tongue while the rosemary and anise were also quite discernible in moderate amounts. The beer was light-bodied with just a bit of carbonation evident on the palate. I was a bit surprised to find that the brew was slightly tart like a Berliner Weisse with a bit of that lemony/citrusy tartness. It was really the botanicals that shone through here with the malt and wheat in the background. As the beer made its way back the bay and caraway came out and wasn't bitter at all.

As I drank my glass was left with little Schaumhaftvermoegen.

Of the three gruits I've tried so far, this one has the lightest body which has the effect of emphasizing the botanicals. There's no bog myrtle or wormwood here for bittering which makes for a very different taste – he's not trying to emulate the role of hops here. In addition, Vintage and New Belgium's brews had much more prominent floral tastes than Briem's gruit. Instead he utilizes spices and herbs with sharper flavors that contrast more with the grainy flavors and sweetness.

My gruit trifecta has been a flavorful journey but I must admit that Briem's take enthused me the least. This is partly because I really like floral flavors which are absent here and I am not a fan of anise while I can take or leave caraway most of the time. (Unseeded rye for me, thanks.) However, neither the caraway nor anise was very prominent here. I could taste them but there was a lot happening on my tongue at the time. Don't like the anise? Then don't worry because there's ginger and rosemary around the corner to help. This gruit is a bit of a roller coaster ride in that new flavors are always appearing. You get some this on the front and then some of that on the middle of your tongue and yet even more new flavors appear in the finish. It gets high marks from me for a having just the right amount of tartness and a high refreshment factor for warmer weather with a moderate alcohol content of 4.6% A.B.V.

Junk food pairing: Prof. Briem's Grut Bier pairs well with Snyder's Bacon Cheddar Pretzel Pieces. You've got the two main German culinary staples: beer und pork.

Heute bin ich ein Berliner

A glass of Scotty's Berliner Geist mit Schuss from Bavaria Sausage. They have Waldmeister und Himbeer.

A Taste of Deutschland at Vintage

The Dulcinea and I went out to Vintage for dinner earlier this week. Scanning the beer menu I noticed that Scott Manning's gruit was still there so I ordered one after The D went in for a Maltiplicity Maibock. Alas, there was no gruit to be had. Instead I went for one of these:



It's Scotty's dunkelweiss. It was absolutely delicious with the dark malt giving some chocolate flavors that were complemented by the bananay esters from the yeast. Incredibly tasty take on a style that is much neglected by Wisconsin brewers. At least those that bottle/can. Somebody tell Dan Carey to brew Black Wheat again.

The maibock was also very tasty. As its name says, it is full of bready, malty goodness.



While chowing down we caught Scotty as he walked by and were graciously supplied samples of the above, his Berliner Geist, a Berliner Weisse which he said would be ready on Friday, i.e. – yesterday. It was warm and not fully carbonated but it was still tasty. Light and moderately sour, it portended a growler and me on my porch anon. Scott said that he was unsure if the kitchen would be amenable to making some Schuss. I shall find out if there is Waldmeister to be had there or not. Otherwise I shall have to concoct some myself.

Maiwein im Juni

I made some Maiwein, or "May wine" in English, over the weekend. It's simply Waldmeister (woodruff) steeped in riesling wine. Woodruff blooms in the spring, hence the drink being associated with the month of May. The riesling was a bit too dry for my taste and I shall have to get something a bit sweeter next time. If this stuff was sweet as the gentleman at the liquor store suggested, I'd hate to taste the dry variety. I'll need to keep an eye out for some Wollersheim White Riesling or otherwise learn a bit more about wine. The woodruff was dried - I have no idea where one can get fresh woodruff in the Madison area - and it lent an herbal, straw-like flavor to the wine. A nice, cold glass of this stuff makes for some fine Teutonic refreshment on a warm day.

And Your Beer Smells of Elderflowers!: New Belgium's Gruit

Next up on my quest for hopless beer is New Belgium's Gruit.

New Belgium is in Fort Collins, Colorado and they've been around since 1991 which makes them craft brew veterans. I find their Fat Tire amber ale in coolers at most summer shindigs I attend at friend's homes. Fat Tire is fine by my palate although I don't go out of my way to buy it. Indeed, I rarely give New Belgium's annuals and seasonals a glance although I do enjoy 1554 dark lager. However, I do always check out their Lips of Faith line which features more experimental brews. The Coconut Curry Hefeweizen went well with the Thai food I and my fellow RPGers ate at various gaming sessions last winter. And so when I saw that New Belgium had brewed a gruit, I just had to grab a bottle.

I must admit to being quite surprised when I poured myself a glass and found that, unlike my local gruit from Vintage, this stuff was so pale in color. My chromatic confusion must surely be because I associate gruit with being the stuff people in 1350 quaffed after a hard day of setting the bodies of plague victims alight which would have been dark and smoky. Instead New Belgium's iteration is a nice dark straw hue that's a big hazy from the wheat in the grain bill. I got a nice white head while a modicum of bubbles were found below.

With an herb/spice mix containing ingredients that I was unfamiliar with, I was keen on taking a whiff to find out what these exotic botanicals smelled like. It's just extra fun knowing that you're to get something different instead of more fucking grapefruit hop aroma. My nose caught plum, a bit of sweet, doughy malt, orange, and a floral scent which I presumed to be the elderflowers.

The first thing my tongue noticed was that tingling from carbonation. The beer didn't look particularly effervescent but it tasted so. Beyond that the elderflowers returned from the aroma and there was more of the stone fruit malt sweetness. The beer also had earthy, almost musky, overtones. I'm not sure if these came from a particular botanical or if it was the product of multiple herbs/spices. Whatever the case, they complemented the floral taste really well and made a nice contrast to the sweetness of the malt. The gruit had a medium-light body which was smooth as it was brewed with oats. As the beer warmed, the malt became more prominent yet the balance of flavors remained.

The bitterness came at the finish. All that bog myrtle, horehound, yarrow, and wormwood really did the job and it was a lasting bitterness. Just like with the Vintage gruit, there was a subtle minty burn here as well which I take to the bog myrtle. My glass was left with some nice lacing.

I am beginning to get the hang of the new-fangled gruits. You use a few herbs/spices that are bitter and then something floral for aroma and to add to the flavor. As it stands, New Belgium's gruit is mighty tasty. My palate has really taken to floral flavors in beer. There's a pleasing détente here between the sweet and the bitter, the earthy and the floral. While I'm sure an India Pale Gruit with 100 I.B.U.s of mouth-puckering wormwood astringency can't be too long in coming, I enjoy the gentle bitterness of the gruit. I also really appreciate how this brew's body had one foot each in the medium and light. The beer is easy-drinking yet it does not venture into the lawnmower beer realm. It is, ominously enough, 6.66% A.B.V. yet it doesn't taste that big.

Junk food pairing: New Belgium's Gruit pairs well with rosemary potato chips. Even better if there's garlic on 'em too.

What Happened to the Harold's Chicken on the East Side?

I was thrilled when a Harold's Chicken Shack opened over on East Washington. There are times when I get a hankering for some fried chicken and there just isn't much beyond a KFC by me on the east side. (Plus they had Italian beef and Chicago Polishes.) And now that location has closed, although the west side location remains open.

At the franchise's Facebook page a post from 29 April reads:

Thanks to local businesses hatin on other black owned businesses is why Madison cant have anything!

This was followed by another post dated 13 May that says in part:

We appreciate all of your support! Unfortunately the EAST location has come to and END, the WEST location is open at 707 s gammon rd. Our presence was unwanted at our 2810 e wash location thanks to te SLUMLoRD Micheal [sic] Matty and RPG Rental and the Madison police Dept.

Did the business garner a lot of calls to the police or some such thing? What happened?

Coming Soon: Chris Farley Documentary I Am Chris Farley

A new documentary about comedian and Madison native Chris Farley called I Am Chris Farley is set to debut this summer. According to Cinema Blend the movie "will get a very limited theatrical run later on this summer, touching down in a few key (read big) markets" so it probably won't screen in Madison. After that it heads to Spike TV followed by video-on-demand.

I can say that I was once in the same building as Chris Farley. That was at Babe's Grill & Bar which was over on West Washington in The Depot. The occasion was the Badger's appearance in the Copper Bowl. My friends and I were in one room while Farley was in another although we were informed that he was holding court. One of my friends disappeared for a while and returned saying that he had been interviewed by a reporter. We all ended up being mentioned in the The Capital Times the next day with my friend having gone on record dissing Mormons.

Forward: Anger Into Action Documentary Seeking Support

Race is a hot topic here in Madison these days. The latest entry into the community conversation took place last Friday when the Justified Anger coalition unveiled their "Our Madison Plan" which was designed to help set the city on a course to deal with the problems that have beset the black community here. I was not at the event but I'd bet that Jonathon Leslie-Quam, Jamie Quam, and Sheba McCants were as they are the producers of a documentary called Forward: Anger Into Action which looks at Madison as it tries to deal with a black community falling further behind its white counterpart. They describe it as "an observational portrait of a city at a crossroads". Here's a teaser:



The project is seeking money via an IndieGoGo campaign and it looks like it will be very interesting. You can also find out more from this article at The Madison Times.

That article at The Madison Times notes that the genesis of their documentary came on the heels of the "Race to Equity" report which was released in October 2013. It laid out for all to see the iniquitous disparities between whites and blacks in Dane County with regards to poverty, unemployment, education, arrest rates, et al. So it's no surprise that the report seems to be the movie's starting point. Given the frequency of Rev. Alex Gee in the trailer, he seems to be the protagonist of the movie. With the sting of the "Race to Equity" report still lingering Gee loosed his "Justified Anger" essay onto Madison's white liberals in The Capital Times. A black middle class pastor and a native of Madison (as opposed to an interloper from Chicago), Gee described being the victim of racial profiling by Madison's men in blue and pointed an accusatory finger at the white liberal majority of the city. A large swathe of white Madison shivered at the touch of this Ithuriel's spear

In the trailer Erica Nelson, the Project Director for the Race to Equity Project says that her organization's report took a lot of people by surprise. This is extremely sad considering that another report, "The State of Black Madison 2008: Before the Tipping Point", had given a similarly distressing picture for blacks in Madison five years previously. While I cannot say with certainty why that earlier report didn't start a larger conversation in Madison about racial disparities, the few returns I got in a Google search for it sure makes a prima facie case that a paucity of media attention is a leading factor.

Hops? We Don't Need No Stinking Hops! - Snowflake 2015 Gruit by Vintage Brewing

A recent column by the Wisconsin State Journal's Chris Drosner reviewed Small Town Brewery's Not Your Father's Root Beer, a beer, unsurprisingly, flavored to taste like root beer. Drosner wrote:

But beer purists — and they are a vocal lot — will say that Not Your Father’s Root Beer is not a beer because it lacks one ingredient considered essential to beer: hops.

Who are these "beer purists"? It's funny. Do beer bottles say "malt beverage" on them or "hop beverage"? Here's how Wikipedia defines beer: "Beer is an alcoholic beverage produced by the saccharification of starch and fermentation of the resulting sugar." Now, do you boil grains to get fermentable sugars or do you boil hops? People were consuming beer long before the use of hops came along.

I didn't know this until I looked it up but the ancestral home of the beloved hop is China. The plant made its way west and found a home in the gardens of ancient Romans who ate the shoots. As far as Western civilization and brewing is concerned, the first record of hops used in brewing comes from 822 C.E. in a list of rules written by Abbot Adalhard documenting how his abbey was to have been run. Tenants of the abbey were to collect hops and a tithe of malt and hops were given to the porter to brew beer.

Hops were growing in the wild in Europe during this time and it wasn't until the 11th or 12th century that hops were first cultivated commercially by some enterprising folks in Northern Germany. From here, their use spread although there was resistance that took decades, if not centuries to overcome.

So, if medieval brewers weren't brewing with hops, then with what did they flavor their brews?

Various and sundry divers botanicals. "Gruit" or "grut" refers to not only hopless beer but also to the botanicals used to flavor beer. It seems that the most common ones were bog myrtle, yarrow, and rosemary. However, many other herbs, spices, barks, etc. were used including juniper, mugwort, heather, sage, caraway, ginger, et al.

As someone who is not a hophead and who grows tired of liquor store clerks only being able to suggest some kind of hoppy pale ale or apologize for not having Pseudo Sue in stock, I decided to try all of the gruits I could this year. Granted, there are few but I gave it my best shot.

Every year Scott Manning at Vintage brews "a new and unique 'snow flake' beer- always a fresh new recipe and never the same brew twice." This year he brewed a gruit which he described as a brown ale with mugwort, licorice root, sweet gale, chicory, chamomile, and orange peel. Not a hop in sight. (Praise be to St. Gambrinus!) I got to taste this year's gruit while it was still in the tank and I was really looking forward to the finished product.

As befitting a brown ale, the beer is a deep reddish brown and is also clear. My pour produced a small head that disappeared fairly quickly. Some bubbles could be seen in the glass. Considering that Scott basically threw the whole spice rack into this brew, I was surprised that all my nose could pick up was roasted grains and an unidentified floral scent. Heck, maybe it's just my nose. Despite my proboscis not being overwhelmed, the aroma was very fine.

As for the taste, the brew was very smooth but had a fairly thin body. I first noticed roasted malt sweetness that was bread-like. On top of this there was a nutty flavor that I presumed was the chicory. Where I would normally expect to taste some sprightly hop bitterness, I found myself pleasantly surprised by a floral flavor along with a hint of licorice. Mind you the beer didn't taste like you were digging into a plate of begonias but rather a more subdued flavor similar to how rose hip jelly doesn't have a sharp, pungent floral flavor. At the finish, I could taste something minty and a bit of bitterness as well that was akin to that of a Noble hop. I believe that the mugwort provided the former while the sweet gale gave the latter.

If you had any ancestors in medieval Europe, you don't have to contract the Black Death to feel a connection to them. Instead you can quaff this fine gruit. I'm not a malt expert but I believe that the invention of malts that didn't taste like the smoke of whatever was fueling the fire that kilned them wasn't until the 17th or 18th century. And so I'd guess that, if you were to invite your ancestors to dinner (which humans don't seem keen on doing), they'd probably wonder just what the hell they were drinking. Having said this, I thoroughly enjoyed Scotty's vintage 2015 gruit.

With a body on the thin side and an A.B.V. of about 5%, this is certainly a brew for the warmer months. The floral taste and minty finish also contribute to the sense of this being a beer for nice spring days and the summer months. I really like how the floral flavor contrasts with the earthy malt/chicory base. These are all mellow flavors with the malt segueing into the botanticals seamlessly. Honestly, I didn't miss the hops at all.

Junk food pairing: Eat Cheddar Cheese Cracker Combos along with your Snowflake gruit. The salt accents the botanicals while the cheese provides a vaguely sharp and creamy contrast to the malty sweetness.

Getting Better With Age: Terrance by Lakefront Brewing

Lakefront's My Turn series began in 2011. These limited edition beers showcase the potatory predilections of the brewery's employees and not just those who specialize in zymurgy. Front office folks also get to proclaim their tastes.

Terrance came out in 2013, if memory serves, and is a Kölsch. Sadly, I recall bottles of it languishing on the shelves of Jenifer Street Market. Apparently most Madison microbrew drinkers are like Madison Craft Beer Week co-founder Jeff Glazer who craves "weird or exciting or creative" brews. If it's not laced with an exorbitant amount of hops, isn't soured with bacteria from the brewmasater's toilet, or isn't aged in a Malort barrel, well, why bother? On the other hand, this left plenty for me and perhaps a few others who don't prize novelty above all else in beer.

The Kölsch is a specialty brew of Köln (Cologne), Germany. The beer we know today goes back to around the turn of the 19th century. Lagering (i.e. – storing the beer in temperatures that approach freezing for a couple of months) was quite hip and trendy at the end of the 19th century time yet Köln was still under the influence of its own Reinheitsbegot laws which outlawed bottom-fermenting beer. Not wanting to miss out on the trend of the day, brewers there used top-fermenting yeast but lagered their beer. The term "Kölsch" (or "Koelsch") is a protected appellation so only beers of this style brewed in the Köln area can rightly use the name. Hence the use of "Kölsch-style" on Terrance and other American iterations.

By all appearances, Terrance adheres to the conventions of the style. It is clear and straw-colored and looked mighty fine in my stange. Kölsches are supposed to be well-carbonated and my pour had lots of bubbles making their way up to a nice, fluffy white head. The beer had a slightly fruity aroma with yeast and bread smells also being prominent.

Like the color, the Kölsch is supposed to be light-bodied and Terrance hits the mark. It had the perfect biscuit/cracker flavor from the pale malts that was just slightly sweet but there was also a vaguely berry-like fruitiness to it, a flavor derived from the yeast. Hops were faint here but I could taste a subtle Noble spiciness underneath everything. The carbonation gave my tongue a little zing as well. That spicy hoppiness returns in the finish and made it fairly dry.

My glass was decorated with an abundance of Schaumhaftvermoegen.

As I noted above, Terrance was released in 2013 which means that the bottle reviewed here has been sitting in my cellar for a stretch. I recall drinking this beer fresh, however, and I think that it has improved greatly with age. Back in 2013 Terrance had a heavier mouthfeel with a bit more sweetness and it tasted more of dough than my preferred clean, biscuit flavor. The doughy taste seems very common in Wisconsin Kölsches with Point's Three Kings Ale, Leinenkugel's Canoe Paddler, Sand Creek's Groovy Brew, House of Brews' Prairie Rye, and the new Parched Eagle's Golden Ale all having this taste. Exceptions to this rule include Big Bay's Wavehopper and Vintage's Sister Golden Ale (the reformulated one). Not knowing exactly how all of these beers are brewed, I will say from my little experiment here that, generally speaking, more lagering seems to be needed for Kölsches.

My aged Terrance was extremely tasty. It had a clean taste in which the fruity flavors from the yeast and the biscuity ones from the malt are allowed to come to the fore. The hops were subdued and I wouldn't have minded just a bit more of them. Terrance's 4.2% A.B.V. paired with its crisp flavor makes for a fine brew on a hot day.

Junk food pairing: The Kölsch style is all about subtlety and so I recommend a junk food on the mild side. Pair (aged) Terrance with Monterey Jack Cheez Its.

Smells Like Victory: Kirsch Gose by Victory Brewing Company

I must admit that I am not familiar with Victory Brewing beyond having had the occasional Prima Pils. But I was intrigued when I read that they would be releasing a kirsch gose. I like gose beers. I like cherries. A truly tantalizing combination.

Although most closely associated today with the German city Leipzig, the gose originated in the town of Goslar in north central Germany at some point in the 16th century. (The river Gose flows through the town.) A cousin of the more popular Belgian witbier, it is a top-fermenting sour wheat beer flavored with salt and coriander with the sour coming from the addition of lactic bacteria these days. The style was extremely popular in the 19th century but is now on the endangered species list. It went into decline after World War I, seems to have gone extinct in 1945, but has been revived in fits and starts ever since. For a much more thorough history of the gose, read Ron Pattinson.

Being a fairly rare style, I've not had many a gose. The only German iteration I've had is Leipziger Gose. As for American versions, my first experience came by way of Gordon Biersch's take on the style at the Great Taste of the Midwest. Schell has tried their hand at it as well and Anderson Valley with mixed results.

Closer to home, Next Door Brewing here in Madison brewed a gose called Egon's Revenge last year. I rather liked it and head brewer Bryan Kreiter says that it will be brewed again this summer with a tweak here or there. For instance, instead of using acidulated malt to create tartness he hopes to "culture some wild yeast/bacteria from raw grain and sour the wort pre-boil."

On their website, Victory proudly proclaims of Kirsch Gose "European tradition and American ingenuity come together in the truest sense..." I am not sure what they mean by this but assume that they are saying that adding cherry juice to a gose is a unique example of American creativity. Or some such thing. While a fine idea, it is not paradigm-shifting. If you go here, you can see how it is common to quaff a gose in Leipzig mit schuss, that is, with a shot of raspberry or woodruff syrup just like a Berliner Weisse. Caraway schnapps is also traditional. (N.B. – the website has graphic photos of tasty beers and may lead to the impulsive purchase of plane tickets.)

I served my Kirsch Gose in a tulip glass because I bought a couple at Goodwill and hadn't used them yet. That and I hoped this beer would have a nice cherry-laced aroma that would be concentrated by the glass. Traditionally gose is served in a vessel that is essentially a graduated cylinder. (See photos at above site.) Despite my lousy photography (it was cloudy outside), Kirsch Gose is an exceptionally pretty beer. It is a touch hazy with a gorgeous light-orangey/hibiscus red hue. Bubbles made their way up to the generous pillow of pink foam atop the brew.

My choice of glass was fortuitous as there was indeed a luscious cherry aroma to be had along with a hefty dose of lemony tartness. Also present was a hint of biscuit. Goses have a modicum of hops but I could detect none of the German Spalt hopfen in the nose.

On the tongue the beer unleashed a wave of lemony tartness as to be expected. It was very pronounced but I've had beers that were even more sour. The tartness finds a friend in the cherry flavor which was sweet, but only just. The fruit flavor let the sourness predominate but the cherry made sure you knew it was present. Underneath all these flavors was a bit of bread. What brought everything together was the salt. The salinity was obvious but not overpowering. Not only did it make a nice counterpoint to the sweet and sour but also gave the beer a nice complexity. The mouthfeel is medium-light and the wheat makes it smooth but the salt added a depth of flavor that belied the overall lightness of the beer.

Kirsch Gose finishes on the dry side with the cherry, tartness, and salinity all lingering on the tongue. And my glass was left with some wonderful Schaumhaftvermoegen. Victory nailed the visual aesthetic here on the head.

To my palate and that of my significant other, Victory has hit one out of the park with Kirsch Gose. It has a wonderfully complex mix of sweet, sour, and savory yet it remains light and refreshing. It is easy drinking as witnessed by the rapidity at which our 4-packs were emptied.

Junk food pairing: Pair Kirsch Gose with Chinese shrimp chips. They're the chips that look like Shrinky Dinks before you fry them and then turn into light, crispy chips after a bath in the oil.

Mutatis Mutandis: Betray Ale by Wisconsin Brewing Company

I recall the spring of 1991 when I walked into my dorm room and found my roommate proudly brandishing a bottle of Capital Maibock or as he referred to it, Mindblock. If memory serves, this incident was my introduction to seasonal beer drinking and also when I became enchanted by Kirby Nelson's bock-brewing diablerie. You had Maibock in the spring as the air began to become more temperate and then, as the leaves withered, there was Autumnal Fire followed by dark and blonde doppelbocks to stave off Jack Frost.

As the craft beer scene matured and an unremitting hop assault on the tongues of drinkers began, Nelson largely stayed out of the fray preferring to remain at the helm of a "Wisconsin lager" brewhouse. In 2012 Nelson left Capital to join the new Wisconsin Brewing Company and promptly shocked longtime Capital fans by brewing two IPAs out of the gates. But there was a collective sigh of relief from these folks when WBC released a maibock called Big Sweet Life last spring.

It wasn't long before a draught-only India Pale Pale Bock, a helles bock, hit taps around town. And this year it has been christened Betray Ale and bottled to replace Big Sweet Life.

The maibock ("May bock") hails from Munich in southern Germany and is the lighter-colored member of the bock family having a golden hue that can wander into amber territory. Like other bocks, this style has a rich malt flavor but is often more hoppy than its cousins. It is brewed in the winter and brought out to celebrate its departure in the spring.

Betray Ale is billed as being an "India Pale Pale Bock" so you know that Nelson has taken the greater hop flavor of the style to heart. Nothing seems out of place, however, when you poor the beer into a glass. It is clear with a nice deep yellow color. Bubbles galore run up from the bottom of the glass to a nice white head that stuck around for a while.

The first indication that this isn't the bock of springs past comes in the nose. I was taken by surprise when I smelled grapefruit. There was a little bit of a bread-like scent in the background but the citrus/grapefruit fragrance dominated. After taking my first whiff I was rather ambivalent. On the one hand, I was not amused at smelling 20+ years of drinking Nelson's maibocks go down the drain because many people have lost sight of the fact that beer is a malt beverage, not merely a vehicle for hops. On the other hand, it simply had an alluring aroma.

I was unsurprised to find that grapefruit was not to be found solely in the nose. It was the first thing I tasted. While very prominent on the tongue, this hop flavor was not bitter. In fact, I think that the malt comingled with it to make a very sweet, fruity flavor akin to a pink grapefruit juice cocktail. While I inquired of WBC as to what kind of hops are in Betray Ale, I have not yet received a response. WBC advertises the beer as being dry hopped so I presume the grapefruit aroma and flavor come from that addition of hops. Simcoe?

There was also just a touch of spicy hop flavor underneath all the citrus. Once the hoppiness recedes, you get a brief flash of malt sweetness that was a mix of stone fruit and corn. (Not creamed corn, by the way.) Betray Ale is 6.5% A.B.V. so, while it is a good strength for a spring night, it's not super-potent and you cannot taste the alcohol. Considering all of the sweetness, Betray Ale has a medium body that befits a maibock. I found the finish to be smooth yet slightly dry with lingering citrus hop flavor.

To be blunt, I drank about half the bottle and gave the rest to my significant other. If she hadn't been around, it would have been poured down the drain. Kirby Nelson can brew a damn fine maibock so why hide that behind all the lupuline macquillage? If Betray Ale had about a quarter of the citrus flavor, then I suspect I'd like it more. A quarter of the citrus plus a bit more Noble hop spiciness. Use the grapefruit flavor as an accent and not the main attraction. As it is, the brew just tastes too syrupy, too much like grapefruit juice cut with sugar to dull the tartness. While I hate to see tradition suddenly disappear, I am not opposed to change and the creation of new traditions. But Betray Ale is Old World tradition ruined by New World novelty.

On the plus side, my glass was left with some really nice Schaumhaftvermoegen.

Junk food pairing: Drink Betray Ale along with cheese curds, preferably those made with a beer batter that tastes like beer instead of grapefruit. The salt and fat should help counter the cloying fruit punchiness of the beer.

Willkomen in Wisconsin, Metropolitan Brewing

Chicago's Metropolitan Brewing recently announced that they'll begin distribution in Wisconsin come May Day so you can raise a glass of their fine lager to the proletariat or cool yourself off after leaping over your Beltane bonfire. To celebrate, Ale Asylum will be hosting a welcome party on Wednesday, 29 April.

If the Metropolitan folks show up you know it will be fun. I am hoping to attend so I can wrap my lips around some of their Arc Welder rye dunkles. It is the nectar of the gods.

Medieval Salve Kills Antibiotic Bacteria

Perhaps the Dark Ages aren't as dark as generally thought.

Researchers have discovered that a medieval salve for eye infections is very effective against some nasty strains of bacteria which laugh at futile attempts to kill them with antibiotics. The recipe was taken from the above "Bald's Leechbook". I presume that none of the researchers knew Old English which means that a medievalist of some stripe at some point had to translate. Score one for liberal arts majors!

But researchers recently found that a thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon treatment for eye infections works as an antibiotic against one of today’s most notorious bacteria, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The British researchers will present their findings this week at an annual microbiology conference held in the United Kingdom.

Christina Lee, a professor in Viking studies at the University of Nottingham, translated the recipe from the Old English in Bald’s Leechbook, which was written in the 9th century and is one of the earliest known medical textbooks. The researchers prepared four batches of the recipe, which called for two species of garlic and onions, wine, and bile from a cow’s stomach brewed in a brass cauldron and let sit for nine days before use.

take cropleek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together, take wine and bullocks’ gall, of both equal quantities, mix with the leek, put this then into a brazen vessel, let it stand nine days in the brass vessel, wring out through a cloth and clear it well, put it into a horn, and about night time apply it with a feather to the eye; the best leechdom.

The researchers tested the concoction on cultures of MRSA bacteria in synthetic wounds as well as in rats. No individual ingredient had no effect on the cultures, but the combined liquid killed almost all the cells; only about one in 1,000 bacteria survived. At more dilute concentrations, the salve didn’t kill the bacteria, but still interrupted their communication, preventing them from damaging tissues.