Beer for Christmas

Happy holidays everyone. I'm in Wisconsin celebrating Christmas and excited to have tried some native Wisconsin beers during my trip. In a previous post I mentioned my obsession with a Wisconsin brewery, New Glarus. Well, I was able to sample several more New Glarus products and thought I'd share my thoughts:

Spotted Cow: This is a beer I had tried before, but several weeks ago when I was in Wisconsin tried again and really fell in love with it. This is described as a farmhouse ale and is the beer that they have doing a lot of marketing with and have on tap in a lot of locations. This beer pours a very light golden color with a thin white head and a healthy amount of carbonation. It's very fruity with a hint of citrus and melon. It's very smooth and has a soft mouthfeel. This is a great summer beer and just an easy drinking beer.

Smoke on the Porter: This is part of the "unplugged series." The label says that Dan the head brewer is given freedom to brew a batch of whatever he can come up with. This summer was a Belgian Quadruple. For the winter they market a four pack of this unplugged, a smokey porter. Apparently the malted grains are smoked with applewood. My dad described this beer as "incredible!" It pours a dark brown, almost black with a very thin tan head. The first thing that hits you is the smokiness and it remains throughout. This beer is unlike anything I've had before. Smokey and roasty, with very little hint of anything else. This beer tastes like a campfire. Unique and excellent.

Yokel: This is New Glarus' lager and while I'm not normally a lager fan, this is a good beer. It pours a very light yellow with a thick rocky white head. There's a crisp, slightly sweet aftertaste. This beer drinks very smooth with very little hop presence. A nice drinking lager.

Organic Revolution: This is a newer addition brewed with organic Wisconsin malts and organic Hallertau hops. It is described as a hoppy pale ale, but I found the hop presence to be quite mild. It was a nice drinking pale ale, with a slightly caramel taste. I thought it was decent, but nothing outstanding, especially in comparison to their other beers.

I also had another Wisconsin beer from Point Brewery in Stevens Point. I'm a big fan of their white beer, it was actually the inspiration for my Inky's White as it's one of my wife's favorite beers. Nothing else we've had from them has particularly stood out. Their holiday beer is called St. Benedict and is a Belgian double. It pours a light brown with a ruby red hue. It has a very thin off-white head and a very fruity flavor. It's very nice and has a warming alcohol presence to it. I liked this beer and would compare it to the Schell's Snowstorm. A nice holiday Belgian.

I got several beer related books for Christmas, including one that deserves its own post, the great Land of Amber Waters. This exhaustive history of the brewing history of Minnesota is an amazing book. More on that later.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
-The Bearded Brewer

New Glarus

A brewery that I fell in love with this summer is New Glarus Brewing Company from New Glarus, Wisconsin. I have been unable to find New Glarus in any of the liquor stores in the twin cities, but whenever I go to Wisconsin, I make a point to pick some up.

New Glarus is a husband and wife duo who makes some ambitious and award winning beers in Southeastern Wisconsin. They brew a wide variety of beers, including a lot of interesting Belgian style beers. I've tried a handful of their beers, but check out their website for a bigger list:
http://www.newglarusbrewing.com/


I've tried their Yokel, a straight unfiltered lager. Its good, but I'm not a huge lager fan. The three beers of theirs that I love are the Fat Squirrel Brown Ale, the Stone Soup Abbey Ale and the Dancing Man Wheat.

Stone Soup: This beer is a great summer beer. This is a light abbey ale that is slightly fruity, but just delicious. It's a light golden color and is crisp and sweet. As their website puts it: "Both elegant and drinkable this ale is cleanly aromatic with spicy notes of clove and ginger." I can drink a lot of these beers, and at 5.3% abv, that's not a good thing. As my friend Josh says about a good Belgian, it's like candy. This is a summer seasonal.

Fat Squirrel: This is a brown ale that has a lot toasty flavors to it. Its got some chocolate and hazelnut tones to it. It comes in at 5.8% abv and bears a strong resemblance to Fat Tire. I was very excited about the arrival of Fat Tire to the Twin Cities this summer and love New Belgium's beers. But I have to admit that while I love Fat Tire, I think Fat Squirrel is almost better. Its a close call, but either way, Fat Squirrel is really good.

Dancing Man Wheat: My parents recently went on tour of the New Glarus Brewery and came back raving about this beer. My dad is also a homebrewer and brews the best hefeweizen I've ever had. Well, this beer is a close second. He couldn't stop talking about the cloviness of this hefe. It's a classic bavarian wheat beer, that weighs in at a whopping 7.2% abv, and is smooth and crisp. It pours a hazy, light gold color and has a strong clove and cinnamon presence. Its a shame this beer is only a seasonal, and again, not available in the cities. For all my friends who don't like hefeweizens, this would change their minds.

Wisconsin Belgian Red: I bought a bottle of this beer this summer because I needed to try it. This beer is an award winning beer that is very unique. I read about it in a book by the "father of homebrewing" Charlie Papiazan. I was really intrigued to try this beer since it is unique and well known. It's brewed with 1lb of Door County cherries and it definitely doesn't skimp on the cherry flavor. It's highly carbonated and pours almost like a champagne. I wasn't crazy about it at first but it grew on me. I liked it and would consider drinking it on occasion, but its so heavily cherry flavored and sweet that it almost tastes like a cherry soda.

There are a number of different styles they brew. Based on the few I've tried, I'm guessing their others are good. Hopefully they will expand their distribution to include the Twin Cities.

Next blog is going to be about my Bearded Fury Pale Ale and my adventure brewing the Burning Beard Belgian Ale...
Cheers!
The Bearded Brewer