Frigid Northlands: Mount Horeb, Wisconsin

Grab your coat, we're going to have a rapid change of climate this week.  From the relatively warm Southern United States to Wisconsin, a place largely described as uninhabitable about three to four months of the year.

It is because of that weather, however that the beer selection is suddenly improving.  That's not to say the beer from the last three weeks or so hasn't been good, it has.   It's just been... well, kinda standard.  Like a brewer took out a style guide and designed a beer that perfectly fit within the acceptable style for, say an IPA.   It is pale, it has a lot of hops and an alcohol level over 5%, yes this is an IPA, no doubt about it. 

It's not their fault, it's nice outside.  You can leave your house without bits of you turning blue and falling off.  Here, that's less the case.  Instead people gather in the heated taverns and pubs practice and evolve the art and the craft of drinking.  Not just drinking to get drunk, but drinking as an end in and of itself.

This week I'm in the small town of Mount Horeb Wisconsin.  It's about an hour and a half west of Milwaukee and home to The Grumpy Troll Brewery.  They have twelve beers on tap at any given time running from a simple American pale ale to an Imperial Stout to a wild rice ale or a 'crisp American lager'.  I was passing through and my time was limited so I picked a selection of the beers I thought would be most interesting which turned out to be just shy of half the total selection.

Spetsnaz Stout: Starts off with a chocolate, coffee aroma.  The flavor is intensely bitter for the style.  It's texture is creamy it has a lot of roasted dark malt off the top, but it ultimately ends in a herbal bitterness that is surprising, but not out of place like hops can often be in a stout.

Eclipsed Imperial Stout: This one has a much stronger fruit aroma then it's little brother, it also packs a hop punch.  The flavor starts malty with hints of black cherry but finishes dry with an almost astringent bitter flavor.  You know how I was talking about bitterness seeming out of place earlier?  Yeah, this was what I was talking about.

St. Bernard Abby Ale: It had a very nice tropical fruit and clove aroma with a very similar flavor profile.  Like the stouts, this beer ended with a surprising amount of bitterness, but I came to believe this might have been some flavors left over from the two hoppy dark beers I had just enjoyed.

Maggie IPA: An imperial IPA.  If their stouts are hoppy, what are they going to do when turned loose on this style.  Answer, they are going to hop the shit out of this.  It presents with a citrusy, fruity aroma.  The flavor is sweet at first with some orange citrus.  The bitterness slowly builds in the background however, and soon it was dominated by intense floral hops.

Wee Curley: Scotch ale with a very, very light woody aroma.  Oaky, toasted malts hit really hard and really fast in the flavor leaving an unsettling amount of hop bitterness in the back.  At this point I'm not sure whether I've just spent too much time in a place where they have only heard of hops by rough description or if the brewer got his education from one of the Portland hopheads.

Like I said, a quick visit, but a nice one.  Next week I venture farther east to the city known for it's brewing tradition.

Cheers!

Do You Know What it Means, To Miss New Orleans?: Louisiana

Back in New Orleans this week.  You know, there are worse places in the world to consistently find yourself.  This time it's Crescent City Brewhouse in the French Quarter.

This might be the first brewpub I've found in the south.  Most of the breweries down here focus their efforts entirely on beer, and that's not a bad thing.  It does, however, make locating their beer a little harder when they lack a nice, handy central location.  Crescent City is much more of the typical brewpub like you would find in the rest of the country.

Overall, it's nice.  They have live jazz music, which is a nice touch to an atmosphere that tells you to sit back, relax and, yes, go ahead and have just one more beer.  The food is a little on the expensive side, but it's the French Quarter, so what do you want?  It's not exactly the place people go trolling for deals, is what I am saying.   And the beer, it's mostly good.  Most of the available selection is rather boring, but the one or two beers that hit the mark, do so remarkably well. 

Crescent City Pilsner:  Pretty good for the style, but nothing all that spectacular.  It has a grassy aroma.  Flavor is light and refreshing.  Lemony, grassy hops slowly build in the back of the palate for a nice bite at the end. 

Red Stallion:  Again, just an amber ale.  Nothing really special to talk about.  The aroma is very, very light; just a hint of malt there.  Toasted malty flavor dominates the flavor profile with floral hops following in the back.  Good, but nothing to rave about.  A good session beer for those who like a malty option.

Crescent City Wiess:  By this time I was starting to worry about the selection here at the brewery.  This was the third beer and I still wasn't hitting anything all that memorable.  This beer has a banana aroma followed with a spicy banana flavor. I picked up some slight herbal hops on the back, but it's mostly dominated by the fruity esters for a simple, strait forward beer.

Black Forest: And then, we hit gold.  The black forest has a wonderful chocolate, fruit aroma that made me think of black cherry and currants.  The flavor is much the same with chocolate, black cherry and currant with a sharp roasted barley flavor in the back. This one quickly became one of my favorite beers.

Special Brew (IPA). Crescent city has a rotating selection of beer and the selection during my visit was an IPA.  The aroma was very light, bordering on non-existent.  The flavor started off very sweet for an IPA with light malt and a pear fruit flavor.  Hops gradually build and build in the background till they fill the palate with grassy floral hops.  A little on on the malty side of the scale for an IPA, but I wouldn't turn it down.

Trendsetters: West Palm Beach, Florida

I've been south for the past few weeks escaping the frozen hell-scape that is Nebraska during the winter.  Exchanging snowdrifts for sunshine and enjoying the fact I can walk outside without worrying about bits of me turning blue and dropping off.

City Place, West Palm Beach

I stopped by City Place near downtown West Palm beach.  It is one of the growing number of entertainment districts popping up around the country.  If you've visited Universal City Walk on either coast, you kind of have an idea what I am talking about.  It's a city block literally designed as a place for people to go and spend money.

At City Place there is a brewery nestled among the shops with things I can't afford and chain restruants designed by reality show chefs that scream a lot on television.  Brewzzi is part of a growing sect of microbrewing that exists because craft beer is popular now.  It's basically a resturant that brews it's own beer, not because they have a real interest in craft brewing but because the public increasingly does.

Here's the thing, they only have three regular beers on tap; a light beer, and amber and a dark beer, and they seem rather satisfied that this encapsulates the entirety of the wide world of craft brewing.  You kind of get the feeling that they might be missing the point, but it might be my personal geek-snobbery finding a target at which to be snobbishly snobbish.

In addition to their three regular beers, they have a rotating selection of two additional beers which I believe exist to keep beer snobs like me somewhat happy.  I get the feeling that those are the two beers where the brewmaster get's to roll up his sleeves and get creative with some grain.  Ideally I would have tried all five of their beers, but they don't have a tasters flight of beers.  They will pour a sample of any beer you request, but the servers get downright irate if you ask for a sample of each.  So I went with the following three, both of the rotating beers they have on tap along with one of their three regular beers.

Hurricane Hefe: This is a Belgian wheat beer with the tell-tale bannana clove aroma.  The flavor is about the same with just a bit of spice and a fairly strong hop presence in the back of the palate.  It's pretty good, but the herbal hops in the back just seem out of place and they kind of clash.

Belgian Double:  This beer has a rasin caramel aroma.  The flavor is malty with a kind of cider flavor up front with some very slight nutty notes mixed in as well.  It ends suprisingly dry with a bitter coffee flavor.

Black Duke: This is their dark selection.  I have to say I was plesantly suprised by the amout of flavor in this beer.  It has a charcoal coffee aroma.  The flavor adds some liqorice notes among the standard coffee and woody flavors.  It has a creamy feel to it and is a very good beer overall.

Big Easy Brew: New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans has been on my top ten list of cities to visit for a while.  Whereas elsewhere in the country cities seem to be slowly blending together, the Crescent City stands out with a drink in hand and a defiant middle finger raised.

Jackson Square, New Orleans

 The microbrew revolution has been slow spreading to the south as I have said before.  The idea of the brewpub, a staple among the Pacific Northwest is a rarity here.  Southern microbreweries tend to focus their efforts entirely on brewing and use local bars and ale houses to get their product to consumers.

Such is the case for NOLA (New Orleans Lager and Ale) Brewing.  It is possible to go to the brewery and check out the events that they host or tour the facilities, but to actually sit  and down a few pints you have to venture out and find them hidden among the tap handles in the bars and taverns that keep this city good and liquored up.

For this I found Lagers Ale House.  As beer bars go it has a fairly decent selection.  Not the best I have ever seen, not by a long shot, but something on par with the Old Chicago franchises peppered around the cities.  It has kind of an English pub ambiance and some pretty good Cajun fare.  All in all, it was a pretty nice place to hang out.  And here's what I found about NOLA.

NOLA Blonde: This is NOLA's flagship beer and the first beer they introduced when they started their business.  It's a pretty standard light ale, no aroma to speak of off the top.  The flavor is light with slightly more herbal bitterness then expected. Nothing all that exiting, but a pretty good, drinkable session beer.

Forground: NOLA Hopitoulus, Background: Hopzilla

NOLA Brown:  I liked this one because this brewery managed to pump quite a bit of flavor into a style that is unfortunately known for a lot of light, watery beers.  Chocolate, caramel and berry dominate the aroma. The flavor is very Malty with hints of chocolate, raspberry and a little roasted barley bite on the back and a creamy texture all the way down.   All in all a nice darkish beer.

NOLA Hopitoulus: We're getting into IPA territory now.  The Hopitoulus has a light citrus  hop aroma.  The flavor starts malty combined with a little citrus.  Pine and herbal hops eventually dominate and finish off the flavor profile.  Overall I like the balance on this beer, or at least I liked the balance a hell of a lot more then it's big brother...

NOLA Hopzilla: The aroma is slightly fruity aroma with hop overtones.  The flavor presents just lightly sweet off the top but, well... ever bite into a hot pepper?  You know that delay that happens where you take a bite and declare, "See?  It's not that hot!"?  You know, right before you frantically search for bread and milk?  This beer is like that with IBU's instead of capsaicin oil.  This beer is a  hop nuclear bomb.  By the end the flavor is nothing but intense spicy, herbal hop flavors that last almost until morning.  Approach with caution.

Next week I hop over to Florida for a few pints, it is my hope that I will have the taste of hops out of my mouth by then.  Seriously, it's freaking bitter, people.

Cheers!

Southern Hospitality: Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas

This is a slightly different post to start off the new year. Still on the road for a two-week long jaunt, and finding time to hammer something out is a challenge. Still found enough beer to talk about here in New Orleans and I wanted to get something written.

There's a specific brewery Ill talk about next week. For now here is a Southern Sampler from Lager's Ale House in New Orleans:

Parish Brewing, Canebreak Wheat: Parish is a fairly new brewery out of Broussard, Louisiana with only two beers currently available, their Canebreak Wheat Ale and their Grand Reserve Barleywine. Their wheat ale has a malty caramel aroma. The flavor is clean and very drinkable. Its fairly malty with a light hint of citrus.

Lazy Magnolia, Southern Pecan: The next beer is from Kiln Mississippi. Thier website claims this as the firs beer to use pecans in the brewing process; a hell if a claim in the eccentric microbrew culture if the United States, but a valid one. The South, the love them some pecans. They do things different in the South, and this is a good example of that. It has a nice sweet earthy aroma. The flavor is very different, it has a slightly malty start with a bitter woody flavor that ends very dry. A great beer for those who like the novelty of strange brews.

Saint Arnold Brewery, Fancy Lawnmower Kolch: Lastly, from Houston, Texas, we have a light, German style summer beer. It starts with a very very light lemon aroma. The flavor contains light malt sweetness with just a hint of lemon grass for a citrusy herbal feel. It's a very simple, but nice refreshing lighter beer.

Cheers for now. Stay tuned for a couple more dispatches from the American South.