An Annual Visit: Milwuakee Wisconsin

Still on my Wisconsin tour, particularly the area around Milwaukee.  I've been here enough times that I think I've more or less covered all the breweries near the city.  There are more in Wisconsin scattered among the towns and hinterlands, but Milwaukee is more or less canvased, with the exception of the Milwaukee Brewing Company which I will get to next week.

In the meantime, I stopped by a few of my past favorites to see what they've been up to.  Last year about this time I visited Delafield Brewhaus.  This place is to a bar what Yankee stadium is to a baseball diamond in the park, same basic function, huge difference in capacity and scale.  I think I covered in last year to some degree, but really... wow.

They had three beers on tap that they either didn't have last year, or wasn't part of the sampler I had.   On a related note I must have had the wrong beers or they have done something different.  I remember being a little... ambivalent about some of the beers last year, but the few I had this year were actually pretty awesome.  So we'll make this a quick post and talk about them:

Einhorn Bock:  This beer has a wonderful sweet, fruity aroma.  The fruit translates in the flavor with hints of cherry and strawberry with a kind of woody, earthy flavor mixed in.  It finishes very clean leaving almost nothing on the palate when it's gone.

Delooz-n-it: A very intense banana and floral aroma here. The most striking part of the flavor was the floral, almost lavender qualities right off the top that were followed by some fruity esters and a dry herbal spicy finish.  Different in flavor and fairly awesome beer here.

Strawberry Ale:  So it's like this...I was sipping one of my beers when an older couple sat down next to me.  The woman looked at the menu a minute and asked the bartender about the strawberry ale.  He told her about it using many of the same terms that I'm about to use.  The woman got quiet, looked back at the menu and turned to her husband, "I think I'll have that.  But you don't have to get it.  It's a chick beer."

The bartender smiled and poured the pint.  With it's light pink color and strawberry fruit aroma... yeah there's a certain femininity about it.

The bartender set the pint down and said, "Might be a chick beer, but you'll be surprised at the kind of guys that order it regularly."

The aroma is just what you would imagine, all sweet strawberry  The flavor is very sweet, but what is striking is the amount of flavor they pack into this beer.  I find that a lot of these tend on the light, watery side of the spectrum, but this was actually fairly robust for the style.

But...yeah... the woman was right.  If you're a man drinking this beer with any regularity then you're probably the guy at the bar who's friends give him a hard time because all your drinks come with a little umbrella.

Anyway, see you all next week when, yes, I break some new ground for the first time in a couple weeks.  Until then, cheers!