Fat Tire nothing special

Jeff at EatWisconsin does not understand the hype of another microbrew, Fat Tire.

I don’t have anything against Fat Tire or New Belgium brewing I just don’t get the hype. It seems like these beer drinkers feel that they have been deprived of the best beer ever brewed. Fat Tire isn’t a bad beer but it sure isn’t an outstanding one either. It’s a gateway beer. A microbrew that is mild enough that your typical Miller or Budweiser drinker would like it, kind of like Spotted Cow or Leinenkugel’s Red. In this instance I believe the mere fact that it wasn’t available here is a large reason (if not the only reason) people are clamoring for it. I predict that in a year or so the Fort Collins beers will be just like every other beer that finally makes its way to Wisconsin, just another good beer choice among hundreds of other good beers available to us.

Its not like the fans of Fat Tire don’t have options. Why haven’t they been enjoying some of the great Amber/Red style beers already being brewed in Wisconsin. Sprecher Amber, Capitol’s Wisconsin Amber, Tyranena’s The Headless Man Amber Alt, Ale Asylum’s Ambergeddon, and Central Water’s Ouisconsing Red are just a sampling of the killer red/amber style ales brewed here in Wisconsin.

An investment plan I can support

Amy has stumbled upon what would have been your best return for $1000 in the last year. It's called the 401Keg.

Now that's living the high life.

RIP Bill Leinenkugel

Sad news in the world of beer brewing. Bill Leinenkugel of the Leinenkugel brands of beer has passed away at age 87.

Those of us from the heydey of UW-Milwaukee's campus newspapers will remember long and occasionally friendly arguments in the Gasthaus over politics between the editors of The UWM Times and The UWM Post. The one thing both newspapers agreed upon was the choice of Leinenkugel beer.

Thanks Bill.

Grilling out?

Grilling out, but you feel like raiding the wine cellar instead? What are you going to serve? Food & Wine magazine asked Sam Calagione, the founder of Delaware’s Dogfish Head brewery, and Marnie Old, a wine educator, the authors of He Said Beer, She Said Wine, to offer their suggestions for the appropriate beer or wine pairing with various grill dishes.

Including the grill classic, the hot dog:

Grilling Recipe
Hot Dogs With Grilled Coleslaw

Great Beer
Victory Prima Pils
Yeasty pilsners are great with anything on bread and especially refreshing with hot dogs.

Delicious Wine
2006 Georges Duboeuf Domaine des Rosiers Moulin-à-Vent Beaujolais
This friendly wine’s vibrant fruit is ideal with hot dogs.

Fred Tasker at the Miami Herald says don't wash your food down with beer, go for the corkscrew.

With that grilled shrimp slathered in oil and garlic, pour a fruity, nutty wine with a Portuguese heritage -- verdelho.

With barbecued chicken quarters, serve a complex, multigrape rosé in the style of the Southern Rhne.

With that peak grilling achievement, the charcoaled New York strip, try a sturdy, ink-hued nero d'avola from Sicily.

In California, Randall Grahm, the brooding, eccentric, genius winemaker, makes whites, reds and rosés roughly patterned on those of the Southern Rhne. They're packed with flavor, capable of standing up to the spiciest barbecue sauce.

In Sicily, Alberto Cusumano takes the native, dark-black nero d'avola grape from vineyards around the island and vinifies it in the family winery near Palermo. Rapidly breaking into the international market, his powerful wines are good matches for spicy barbecue.

In Italy, Fabrizio Bindocci makes a rich, smooth red wine from the sangiovese grape. Located in Tuscany but just outside the official Chianti area, he can't call it Chianti. So he calls it Rosso de Montalcino. If you grill your steak in the Tuscan style, with olive oil and rosemary, this would be the perfect match. In France's Southern Rhne Valley, the Skalli Family's Maison Bouachon makes Chateauneuf-du-Pape with extra richness from grapes from 70-year-old vines.

While I don't think wine vs. beer will replace the great gas vs charcoal debate, don't be afraid to center your grilling experience around the beverage rather than the main course.

Take these bad beers off your shopping list

Friday afternoon. Normally the cocktail hour, but today it's nice and sunny. Time to sit back, enjoy the sunshine, and enjoy a nice cold bottle of... Hey, What's this? Coors Aspen Edge? Blechh. Time to look at a list of beers that do not belong in your refrigerator, according to a writer in the St Petersburg Times.
10. Coors Aspen Edge
9. Milwaukee's Best
8. Sleeman Clear Lager
7. Cave Creek Chili Beer
6. Winter Park Beer
5. Bootie U95
4. Hurricane High Gravity Lager
3. Chapeau Exotic
2. Camo Genuine Ale
1. Busch NA

Here's the description of Milwaukee's Best:

I understand this is a sentimental favorite of many, as it takes them back to the old days. Well, human sacrifice harkens to a simpler time, too. If you want to kill your taste buds, try battery acid — it probably tastes better.

This description is my favorite. How it didn't end up as the worst beer, I'll never know:

5. Bootie U95 I thought with a name like Bootie, the makers of this brew were attempting to position it as a dance club beer. Turns out, it simply describes the aroma. Tallahassee Ratebeer.com member Aurelius sums up the Bootie this way: "The name sounds like some sort of nuclear isotope in a barium enema, and it delivers all the flavor the name suggests."

If you're looking for a more comprehensive listing of beers, RateBeer.com bills itself as "The Ultimate Source For All Things Beer" and allows beer consumers to comment on different beers from around the world. For example, one of my personal favorite's, McEwan's Scotch Ale. (Or as a friend of mine once said, "Beer you can chew.")

Compare their rating with the rating for Coors Light.

I like the bottle

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting Miller Brewing has acquired the rights to distribute Grolsch beer.

Miller acquired the rights to sell Grolsch after its corporate parent, London-based SABMiller Plc, in February completed its purchase of brewer Royal Grolsch NV. Anheuser-Busch, which began selling Grolsch in the United States in 2006, said today it expects to end its distribution rights by Aug. 1.

Grolsch becomes the newest import in Miller's portfolio, which includes other brands owned by SABMiller, such as Pilsner Urquell, from the Czech Republic, and Peroni Nastro Azzurro, an Italian beer. Anheuser-Busch's imports include U.S. distribution rights for Stella Artois, Beck's and Bass Pale Ale.

My memory of the beer is always better than when I actually pop one open, probably because it sits on the shelves forever. But if Miller is distributing Grolsch, they have to keep the distinctive green bottles with the attached bottle-stopper.

When the going gets tough, the governor gets going

The Wisconsin Club for Growth has discovered a pattern in the governor's schedule:

This week, Doyle announced he would be heading to Ireland and the UK, leaving budget negotiations behind. This will be Doyle's sixth "trade mission" since 2003, but the only thing Doyle is likely to "trade" is a budget headache for a nice cold pint of Guiness. The state revenue generated by Doyle's previous trade missions seems to have gotten lost somwhere in the couch cushions at the Governor's mansion.

Our illustrious Governor has a knack for fleeing the country when he sees trouble brewing. When Doyle Administration staffer Georgia Thompson was indicted for allegedly rigging a state travel contract to benefit one of Doyle's biggest contributors, Doyle sought refuge in Baghdad. Apparently he thought it would easier to dodge suicide bombers than members of the Capitol press corps.

Last September when the state budget was months overdue and a deadline for setting state aid to local school districts was looming, Doyle fled the country, this time taking his entourage on a 12 day trade mission to China and Japan. Before abandoning budget negotiations at home to down saki with Japanese officials, he threatened a government shutdown if legislators didn't come to an agreement. The impact of Doyle's Asia trip is still unknown.

Perhaps the timing of Doyle's upcoming trip to Ireland can be explained by the ongoing trial of racketeer and Doyle pal, Tony Rezko. Doyle and Rezko dined together before sharing a luxury box at a Packers-Bears game at Soldier field. Last week, testimony in the Rezko trial turned to Wisconsin and the man who introduced Doyle to Rezko. It is unclear whether Doyle is leaving town to escape the budget mess he created or to elude embarrassing questions about his ties to Tony Rezko. The one thing we know for sure is when the going gets tough, Governor Doyle skips town.

I bet Ireland is lovely this time of year.

Classic Schlitz

Pabst is still around, and they're bringing back the beer that made Milwaukee famous, Schlitz. Unfortunately we'll have to drive to Illinois to get it.

Schlitz had been available only in cans for several years until the brand's owner, Pabst Brewing Co., began selling it in bottles last year in Minneapolis and Tampa, Fla.

That bottled version of Schlitz, which uses a traditional recipe last used in the early '70s, was snapped up by older baby boomers who remember the beer from its glory days, before Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. cheapened the formula. On Monday, 10 Chicago taverns and liquor stores began carrying the bottled version.

The "new" brew, dubbed Schlitz "Classic 1960s Formula," carries a more "full-bodied taste," with a bit more flavoring from hops than Schlitz in cans, which remains unchanged, said Kyle Wortham, a brand manager at Pabst, based in suburban Chicago.

"It tastes like a real beer," Wortham said about classic Schlitz.

Unlike most beers, classic Schlitz isn't being marketed to people ages 21 to 35, who buy more than half the beer sold nationwide.

Instead, Pabst is selling bottled Schlitz as a sudsy comfort food for men in their 50s and early 60s. Those drinkers mostly came of age in the 1960s, when Schlitz was advertised as the beer with "gusto."

A series of Web-based ads, which can be viewed at schlitzgusto.com, feature a man in his 50s. Each spot provides a definition of gusto.

One ad shows a bar scene with a 20-something looking at his cell phone, as the narrator says gusto is "instant messaging -- face to face." The young man then moves aside to show two baby boomers yukking it up at the bar over a couple of beers.

The tagline for the ads: "Go for the gusto. Your Schlitz is back."

Here's a classic ad:

Way too complicated Mac 'n' Cheese

On Friday's Good Morning America, Emeril Lagasse picked the winner of the best macaroni & cheese contest. The winner was Laura Macek, and not only was her recipe complicated, it looks damn expensive.

For an alternative, here's the James Wigderson College Daze Mac N' Cheese recipe:

1 box generic macaroni and cheese dinner. Make sure it is the kind with the powdered orange cheese dust.

Then discover your milk was drank by your roommate, and the other roommate didn't buy any butter because he's tired of you swiping it.

3 cans beer.

Follow directions on box while drinking first can of beer. When you reach the point of the missing dairy products, slowly add the remaining beer from your can until the powedered cheese mix reaches the desired viscosity. Open second can of beer and drink while stirring macaroni and cheese. When macaroni is sufficently covered with the powdered cheese and beer mixture, down second beer. Clean dish. Pour desired serving of macaroni into dish. Open third beer.

For a healthier dinner, chop up some broccoli and throw it in there. The beer will kill the taste.

Frivolous luxury destroying the planet

Oh sure. I'll point you to my beer 'fridge. It's in the cage with the abused and hungry pitbulls.

The wacko environmentalists are coming for the beer fridge.

Getting rid of vintage “beer fridges” – secondary fridges which many North American and Australian homes boast – could have a significant impact on household greenhouse gas emissions, suggests a new study.

Beer fridges are additional fridges that are generally used to keep beer and other drinks cold on top of a household’s primary fridge for food. One in three Canadian households has a second fridge, many of which are ageing, energy-guzzling models, according to Denise Young, a researcher at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Young suggests that getting rid of older models, in Canada at least, would have an impact on energy usage. Her study analyses industry data and the results of a national survey to look at the environmental effects of having beer fridges in Canada.

"People need to understand the impact of their lifestyles," says Joanna Yarrow, director of Beyond Green, a sustainable development consultancy in the UK. "Clearly the environmental implications of having a frivolous luxury like a beer fridge are not hitting home. This research helps inform people – let's hope it has an effect".

Denise Young and Joanna Yarrow can contribute to the environment by feeding themselves to the polar bears for all I care. But when I want a politically incorrect cold one, I'm reaching into Old Reliable. And when I want a place to keep the extra fixin's for cocktails, I'm putting them in the Old Reliable. And when I have an extra bottle of vodka that needs proper chilling, Old Reliable has a freezer, too. And when it comes time to dispose of the body of the government agent that shows up to take away my beer refrigerator...

(ht: Silflay Hraka)

Find classic movies at Amazon.com

Got bilk?

Speaking of Jessica McBride, she's discovered a new beverage coming to the market, beer made from milk.

"We came up with the idea after hearing about surplus milk," said Chitoshi Nakahara, head of the Nakahara liquor shop on the northernmost island of Hokkaido.

Milk consumption has been declining steadily in Japan, and Hokkaido disposed of nearly 900 tonnes of milk last March due to over-production, according to the Japan Dairy Association.

Nakahara's new brew, "Bilk" - a combination of "milk" and "beer" - is about 30 percent milk. It also contains hops, and the production process does not differ much from that of regular beer, he said.

His shop started selling Bilk, which apart from a slight milky scent looks and tastes like ordinary beer, on February 1 after spending about six months developing the product with a local brewer.

The Japanese brewer is sold out, but maybe Senator Kohl can add this to his milk stand at State Fair Park?

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