The Great Taste Caper 2018 - Day 4: We'll be back, Wisconsin

Day 4 of the trip saw us cover a decent amount of ground, from Milwaukee to Lake Mills, WI, before heading to the middle of nowhere, which in this case is Black River Falls. I thought it would be a good idea to get halfway to Minneapolis after visiting Tyranena Brewing, which proved to be exhausting. But more on that later.

For now, we're still in Milwaukee. We kicked off our Monday with a brewery that was thankfully open early. (NOT-SO-FUN FACT: Most breweries are either closed or open late on Mondays so workers have a day off since weekends are popular drinking days. This is decidedly inconvenient for Pour Traveler folk.) I found that the majority of breweries in Milwaukee were either closed on Mondays or didn't open until 4 p.m.

Outside Good City in Milwaukee.

So, thanks Good City to for falling in the minority. Upon our arrival, I was immediately struck by the branding of this place. I often have my eye on this type of thing, being someone who works in marketing for a brewery and all. The logo itself was one of the best I've come across: an old skeleton key with the letters "G" and "C" as well as a hop cone worked into its design. Clever. Inside, the place was super clean, modern and comfortable with lots of blonde wood and brick and contrasting black and chrome detailing.

Now that looks like a good city!

The brewery's three founders connected in Portland, Oregon, at the 2015 Craft Brewers Conference. While hanging out at a newly opened brewery, the trio hit it off and eventually hatched a plan to open a brewery together with a desire to help Milwaukee continue its growth into a mature craft beer city. I must admit that for an operation with only two years under its belt, they seem to have their shit together.

View from our bar stools at Good City.

Upon reviewing the draft selection, I was excited to come across a German-style Rauchbier called Stadt. Turns out this is a smoked version of its Oktoberfest lager brewed with German beechwood-smoked malted barley. sign me up! I rarely come across smoked beers and will always jump at the chance to sample one. Brewslut? Not a fan. So if the beer turns out to be sub par, I'm stuck drinking it because she hates smoked beers. Lucky for me this one was good!

From good to better, my next beer was something called BFG. Hmmm... Best Friend's Girl? Back From Gettysburg? Batman Fled Gotham? Bangin' Four Guys? Big Fuckin' Gorilla? Bert Forgot Gum? I could come up with funny acronyms all day. The official name of this beer, however, is "Big Friendly Goodness," and a name like that could only manifest itself as a huge 12-ish% ABV American-style Barleywine. This tasty concoction is brewed with malted rye for a distinct red color and subtle spicy note. Perhaps this could have been named "Better Forget Guzzling!"

Pleeps knocked my robot's block off!

With extra time to kill since most breweries didn't open until 3 or 4 p.m., we stayed for a second round. This time, we opted for Motto, a SMASH (single malt and single hop) ale brewed with pale ale malt and Mosaic hops. These stripped down beers geared to showcase the unique characteristics of a single malt and hop variety are becoming commonplace at craft breweries these days. Mosaic is one of the most complex and versatile of the newer crop of hop varietals, and this beer allowed its juicy tropical and resinous pine notes shine. We also grabbed a pour of Goodhaus, a double red IPA brewed in collaboration with Bavarian Bierhaus of Glendale, WI. This one was as anticipated with an assertive floral hop bite with a good bit of caramel maltiness and some citrusy undertones. Overall, this place is pretty legit, and they were one of my favorites with regard to branding. Before we left, I noticed that their crowler design closely resembled our Nimble Giant logo with its shield-like frame and gold, black and white color. Needless to say, I had to give them a can simply for the sake of coincidence. They'd never heard of Tröegs, so I'm sure they were happy to try a new beer. And with that, it was time to move on to our next destination.

Thanks for opening early, Milwaukee Ale House!

I'll admit that I didn't have very high hopes for Milwaukee Brewing. I worked them into the itinerary because there were one of only a handful of places that opened early. When we arrived, the brewery appeared to be situated in a high traffic area. Once inside, the layout and atmosphere reminded me of a "brewpub chain" that served mediocre beer to tourists, who happened to be in town for a conference or sporting event. My Spidey sense was tingling, but fortunately for us, it was a false alarm because this place was legit.

We set up shop at the bar and were quickly greeted by a friendly thirty-something guy. The draft list was hop-heavy, so we ordered accordingly. Hop Happy, my first selection, struck me as more of an old-school East Coast IPA akin to some early favorites like Bell's Two Hearted or Ithaca Flower Power. Brewed with not-so-trendy hop varieties Columbus, Cascade, Mt. Hood, and Bravo, this was a throwback to the type of IPA we were drinking a decade ago. It didn't knock my socks off, but it was fine as-is.

Brewslut ordered a pour of Earl Grey IPA, which I found to be an odd choice for her. While we've both since graduated from tea to coffee in our middle-agedness, I'll confess that Earl Grey is probably my favorite variety of tea, not just for the connection to Jean-Luc Picard, but also because of its flavor. However, I haven't had that many tea-based IPAs that I've been jazzed about. This one was no different. I think a robust flavor like Earl Grey tea would be much better suited for a Belgian Dubbel or even a saison. But an IPA? You'd think that since Earl Grey is flavored with the oil of bergamot (a variety of orange), it would be a natural complement to the citrusy notes often found in IPAs. However, this one was too earthy and floral for my liking.

Pleeps gets around just fine without a map.

However, one of the other IPAs we tried called MKE IPA turned out to be one of the more memorable IPAs of the trip. Brewed with generous amounts of Citra and Mosaic hops, this flavorful and aromatic IPA boasts notes of grapefruit pulp, passionfruit, and juicy mango. And this came from a can! I was getting a more West Coast vibe from this IPA, although it was a bit hazy, the crispness of the malt lead to a nice, dry and moderately bitter finish, which NE-styles don't really capture. Whatever style it's meant to be, it sure was pretty freakin' tasty!

Pleeps chillin' in Milwaukee.

Another odd choice for Brewslut was her next beer, O-Gii Imperial Wit, a collaboration with Milwaukee’s own Rishi Tea. This 9.2% ABV monster of a wheat beer boasts an Asian flair due to a blend of tea offering hints of chamomile, orange, and ginger. Seems as though the folks at Milwaukee Brewing love tea. And that's OK. Plenty of breweries have coffee stouts for those who enjoy drinking before noon. Overall, we were pretty impressed by the beers here, especially the MKE IPA, which was a personal favorite of mine. I wish I would have bought some to take home. Plus, our bartender was friendly and attentive although it wasn't very busy while we were there. But he poured a beer by mistake and gave us a freebie, which was thoughtful. So bonus points for that!

When we left, we still had some time on the meter, so we hopped across the street to check out a bottle shop. Well, it was more of a beer, wine, liquor, and lottery shop with glass "tobacco" pipes and a few other sketchy items. I was hoping to find some Surly or Toppling Goliath, but nothing was very fresh, so I only left with a 4-pack of the excellent Peruvian Morning, a bourbon barrel-aged imperial coffee stout from Central Waters. That's one that will age nicely in my cellar, thank you very much. I'd actually considered working Central Waters and the nearby Point Brewing into the itinerary, but this detour would have taken us well off the beaten path. They would have to wait for another time.

Well-played, MobCraft... well-played!

Back at MobCraft for our return visit, we were able to plow through the remaining beers we wanted to try the previous day. Again, sample size pours were in order because there were five more beers to be had. Here's the skinny:

• Rhubarb IPA - a slightly tart IPA with a pinkish hue and contrasting citrusy hop notes. 
• Nuance - Farmhouse Ale brewed in collaboration with 1840 Brewing Company. This beer was fermented and aged in fresh wine barrels for four months, conditioned with Brettanomyces Bruxelles and blended with apricots and peaches. 
• Squeeze the Day - DIPA inspired by strawberry lemonade featuring strawberry puree and zested, juiced lemons as well as Citra and Sorachi Ace (the latter a lemon-forward hop variety).
• Gentlemen S-Tart Your Engines - barrel-aged dark sour ale with berries and vanilla.
• Sour Support - barrel-aged blended sour with raspberries and ginger.

This time around, it was Sour Support and Nuance that captivated me most. Since I'm a sucker for a nice spicy ginger beer (I love me a kickin' Moscow Mule... thanks Dano), the Sour Support sat well with me. Ginger can be a tricky ingredient to use in brewing, but this beer worked really well, in my opinion. As for Nuance (aptly named), there was plenty going on with it. Aging in wine barrels coaxed out notes of oak and dark fruit, while the Brett added a layer of funky, earthy complexity to the mix. Throw in peaches and apricots, and you get a hint of juicy sweetness that ties it all together.

All in all, I'd say that MobCraft was one of the breweries we visited on the entire trip that operates "outside the box." I didn't really focus on it during our last episode, but MobCraft's schtick is undeniably unique. Established in 2013, it touts itself as "the world's first crowdsourced brewery." What does that mean, exactly? Well, they basically turn your ideas into beer. Each month, the brewery leverages its fans (i.e. the "mob") to submit ideas for potential new beers. The ideas are then advertised on MobCraft's web site, and fans can vote on their favorites. The beer with the most customer pre-orders is the winner, and the beer is then brewed, packaged and shipped straight to customers via an online retailer. Or you can just pick up beer at the brewery. Pretty cool concept, right? So if you've ever had dreams of a particular beer and no brewery has yet to step up to the plate, then perhaps MobCraft can make your dream a reality. Glad we got to visit them twice.

Outside City Lights Brewing.

I don't know why, but something about City Lights reminded me of Portland, ME. Perhaps it was because it's situated near a body of water (OK... a river, the Menomonee) but still. I seemed to be transported to Portland momentarily. This was the last brewery on our agenda for Milwaukee, after which we would enjoy a nice little 45-minute drive to our next destination.

But first, a quick history lesson about the brewery. In 1902, the Milwaukee Gas Light Company began construction on the West Side Water Works, a campus designed to turn coal into gas to be used to light street lamps throughout Milwaukee. Over the years, Milwaukee established itself as the first beer capital of the U.S. with the forerunners of the day (Miller, Pabst, Schlitz, etc.) defining the beer industry. Fast forward to 2012, four brothers decided to enter the craft beer arena. After transitioning from a family-run business, the brothers partnered with some experienced industry moguls to create City Lights Brewing Company. The brewery occupies two of the buildings of the original West Side Water Works campus, hence the brewery's moniker. You can check out the full story here. It's pretty compelling.

Anyway, on with the beer. Once seated at our table, we were greeted by an extremely friendly young guy, which was a good sign. The tasting room was fairly small but very well kept and clean. The bar was packed with what I assumed to be regulars. One of them (a guy we'd dubbed "NF," short for "neck fat") seemed to be quite boisterous, loud, and glad he was off work for the day. Still, it was good to see a healthy crowd converged at a small brewery around happy hour time.

I decided to go with one of its signature beers, Coconut Porter. This is just as the name implies although it is enhanced by the addition of Madagascar vanilla beans. This beer boasted a rich blend of chocolate, coffee, and, as anticipated, toasted coconut. A worthy year-round beer, for sure.

Brewslut went with the Hazy IPA this time. Again, not too clever with the name of this beer. However, its flavor had plenty of character. This hazy IPA is hopped with Citra, Mosaic, and Amarillo for a big smack of tropical fruit. The grain bill features malted barley, wheat, and flaked oats for a silky texture. Double dry-hopping with Vic Secret (a new-ish variety from New Zealand) brings out even more tropical fruit notes, especially in the aroma.

Beer, please!

OK, thank you!

Sticking with dark beers, I opted for the Coffee Stout next. This tasty stout is brewed with seven different malts, Chinook hops for a hint of pine, and cold brew coffee from local Stone Creek Coffee. I enjoyed this one as much as the Coconut Porter. It seems like they do justice to their dark beers!

Brewslut decided to try the Mexican Lager. Brewed with flaked corn and fermented with a Mexican lager yeast strain, this easy-drinking beer elicits a refreshing island vibe. Motueka hops impart hints of fresh lime, giving it a margarita-like flavor. They even garnished it with a lime wedge.

Strike a pose, Pleeps!

I was so excited to get back to Tyranena after a 6-year lapse. It also marks one of only three breweries we visited on this trip I'd been to previously. Since our last visit, they added a really nice outside beer garden area that unfortunately was void of patrons when we arrived save for a few stragglers. But Lake Mills, Wisconsin, is a pretty small town (less than 6,000 folks), and it was a Monday night, not the most popular night for brewery hopping. At any rate, I'd always been impressed by this small brewery's output, especially its barrel-aged beers. Established in 1999, Tyranena produces five year-round beers, eleven seasonal brews, and a wide variety of specialty beers. Its distribution footprint covers just four states: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, and Illinois. The names of each of its beers pay homage to the history and folklore of the Lake Mills region, referring to something quintessentially Wisconsin.

It's good to be back in Lake Mills!

I was hoping they had Scurvy on tap, an IPA brewed with orange peel. This was one of my favorites many years ago when we first visited, but sadly it was not available during our visit. However, the board was rife with about a dozen other assorted beers to keep me lubricated. Most were beers I had never tried before, so it was looking like we'd be here for a while. That, my friends, is an understatement!

I started off with what was, in my opinion, the most interesting beer on the menu. Sailors Take Warning! is a blonde ale brewed with agave and blood oranges with cherry purée added then aged in tequila barrels. Might as well go with the money shot right off the bat! The bar was sparsely attended, but we were kind of fatigued from drinking all afternoon, so we decided to chill out on the couch in the foyer for a bit. I got halfway through my beer and started getting antsy, so I headed in to check out the beer garden and, of course, got chatting with people at the bar. After a few minutes when I didn't return, Brewslut took my cue and came in to join me. By then, she'd been working on a half pour of Lost Adult, an unfiltered double dry-hopped Imperial IPA, and soon enough we were engulfed in conversation with the bartender, Dan (who was down from northern Wisconsin and celebrating his birthday), an older guy who works on the bottling line at the brewery, and a beer-loving couple from Wisconsin who were visiting the area.

Chillin' on the couch in the foyer at Tyranena.

Talking makes me thirsty, so it was time for another round. I opted for what could be Clubber Lang's favorite (or least favorite) beer, Wrath of Rocky, an imperial brown ale aged in bourbon barrels. OK, I'm sure the beer was NOT influenced by the Rocky movie franchise; that's just how my mind works. Plus, I love saying Clubber Lang. Tyranena's got the barrel-aging thing down to a science, as far as I'm concerned. Everything I've had from them that was put into a barrel and came out the other end has been pretty delicious. This one was no exception.

I decided to do a complete 180 and order a small pour of Helles for Real, a lightly hopped German-style Helles lager, just to change things up a bit. Helles Lagers don't get a whole lot of love from beer geeks, but I'm a fan. Same goes with pilsners. They are simple beers that aren't flashy, but when executed well they just hit the spot. This was a fine example of the style.

Back to being bludgeoned by barrel-aged beers (pardon the rampant alliteration), it was time for a fun-sounding beer called High-Class Broad. Like Rocky's Revenge, this too was an imperial brown ale. However, this one was aged in brandy barrels. I'll admit I'm more of a bourbon guy but this was pretty damn awesome too. Plus, I love a brewery that uses the word "broad" in one of its beer names. Non-PC for the win, Alex!

More barrel-aged goodness was up next with Imperial White Stout Aged in Bourbon Barrels, golden stout aged in bourbon barrels. This one must be pretty new, hence no clever name. White stouts to me come across as imperial cream ales. I find it hard to call a non-dark beer a stout. Call me old-fashioned. But this one was rife with coffee and chocolate notes, and certainly tasted like a stout. Looks can be deceiving, I suppose. I look forward to seeing if this becomes a mainstay or a one-off.

By this time, it was pretty much Brewslut and I, plus the bartender, the bottling line guy, and Dan. And then there were five. The beer was still flowing, though. Up next was the evocatively named Balling the Queen, an Imperial IPA brewed with honey and hopped with Citra and Simcoe. I appreciate some well thought-out sexual innuendo in a beer name from time to time, and I had to chuckle upon reading this one aloud. (Although, in all honesty, pretty much anything with the word "ball" in it makes me giggle like a second grader.) I don't really recall much about this particular beer because we were - wait for it - balls deep in conversation with our new Wisconsin beer friends. Man, I love this state!

After trying pretty much everything I was really interested in drinking, it was time to revisit an old favorite: Devil Over a Barrel. This dark, decadent treat is a blend of an imperial oatmeal porter brewed with coffee beans and aged in Bourbon barrels (60%), and a porter brewed with coffee beans (40%). As soon as the first sip went down, it was like seeing an old friend after many years. It tasted exactly as I'd remembered it. This is one of the most coffee-forward beers I've encountered, and the bourbon and vanilla notes actually take a backseat to the assertive roastiness of this beer. Yet in all of its over-the-top coffee goodness, it still retains a lushness that's hard to explain. It's a special beer, and I'm still perplexed as to why I didn't purchase any bottles of this to take home. I've had it on plenty of occasions, though. This was supposed to be my last beer, as we had already fallen behind schedule. but birthday Dan wanted us to stay for one more, and who am I to argue with a guy who just turned a year wiser?

The taps keep comin' at Tyranena.

By now, it was small pours (it may have even been sample size glasses... at least for my next beer).
You don't see many altbiers these days, but Tyranena brews one called Headless Man Amber Alt. I'll admit that I rarely if ever get a hankering for a malty Düsseldorf-style Altbier (translates to "old beer" in German), but we'd already had pretty much every other beer available, so I figured I'd might as well get another Untappd check-in. Yes, it's a boring style. I won't regale you with the history of the beer, but if you're unfamiliar and so inclined, here's a link to the Wiki page.

I'm pretty sure I ended our epic visit with a half pour of Chief Blackhawk Porter, an English-style porter named after the Native American leader of the Sauk tribe whose name translated to "the black sparrow hawk," or Black Hawk for short. This one struck me as more of a robust porter, as I'm not a huge fan of the acrid, sour note that is a hallmark of most traditional English porters. Roasty with pleasant bittersweet chocolate notes, it wasn't too heavy-handed on the hop bitterness in the finish. And with that final sip, it was time to officially vacate the premises. We got there an hour-and-a-half early and left about an hour or so after we'd planned on leaving. After all that (including a T-shirt for Brewslut), somehow our tab was only $15. It was arguably the best $15 I'd ever spent at a brewery. It was an epic visit, to say the least!

I was pretty exhausted after the grueling two-hour drive to our hotel. It seems much longer than two hours, actually. But it wasn't. That was just me in dire need of a bed. I didn't even have a post-day beer before crashing. But the room was cozy and spacious (we scored a suite this time), plus it had a big free breakfast to boot, which was good because I couldn't find a decent breakfast spot in Black River Falls on Google. 

Stay tuned for our descent into Minneapolis and St. Paul for Day 5 and 6 of the trip, respectively. We've still got a lot of ground to cover, right Pleeps?

Pleeps?!

***crickets***

Until next time...