Great Taste views from Madison.

My first Great Taste of the Midwest was everything I'd been told it would be -- and more.

There were 100 breweries present and 5,000 tickets sold. The crowd was extremely knowledgeable, well-behaved and hip. At 2:00 p.m., Jared tapped our "pin" of cask-conditioned Bonfire of the Valkyries, smoked black lager aged in a JW Lees Port barrel.


New Holland probably won the annual outrageousness competition with fellow Michigan brewers Bell's, Dark Horse and Founders. Top hats and Marlene Dietrich torch songs are hard to top. Fortunately, all four breweries deliver the goods in the beer context.

The Real Ale tent featured casks from far and wide.

It was a capacity crowd on an uncommonly hot and humid day, and in the end, it's hard for me to imagine a better gathering. Numerous thumbs up.

Greetings from the People's Republic of Madison.

(Crossposted to NA Confidential. Stay tuned for coverage and photos over the weekend.)

By way of explaining my whereabouts, here's the text of my LEO column this week.

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Mug Shots: Abreast of a great beer fest

I’ve never been to Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, but that will change this weekend when I embark on an overdue visit to a city that has often been accused of being “The People’s Republic of Madison.” That’s encouragement enough to elicit warm and fuzzy pre-trip vibrations from me, but moreover, Saturday also is the occasion for the annual Great Taste of the Midwest beer festival.

The GTMW is the ideal craft brew dictatorship that purges dissent by offering hundreds of microbrewed treats available for scientific 2-ounce sampling, ranging across the spectrum of styles, and with nary an ounce of insipid light mass-market beer in sight.

It’s one of the top three beer celebrations in the great brewing nation that America has somehow become almost in spite of itself, standing alongside the Oregon Brewers Festival (Portland) and the Great American Beer Festival (Denver). Each year, GTMW tickets sell out months in advance, and thousands wait joyfully in line to enter the grounds adjacent to beautiful Lake Olin and revel in flavor, diversity and ingenuity.

More often than not, the breweries proudly displaying their wares at the GTMW have come about as the result of an all-American dream to do it yourself, and to do it better. “We brew beer, we drink beer, and we sell what’s left” is a common motto. I get goose pimples just thinking about it.

Big beer events like Madison’s have spawned a subculture of fest fanatics who attend numerous such tastings. An abnormally large number of these die-hards are attracted to the “extreme” end of the flavor spectrum, with its high-octane styles like Double India Pale Ale, Imperial Stout and Barley Wine — libations of complexity and octane, suitable for all weather conditions, and worth traveling long distances to seek out.

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Debarking in Milwaukee yesterday morning, the temperature was 72 degrees. The first thing I saw upon emerging from the jetway in Madison was the word "Wurst," German for sausage, advertising the presence of a German-themed, well, "Imbiss." Most of the streets have bicycle lanes, and people use them. I saw ordinance enforcement vehicles with OEOs at work in a neighborhood driving through.

Vacationing in a blue state paradise? Sweet relief. By the way, are there any Young Republican slumber parties planned back at the Sunny Side?

Great Taste of the Midwest program ad, 2007.