A couple of beers at Next Door Brewing Company in Madison, Wisconsin.

Borrowed from the Interwebz.

As a final Wisconsin trip note, a tip of the chapeau to Next Door Brewing Company, located in Madison on Atwood Avenue near Willy Street and right across from the weirdly distinctive St. Bernard Catholic Church -- is it the truncated non-steeple that reminds me of somewhere I've been in Europe?

We went to Next Door for the first time (ever) on Sunday afternoon after brunch at Great Dane and beers at Capital. I chose Porter as a restorative, and it turned the trick nicely. In the end, I'll always be a fan of Porter on such occasions. It isn't just a colder weather style.

The closer was a Berliner Weisse sans syrup, and it was another winner, refreshing and low gravity with textbook tartness.

For the sale of some salt, chips and salsa came in handy, but we were far too full to eat a meal. Next time in Madison, I'd like to do that. The barroom was modernist and comfy, and my only regret is we couldn't stay for a longer session.

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All hail Sunday: Liquid brunch at Great Dane Hilldale, liquid lunch at Capital Brewery.

During the time of our regular August visits to Madison for the Great Taste of the Midwest, we'd always try to hit the Great Dane's original Doty Street location for lunch on the day of arrival.

Later on, we discovered Sunday brunch at the Great Dane Hilldale, which is just off University Avenue roughly halfway between downtown and Middleton. With brunch from 10 to 2, and Capital Brewery's beer garden opening at noon, it's a leisurely drive with a definite purpose.

Capital's beer garden.

This time around, we didn't proceed directly to Great Dane on Thursday, but waited until Sunday for Hilldale. Is it the best brunch on the planet? Probably not, but fried chicken and ice cream is nothing to sneeze at on a Packers game day -- along with bacon, coffee, Eggs Benedict, tacos and beer.

Afterward, the ten minute cruise to Middleton brought us to the beer garden on sunny and crisp autumn day that screamed Oktoberfest, and Capital readily obliged.

Have I mentioned how much I love Madison?

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Cheers to our old friend at the Sheraton Madison bar.

I don't know the name of the woman who tends bar at the Sheraton in Madison, Wisconsin. All I know is that during those many years when NABC's crew stayed at the Sheraton for the Great Taste of the Midwest, she seemed to be working every shift. Many a nightcap happened there, within crawling distance of the elevators.

On Saturday during our weekend getaway to Madison, Diana suggested having a beer at the Sheraton for old times' sake. There we found our stalwart behind the sticks, skilled and professional like always. I was pleased to find two of the mass-market tap handles replaced by "craft" beers, not an uncommon occurrence in Madison -- but let's appreciate corporate entities on those rare occasions of responsiveness.

Oddly, the only dissonance came from the three Germans seated next to us at the bar. They ordered Budweiser ('America', my ass) in bottles and drank from them while discussing the outcome of a big cattle show with a fourth international bovine dealer, who at least had the good sense to drink bourbon. I almost wish they wouldn't have been conversing in English. Germany's a great beer drinking country, except when it isn't.

I had a martini and tried to ignore them. To the bartender at the Sheraton Madison: You rock. Thanks for the memories, and we'll stop by next time we're up your way.

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Cocktail hour at the Wonder Bar Steakhouse in Madison, Wisconsin.

Cribbed from Google.

In Madison, Wisconsin for the weekend, we stayed at an Airbnb just off Park Street. It's a fine neighborhood for eating and drinking, and our genial host Coco mentioned that she often walked to a nearby establishment for cocktails, especially during colder weather, owing to the presence of a fireplace near the bar.

"You can't miss it," she said. "It  looks like a castle."

She was speaking of the Wonder Bar Steakhouse, and on Friday afternoon we decided to make it our destination for a Happy Hour round of cocktails. It turned out to be a refreshing 15-minute walk from our pad.

The Wonder Bar is located so near Olin Park (fest grounds of the Great Taste of the Midwest) that I'm surprised we hadn't noticed it before. The venue is an old two-story red brick building now overshadowed by a newer structure next door. From the main road, one can see an Old Style beer sign tacked to the Wonder Bar's backside, reminding us that La Cross (former home of G. Heileman) is only a couple of hours up the road from Madison.

The interior is a conscious old school throwback, and every bit as delightful as Coco suggested. We didn't eat, but Diana had a Gin & Tonic, while I opted for a Manhattan with Bulleit Rye.

Delicious, indeed -- and it does look a bit like a castle.

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How Rockhound Brewing's smoked hop pale ale and the Super Bowl in the year 2000 connect in my cranium.

The last time we visited Madison was 2014, and since then, several new breweries have started operations. One of them is Rockhound Brewing, located on Park Street, just a ten-minute walk from our Airbnb. It's sleek and modern, housed in the ground floor of a newer mixed-use building. Rockhound was rocking on Thursday night.

Prior to departure, I'd seen a reference on Facebook about a new smoked beer release at Rockhound called Campfire Stories, and resolved to try it. For once, I made no effort to research the beer any further; just order it, and drink.

At first, I found the results a bit odd. Not bad, just uncommon -- hops in the background and smoky nose, but something vaguely phenolic in the background flavor. At this point intrigued, I asked the bartender. She explained that Campfire Stories was a Pale Ale, with the hops smoked rather than the malt.

Only then did it hit me.

On January 30, 2000, a date verifiable only because it was Super Bowl Sunday (the Rams over the Titans), the late Matt Gould and Kevin Richards came to my garage to homebrew an idea we'd long discussed: Smoked Hop Pale Ale.

Unusually, this was my idea. One night at the bar, I drank a Schlenkerla Rauchbier, then without rinsing the glass (how often did THAT happen?) poured BBC American Pale Ale into it. I was drinking a hoppy ale and smelling smoke, hence the "eureka!" moment, comparable to the old commercials in which peanut butter accidentally met chocolate to form the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

Consequently, Matt bought whole leaf hops, and Kevin joined him in smoking them over wood that wasn't beech, though the exact type escapes my memory. Hickory? Mesquite?

My then-wife was a homebrewer, so we had most of the equipment already assembled, which actually may have belonged to the FOSSILS homebrewing club. Don't ask for details. It was 16 years ago, and these days, it's a challenge remembering what I had for lunch yesterday.

Still, I know we brewed, and I know we drank lots and lots of "guest" beers while ducking in and out of the garage to watch the game, which came down to the final play. At some point a few weeks later, we tried the beer. It was rough around the edges, though better than I expected, and it had this slightly phenolic flavor ...

By the following year, Cumberland Brews was going full-tilt, and Matt was the brewer there. He brewed the second batch of smoked hop ale at Cumberland as a seasonal specialty, and if memory serves, repeated it in 2002. By 2003, NABC's starter brewing system was on-line, and at some point Michael Borchers created our house version, called ConeSmoker, but with a twist. Smoked malt was used, as smoking the hops seemed too variable.  

That's a chunk of Kentuckiana beer history to emanate from a single pint of Campfire Stories at Rockhound in Madison, and that's what I like about the wider world of beer.

Free and unfettered association.

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Great Taste Roadtrip 2011: Thursday, August 11.

Beginning at 6:00 a.m. on August 11 -- with a full tank of gas and powered by Honey Cream doughnuts with espresso -- we piloted the Crown Vic all the way through farm country to Madison, Wisconsin. The first stop each year tends to be the Great Dane brewpub downtown, but this year we hit Capital Brewing's beer garden in Middleton first with pizza purchased at Roman Candle, then drove back to Great Dane to meet Pat (above) and Larry.

Wednesday Weekly: Off again to the gentle embrace of a bluer state.

I’ve updated this previously published essay from 2009 to incorporate recent events. Otherwise, what was true last year remains valid this year, and the Great Taste beckons.

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We’re packing tonight for the annual NABC company jaunt to Madison, Wisconsin, and another educational and entertaining immersion in the city’s unequaled craft beer celebration, the Great Taste of the Midwest.

As oft times before, the Great Taste takes place on a single Saturday afternoon at a pleasant wooded park alongside Lake Olin, affording a gorgeous view of downtown Madison in what I fervently hope will be reduced humidity, compared to this dastardly Louisville summer of 2010.

There is no equal to the Great Taste, at least in our region. It is a savory, savvy, well behaved, open air forum for enjoying the liquid benefits of America’s craft beer revolution. Each year, hundreds of ales and lagers are available for sampling, many rarely seen, because for the Great Taste, participating breweries bring their “A” teams. Few seasonal beer festivals inspire such good-natured competition among breweries. Lucky ticketholders cherish the liquid rewards.

And “lucky” these ticketholders surely are, because if they’re inside the fence, they’ve beaten the odds. The Great Taste sells out months in advance, and last-minute road trips are discouraged unless you have an “in.” One possibility for those without advance ducats is a thriving “resale” market near the entrance, because what better way to espouse good ol’ capitalistic values than negotiating with a scalper, who probably voted for Glenn Beck’s favorite backdoor socialist, Barack Obama?

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That’s right: There’s a leftist tinge to Madison. Apart from the wonders of its one-day craft beer fete, the city’s fair-minded, intrinsic liberalism never fails to impress this unrepentant Social Democrat.

When one considers the strong likelihood that frothy right-wing politicians like Kentucky’s mercifully departing Jim Bunning habitually refer to Wisconsin’s state capital as “The People’s Republic of Madison”, it’s a reminder for people of my persuasion to go there whenever possible, investing early and often in the local beer-making economy, and recalling that in political terms, Kentucky remains apparently forever (and lamentably) “in the Red.”

2009 was my visit Madison since the Hoosier state finally turned a pale shade of blue, albeit it tenuously, thanks to Obama’s ascent to the White House. In the tumultuous months following my most recent trip north, Southern Indiana has seemed possessed by a steady crescendo of loony tea baggers, unapologetic Nativists, freaky fundamentalists and intolerant cretins of all shapes and sizes – unhappy with their own irrelevance, and determined to make someone pay.

It's the sort of phenomenon that makes me scoff, and also thirsty.

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I recall the time when a Bank Street Brewhouse customer asked one of our servers to explain my political beliefs in light of the red stars on the shiny new brewing equipment.

Our man on the floor made a game effort to interpret these complex threads of geopolitics, economics and the art of brewing, and to phrase them in a snappy sentence that is reproducible on a bumper sticker for a Lexus, and yet the customer remained unimpressed, writing this on his charge card receipt:

“Tell your Commie boss to share the wealth.”

Harrumph! I share the wealth of beer knowledge every day, and just in case this man wasn’t joking (right wingers are so lacking in a sense of humor that Vulcans seem positively Bavarian by comparison), I circulated this memorandum to staff on the topic of what to say when someone asks such a question.

The proper answer is: “We don’t care what sort of ‘ist’ he is, just as long as he keeps signing the paychecks.”

As always, I’ll drink a beer for everyone while in Wisconsin. Readers, don’t forget to support your local breweries. Their machines kill fascists, and they’re your chief bulwark against creeping swillism.

"Mug Shots" today in LEO.

Here's my entry for today. Tomorrow it's time to leave for the Great Taste of the Midwest in madison, Wisconsin.

Mug Shots: Sharing the wealth, in LEO Weekly.

That’s right: There’s a leftist tint to Madison. Apart from the wonders of its one-day craft beer fete, the city’s fair-minded, intrinsic liberalism never fails to impress this unrepentant Social Democrat. When one considers the strong likelihood that frothy right-wing politicians like Kentucky’s lame-duck Jim Bunning habitually refer to Wisconsin’s state capital as “The People’s Republic of Madison,” it’s a reminder for people of my persuasion to go there whenever possible, investing early and often in the local beer-making economy, and recalling that in political terms, Kentucky remains lamentably “in the Red.”

Great Dane Duck Blind at the Madison Mallards game.

Spiles away at the Great Dane.

Friday, August 10: Queuing the firkin at the Great Dane brewpub in Madison, Wisconsin.

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?