Go for the Limburger cheese, stay for the bock

The skies seem a little bluer, and the tracks look a little newer
And the water tower has more names
The ruts are a little deeper, the gullies a little steeper
Not that much has changed

Not that much has changed, it’s all just rearranged
Like a picture in your mind of a heart you left behind
Not that much has changed

                   – Joe Ely, “Not That Much Has Changed”

Limburger cheese sandwich, Baumgartner Cheese Store & Tavern

The Limburger cheese sandwich at Baumgartner Cheese Store & Tavern in Monroe, Wisconsin, is still served with a mint. A pint of Huber Bock is still sold at a bargain price.

But, you knew this was coming, a few beery things have changed since we first visited Baumgartner’s in 1995 and last were in Monroe in 2008. This isn’t exactly unusual, even in a rural town of 11,000 residents such as Monroe, the county seat of Green County. Yet it is striking to see an Alaskan Brewing neon in the window of Bartels & Co. Tap on the opposite side of the town square from Baumgartner’s.

Curiously, the second oldest (almost) continually operating brewery in the country, established in 1845, is right around the corner from Baumgartner’s. Curiously, because Minhas Craft Brewery, the 19th largest US craft brewery as defined by the Brewers Association, is not a tourist attraction.

Minhas Craft BreweryThe brewery looks like a building, a large building, built in Eastern Europe not long after the end of World War II. A sign the size of one you’d see hanging in front of a small tavern that reads “Home of Huber Bock” is the only nod to the brewery’s heritage. We did not see any Minhas branded beers on tap in Wisconsin bars or for sale in liquor stores.

Tourists come to Green County first for cheese, and second for New Glarus beers, brewed 16 miles up the road. Green County has 400 dairy farms that produce 530 million pounds of milk a year, much of which is turned into cheese at 13 factories in the county. Chalet Cheese Cooperative is the only Limburger producers in the country. A sign at Alp & Dell Cheese store reads, “Here in Green County cheese is life.”

Baumgartner’s has been in business since 1931, selling cheese, beer, sausage, flasks of hard stuff, etc., from a counter in the front of the building and operating the tavern in back. The tall ceiling is covered with dollar bills and the walls include mounted animal heads, breweriana and signs of the area’s Swiss heritage (a Baumgartner played on the 1996 Swiss handball team). There’s a map of Switzerland with information and shields of all the cantons.

The first time we visited there were four beers on tap, all pouring Huber beers (Ravinder and Manjit Minhas bought the brewery in 2006). Today there are 24 beers on tap, including four from New Glarus Brewing.

In 1995, a cheese sandwich cost $2.25 and today it is $5. Huber Bock was $1.45 for 16 ounces, one of the best beer bargains in America at the time. Now a pint of the bock is $4, a bargain price, but not much of a deal because the beer isn’t what it once was. Trust me, that’s not a nostalgia-tinged assessment.

The beer pictured at the top is New Glarus Gyrator Doppel. It cost $5. Accounting for inflation, that would have been $2.75 in 1995. Either way, a high-value bargain.

A handful of beer links to begin the week

Dollar bills on the ceiling at Baumgartner's Cheese Store and Tavern

Walking into Wisconsin tavern with dollar bills on the ceiling never gets old.

This week’s featured beer ingredient is hops. I’d riff on some of those links now, but we’ve been traveling and I have some catching up to do (thus the overall brevity). More in the next Hop Queries (remember, the newsletter is free).

Our travels took us to several well worn Wisconsin taverns. Not exactly English pubs, but certainly different than brewery taprooms. That, for us, added extra context to Tandleman’s “Underneath the Arches” post, which included this:

“I think I have to face facts. E and I just aren’t the target audience. We will never really feel at home in such places, as the beer and the demographics just don’t suit us. I know they vary and some are, indeed, much better than others, but we generally feel out of place in them, which hardly makes for a good time.”

And for this comment from Cooking Lager:

“Brew taps may be uncomfortable but they have the air of exclusivity and special privilege granted to those in the know. That’s what craft beer is, exclusivity and privilege. Wrap it in an establishment as well as a product and you’ve got a winner.

“Pubs are for the hoi polloi, the prols, those that don’t fetishize beer and breweries. Anyone could be in there for crying out loud.”

Hops
– Happy Fugglesvesary.

– Brewing an English-hopped NEIPA.

– Juicy High Life.

Priceless?
– Pleasure and value from high wine prices.

– Spend money on experiences, not things.

Rhetorical tension
Does the word rustic tell you anything about flavor?

In search of America’s national beer tradition

Cold beer

Before the second edition of “The Beer Bible” reached store shelves, showed up on electronic tablets or arrived wherever people are reading books these days, Jeff Alworth wrote that national tradition is beer’s Rosetta Stone. Take the time to read his post before moving on.

His book offers a description of the American, German and other traditions that parallel the excerpt about British tradition. Buy the book to read them, but for now a few sentences from his blog post:

The American tradition, which like so many others was a riff on an older one, involves the use of unique ingredients (American hops) and techniques (all the weird ways Americans use them). The hoppy ales developed here are made unlike any beers before them, and certainly taste like nothing brewed in the last 12,000 years. And, like monumentally successful beers of earlier eras—London porter, pilsner, Bavarian lager—they are now traveling around the world and getting reinterpreted in other countries where local brewers will twist and distort them as their own cultures intervene.

It is true that many brewers in the United States and elsewhere are doing this. But it is true that even more are doing something else, and not just beers based on their own longtime national tradition. They are making beers like ones that originated in the United States almost 150 years ago and became globally dominant. Before getting to that . . .

Read more

Time to pull out your favorite Larry Bell stories

Larry Bell, 1994

Monday I wondered about the difference between selling and selling out.

Today, there is a bit of news about Little Lion World Beverages buying Bell’s Brewery. Or as a Kalamazoo radio station put it, “Kalamazoo’s Bell’s Brewery to merge with Colorado-based New Belgium Brewing.”

I do not have great insight into “what does this mean?” Clearly, much will be made of it. Good Beer Hunting’s story points out that Bell’s Facebook page indicates all of its locations will be closed today (Nov. 10) and tomorrow to allow staff to “reflect on the past year and talk about what’s ahead.” Keeping it simple, it looks more like selling to me than selling out.

Expect to read many stories in the next few days about how the small brewery business was different when Larry Bell (pictured above at the brewery in 1994) and others were getting started. More than one will involve post-GABF parties and bathtubs.

Instead, on a personal note, when our family was traveling the country in an RV in 2008 and 2009 we slept in the parking lot of Bell’s production brewery outside of Kalamazoo. I might have stayed up late making phone calls that began, “Guess where we are.”

Beer links: malt revolution, rauchbier & selling out

Craft Maltsters Guild map

In honor of this week’s featured ingredient (last week it was yeast) here is the Craft Malsters Guild map that was on display during the Craft Brewers Conference in September.

Whimsy
“The Universally Recommended Timeless Institution Pub” is evidence that we need more blog posts written after a beer or three. Because, otherwise we might not get sentences like this, “That thing where it feels traditional and unchanged but has actually morphed slowly through the ages. So it’s just about on trend, but doesn’t feel trendy.” I wish somebody would say something like that about me.

Baby steps
Lawson’s Liquids is renaming two beers. Say goodbye to Knockout Blonde and Maple Nipple.

Selling (out)
I’ve always wondered about what the difference might be between selling and selling out. Entrepreneurs start businesses every day, and quite often the business plan includes an exit strategy.

Author Tom Acitelli used the word movement on more than a third of the pages in the first edition of “The Audacity of Hops.” I get it (this is not a “Succession” shout out) — drinkers sign on to a movement to stick it to the man and then a brewer who is supposed to be leading this movement sells (out) to the man.

Read more