Birthday and Brewery Tours Part 1
Well, for better or worse my birthday was last Saturday. I'm not really big on birthdays. Getting old is one of the few things that genuinely scares me. But my wife and my daughter always make my "special day" great and this year was no exception.
Last year, for my big 3 0 my wife planned a surprise party for me at the Sprecher Brewery in Milwaukee Wisconsin and it was a blast. Good friends, good food and lots of great beer. As John will recall, I had a little too much fun. But that was when my love of craft beer really sank in.
I've always been a fan of non-mainstream beer but I never really examined why and I never really investigated the industry. But after that tour it really hit home that was just what I wanted to do. And that's when I started down the road to hardcore beer geekdom.
I also decided that I was going to make that a birthday tradition, visit a different craft brewery or brew pub every year. Last year Sprecher, this year New Glarus, the Grumpy Troll, Capitol and The Great Dane.
We got started on Friday later than we'd planned, so that made the trip up feel a little rushed. Combine that with the fact that the main road into New Glarus was closed for construction. So we had to take this 20 mile detour to get to the brewery. But, we finally made it, and when we did there was a tour bus full of seniors piled into the 'tasting room'. It made what was an already small tasting room even smaller. Awful and they were more than rude (the old people, not the brewery employees).
Since there wasn't much room, we pretty much just glanced around the brewery, grabbed a pick-a-six of stuff that I haven't tried (Fat Squirrel, Spotted Cow, Totally Naked, then 2 bottles of Road Slush and an Uff-da, which I had the opportunity to try the week before and really enjoyed) and a bottle of the Belgian Red and got the hell out of there. Which bummed me out but there were just too many people and we didn't have time to go bum around somewhere else until they left.
We made our way out of there and up to Mt. Horeb. And just as we were approaching the off ramp what do we see? It was closed!!! No kidding. I was beginning to think this was a sign. But we went to the next exit and found our way there. The Grumpy Troll.
-C
Last year, for my big 3 0 my wife planned a surprise party for me at the Sprecher Brewery in Milwaukee Wisconsin and it was a blast. Good friends, good food and lots of great beer. As John will recall, I had a little too much fun. But that was when my love of craft beer really sank in.
I've always been a fan of non-mainstream beer but I never really examined why and I never really investigated the industry. But after that tour it really hit home that was just what I wanted to do. And that's when I started down the road to hardcore beer geekdom.
I also decided that I was going to make that a birthday tradition, visit a different craft brewery or brew pub every year. Last year Sprecher, this year New Glarus, the Grumpy Troll, Capitol and The Great Dane.
We got started on Friday later than we'd planned, so that made the trip up feel a little rushed. Combine that with the fact that the main road into New Glarus was closed for construction. So we had to take this 20 mile detour to get to the brewery. But, we finally made it, and when we did there was a tour bus full of seniors piled into the 'tasting room'. It made what was an already small tasting room even smaller. Awful and they were more than rude (the old people, not the brewery employees).
Since there wasn't much room, we pretty much just glanced around the brewery, grabbed a pick-a-six of stuff that I haven't tried (Fat Squirrel, Spotted Cow, Totally Naked, then 2 bottles of Road Slush and an Uff-da, which I had the opportunity to try the week before and really enjoyed) and a bottle of the Belgian Red and got the hell out of there. Which bummed me out but there were just too many people and we didn't have time to go bum around somewhere else until they left.We made our way out of there and up to Mt. Horeb. And just as we were approaching the off ramp what do we see? It was closed!!! No kidding. I was beginning to think this was a sign. But we went to the next exit and found our way there. The Grumpy Troll.
-C
posted by Chad at 10:15 PM
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