Christmas Cheer on Tap in Oshkosh

During this time of wretched music and violent shopping, it’s good to set aside a few moments to appreciate the things that truly matter. Let’s start with Anderson Valley’s Winter Solstice Seasonal Ale and Three Floyds Alpha Klaus Christmas Porter. Yes! The rich and the bitter have arrived in Oshkosh to salvage the holiday season. ‘Tis the season to raise the dark cup and drink deep.

Anderson Valley’s Winter Solstice is pouring at Becket’s and Alpha Klaus is on tap at Oblio’s, setting them apart by just a few blocks geographically as well as spiritually. Both are medium bodied ales that deliver a load of flavor with a significant hop finish, but they each take a different path getting there.

Winter Solstice, at Becket’s, is the more traditional of these holiday brews. The aroma is close to Christmas cookies with ginger and nutmeg drifting up. The beer is semi-sweet and rich with a sticky, caramel malt flavor that builds as you drink it. And then comes a nice, smooth bitterness. At the very end all that rich, sweetish malt gets peeled away with a refreshing wash of bitter hops. It works as a great contrast to what came before it and makes the beer eminently drinkable. This is an excellent brew and at 6.9% it’s a fine match for the cold weather.

Meanwhile, over at Oblio’s, there’s Alpha Klaus - just the sort of beer you’d expect from Three Floyds. Lotsa hops and great brewing make them one of the most dependable breweries in America and their Christmas porter is everything it promises to be. The thing pours like liquified black chocolate and the aroma is enough to make you thankful for the smoking ban. Plenty of brown sugar and ground coffee in the nose of this beer and it’s all brought along on a clean breeze of piney, Christmas-tree smelling hops. I’m guessing there’s a fat dose of Challenger hops in this one because that evergreen flavor shoots all through it. The first few gulps bring a nice mix of caramel and roasted malts, but as you continue to drink those hops take over and the beer veers into IPA territory. This is a fun one and you’ll continue to taste it when you move on to your next as those hops keep working your palate. It’s the beer that keeps on giving. Who said Christmas is for kids?

New Glarus Apple Ale

The new Unplugged beer from New Glarus was finally delivered to Oshkosh last week on the back of a serpent promising sex, knowledge and immortality. Of course, that’s bullshit, but Apple Ale is definitely here and if you're up for a fall from grace reenactment this weekend, here’s the beer to do it with.

New Glarus has shuffled Apple Ale through their line-up a few times, now. Its first outing was in a fancy 750 ml bottle packaged like Raspberry Tart and Belgian Red, but that soon passed and the last couple times through it’s appeared as part of the Unplugged series. Regardless of dress, this a simple and beautiful beer.

Made with Wisconsin barley and a mix of apples grown in Gays Mills, the beer pours out like a clean, brown ale with a head that slips away extra quick, leaving you with a cup full of something that could easily be passed off as sparkling apple cider. It’s got that smell, it’s got that look and it’s got that flavor. The aroma is a waft of candied apples with a bump of cinnamon and is a dead-on forecast of the flavor to come. It starts with apple and gains a lactic creaminess as you drink it before finishing off with a nice, tart nip that keeps things from getting too sugary sweet. Hops? Malt? Forget it. Apple Ale is all about apples and that single note simplicity is really what’s most appealing about the beer. It all seems so effortless and straightforward and makes for a very refreshing change of pace from the big, sometimes unrelentingly complex beers that are typical of the seasonal brews this time of year.

A few weeks ago when Stone Brewing announced it was pulling out of Wisconsin, one distributor speculated that the reason Stone couldn’t make headway here was due to Wisconsinites being too “caught-up” in the local beers made by New Glarus, Central Waters, O'so, et al. With beers like this, how can you blame us?

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: Central Waters Brewhouse Coffee Stout

Is Central Waters the best Stout brewery in America? If you can think of a better one let me know because I can’t come up with another American brewery that bests them in this category. Over the course of the past year they’ve put out five different Stouts (four of them limited releases) and each has been superior. And now comes this, Central Waters Brewhouse Coffee Stout, which hit the shelves in 4-packs at Festival Foods in Oshkosh last week. Once again, Central Waters delivers with an exceptional Stout. Bring on the black liquidation!

This beer pours jet black with a chewy head of thick froth that’ll leave a nice mustache on your lip if you dive straight into it. That’s exactly what you ought to do, because what’s there in your cup is going to make you very happy. The coffee aroma is fresh and intense and completely dominates the nose of the beer. This batch was brewed and infused with the worlds second best beverage just over a month ago and that, no doubt, accounts for the especially vivid coffee profile. It’s the first flavor you encounter once you start gulping it in and it’s what sticks in your mouth after you’ve set the cup down. In between you get a nice bit of roasted malt and a nudge of vanilla, but this beer is really all about the coffee. And unlike many coffee stouts, this one avoids that astringent oiliness that tends to mar beers of this sort. Instead, you get a smooth, creamy brew that’s rich, but wonderfully drinkable. It would make a great breakfast beer, but at over 8% ABV it might get your day off to an unnaturally slow start. For dessert, though, it would be perfect and a great match for a huge chunk of German chocolate cake.

By the way, the coffee in this beer was roasted by Emy J's, a coffee shop in Steven’s Point that’s worth a visit next time you’re up there. It’s a good place to sober up after a few too many at Guu's On Main where they’re usually hosting several CW beers on tap. A road trip might be just the thing for the cool and cloudy weekend we’ve got coming our way.

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: Capital’s Winter Skal

All week long they’ve been stringing up the Christmas lights in Menominee Park and tonight Oshkosh will have its annual Holiday Parade, but to me these are seemingly random and unrelated events. I know we're on the cusp of winter and the holiday season because last week the shelves of the liquor departments suddenly grew heavy with winter brews wrapped in cozy labels that tell me the season is changing. Winter is here!

I look forward to the rich, strong beers that come flowing into Oshkosh around this time, but the one I like to grab first is Capital Brewing's Winter Skal. This is a tasty, early winter lager helpful for easing you into the short days of the dark season. It has more heft than an Oktoberfest, but less of the chewy malt and alcoholic punch of the brews that make February bearable. It’s a November beer. Skal (a Scandinavian toast to friendship and goodwill) pours a deep copper with a short, tenacious head. The aroma is all sweet malt and bread crust and when the beer is introduced into your being via the largest hole in your face it produces a wonderful sensation. The mouthfeel is just a little bit thick, but not in a burdensome way. The flavor is two parts caramel malt and one part spiced fruit and and it finishes so clean and dry that it makes the next draw inevitable. Good beer!

You can pick up Winter Skal just about everywhere in Oshkosh... grocery stores, gas stations, laundromats (have you visited JT's Wash and Mart on Wisconsin Street?). And while you’re out there doing your week-end beer shopping take a look at all the holiday beers that have arrived. The other day I was doing my usual milling around in the liquor isles and saw Bell's Winter White Ale, Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale, Big Sky’s Powder Horn Winter Ale, Lakefront’s Holiday Spice Lager, Point’s St. Benedict's Winter Ale, Samuel Adams’ Winter Lager, Goose Island’s Mild Winter, New Belgium’s 2º Below Winter Ale and Redhook’s Winterhook Ale. Shit, on Tuesday I even saw a 12-pack of Huber Bock. If that doesn’t make you smile, you just don’t know how to have fun.

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: New Glarus Back 40 Bock

In May of 1885 the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern ran a weird little article complaining that Bock beer isn’t supposed to go on tap until May, but that “Americans force the season in everything, and so each year it gets on the market a little earlier.” I’d like to take the author of the article for a visit to Barley & Hops and see how he’d react to the two Bock’s that are pouring here in the early days of November. One is the trusty Shiner Bock and the other is the new lager from New Glarus named Back 40 Bock, which made its way into Oshkosh last week.

Back 40 replaces Uff-da as New Glarus’ fall seasonal bock and it’s quite a switch. New Glarus is calling Back 40 a “Wisconsin Bock” and though that may not exactly be a recognized style, it tells you what they’re shooting for. They’ve taken their cues from the long history of Bock brewing in Wisconsin, where Bocks were brewed with an eye towards balance and drinkability in comparison to the traditional German Bocks (such as Uff-da), which are heftier and marked by a rich melanoidin character. If you prefer your beer to be big, bold and boozy, Back 40 Bock isn’t going to make much of an impression on you, but if subtlety is more your style, then this mild-mannered beauty is going hit you where you live.

The beer pours to a dark brown with a nice creamy head and if you can let it sit for a minute or two the foam will settle into a beautiful, off-white meringue. The aroma is fairly rich, with caramel and some raisin leading you to believe the beer is going to be bigger than it is. The mouth feel, at first, seems somewhat slight and if there’s an argument to made against this beer it may be its lack of depth, but complexity isn’t what this brew is about. This is a phenomenally balanced and drinkable beer and though you’ll get light notes of bread crust and toffee coming through, that’s just background to the bright, clean flavor of malt. There’s a slight balancing bitterness that comes in near the end before an incredibly clean finish. This is a beer that begs you to drink three or four (or five or six) of them in a sitting. It gets better with each glass.

You ought to be able to pick up Back 40 Bock at all of the usual Oshkosh beer depots, but you’d probably have a lot more fun trying it out at Barley’s this weekend. This Saturday is the Main Street Grand Re-Opening (info Here and Here) and amidst the festivities you might want to slip into Barley’s for a beer... or four.

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: Central Waters Hop Harvest

Next to homebrew, this may be the freshest beer you’ll ever taste. Hop Harvest is a limited release brew from Central Waters made with barley and hops grown here in Wisconsin. This is a wet hop ale, where the hops go directly from the vine and into the brew kettle without being dried or processed. When it comes to brewing, that’s about as elemental as it gets.

This year the crew from Central Waters spent some 20 hours picking hops before returning to the brewery to make the beer. That was on September 5th. Just over a month later, we’ve got it here in Oshkosh ready to be made into a memory.

The beer falls somewhere between an American Pale Ale and an IPA so if you’re expecting a huge wallop of hops you’re going to be disappointed. The hop aroma is fairly slight. Instead malt dominates the nose of this beer giving off a honey and crackers sort of vapor with a side-order of grassiness. And malt commands the flavor profile, as well. The beer is sweetish and somewhat thick with a grassy, lemon-like hop presence playing in the background. At first the beer comes across as a little too chewy, but as it finishes the bitterness grows assertive and cleans away the residual sweetness of the malt. It turns out to be a very drinkable beer. Overall, there’s really a unique quality to this brew. It tastes like a living thing, like young homebrew, and I mean that in the best way. I wouldn’t call this a great beer, but it’s certainly an interesting one and something you ought to try if you get the chance.

Your window of opportunity with this beer is going to be brief, though. Central Waters produced just 300 cases of this year's Hop Harvest. The stash of 22 oz bombers that’s on hand at Festival Foods won’t last long and when it’s gone that’ll be the end of it for us here in Oshkosh.

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: Lindemans Framboise Lambic

After yesterday’s post about the Lambics that Nick and Michelle Wilinksi are brewing, I thought it might be a good time to check out the only authentic Lambic that’s available for purchase in Oshkosh. Lindemans Framboise Lambic can be found at Festival Foods in Oshkosh and if you’ve never experienced a Lambic before, this would be a good one to start with. The Lindemans farm brewery, in the Flanders region of Belgium, brews nothing but Lambics, employing airborne yeast to create rustic ales that are utterly unique. These beers may not be for every palate, but every palate ought to taste one at least once.

Lindemans Framboise Lambic is made from several vintages of oak-aged Lambics that are blended and then dosed with a heavy-handed addition of raspberries. The resultant beer is a sprawl of wild flavors that are surprisingly approachable. The beer pours to a dense, bruised red with the aroma of juicy raspberries immediately bursting to the fore. If you’re not a fan of raspberries, don’t even bother with this one. The hugely tart and sweet flavor of the fruit is inescapable and absolutely dominates the beer. But under that blanket of raspberries you can still detect a swarm of the acidic, edgy flavors of the Lambic base dancing around. That’s where the true interest of this beer resides for me. Those earthy flavors, that some aptly describe as “barnyard”, are easy to miss if you get hung up on the fruit, but if you make the effort to dig a little deeper you’ll taste things in this beer you didn’t even know you liked. Another aspect of this beer that always strikes me is how cleanly it finishes. It’s the last thing you’d expect from something that starts so thick, creamy and sweet. If it finished any other way the beer would be deadening and cloying, instead it ends up being - as the Belgian’s say - quite digestible. All the same, you probably aren’t going to want to drink a lot of this. After 10 ounces or so, the richness of this beer is going to catch up with you. So before you uncork that $9.99 bottle, find someone to share it with. It’s perfect as either an aperitif or as a dessert, but if you wind up really not caring for it, find a hearty stout or any lightly hopped ale and give blending a shot. You might just create the best beer nobody else has ever had.

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: Hinterland Luna Coffee Stout

All right, I admit it, the only reason I bought this stuff was that I liked the fancy, 16-ounce bottles. I figured I’d swallow a four-pack and then recycle those sweet jugs to dress-up a few pints of my homebrew. Turns out, it ain't just the bottle that’s pretty. This beer is a beauty and perfect for fall guzzling. Luna is an easy drinker that starts with a percolating coffee aroma and flavor that glides gently into all manner of dark-malt subtlety as it permeates your innards. Along the way you get a little bit of burnt pizza crust, some peat, a hint of chocolate... it’s a well-rounded, flavorful beer that doesn’t punch you in the throat to get its point across. If you’re the sort that likes to fuss about style guidelines, this one hits all the requisite marks for an American Stout. The mouthfeel has a pleasant heft with just enough roasty bitterness to cut the wash of creamy sweetness that underlies the whole set-up. That dark-malt aspect grows slightly astringent towards the very end, but not at all in a bad way. A top-notch stout from top to bottom and one I’ll be revisiting... not just for the bottles, either.

You can find Luna Coffee Stout at Festival Foods in Oshkosh. It snuck into town a little over a week ago in that pile of Hinterland they've got stacked at the entrance to the liquor department. You'll probably have to dig some to find the Luna, but rest assured, there's plenty more in there. And if you want to learn about what's going on up at the Hinterland Brewery in Green Bay, here's an interesting interview with Hinterland brewmaster Joe Karls. It's the classic homebrewer to pro-brewer story and it'll have you liking the beer even more.

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: Wisconsin Beer

Yesterday I went to Dublin’s for lunch. I ordered an O’so Night Train Porter to go with my meal. It was the first time since April that I’d had a Night Train and when I took that initial draw it was like meeting up with an old friend. I drank a lot of this last winter, but I’d forgotten what a fine beer it is. It’s full and creamy with a pleasant roastiness that stops just short of being sharp. It’s a beer that’s great for keeping around the house and dipping into every day. It has more than enough flavor complexity to keep you interested, but it’s not so loud that it wears on you.

Over the past week I’ve had a number of excellent beers in Oshkosh that were all in this same vein. There was the Chief Black Hawk Porter from Tyranena that Becket’s has going, Potosi’s Gandy Dancer Porter at Oblio’s, Central Waters’ Oktoberfest, the Dark Lager at Fratellos and now I see that O’Marro’s has O’so’s Rusty Red on tap. These are beers that aren’t extreme or flashy enough to generate the sort of hype that gets everyone cackling, but they’re each so good in their own way that to take any of them for granted would be a mistake. And they’re all from Wisconsin.

There’s a lot of great beer being made in Wisconsin right now and because it’s so easy for us to get it’s also easy to forget how lucky we are to have it. I was thinking about this a couple weeks ago when I heard stories from the Great American Beer Festival about how the lines in front of the New Glarus booth were 100 people deep before they even began pouring. It’s hard to imagine waiting in a line like that to get a small sample of a beer that we can buy at most any grocery store or gas station in Oshkosh whenever the urge strikes us. And when I was in Asheville, NC last month and told people I was from Wisconsin, all they wanted to talk about was the beer we have here. One guy, who was working at what is probably the best beer store I’ve ever been in, actually made me promise him that if I ever visited again, I’d bring him beer from Wisconsin. Asheville, by the way, was again named the top beer city in America this year. These aren’t people who are deprived of good beer.

The point I’m trying to make is that we ought to take the time to appreciate what’s going on around here. You and I are living in one of the best places in the world to drink beer. Without a doubt, this is a golden age. And if there’s one thing history makes clear, it’s that golden ages do not last. We're fortunate. Let's enjoy this while we can.

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: Holy Grail Ale

Holy Grail Ale at Barley & Hops

When I first noticed there was a beer out there named Monty Python's Holy Grail Ale I immediately dismissed it as some kind of gimmick beer. Then a few months later I learned it was brewed by the Black Sheep Brewery, an exceptional English ale brewery responsible for Riggwelter, one of my favorite beers. So when I heard from Nate at Barley & Hops that he was bringing the Holy Grail to Oshkosh I was primed for finally getting a taste of this brew on draught. And it did not disappoint. I love traditional English ales and this is an excellent example of what the best of them are all about.

The beer pours to a bight copper and offers up a light scent of floral hops over bready, pale malt. It’s a subtle and delicious aroma that made me thankful there wasn’t a cloud of cigarette smoke floating in the bar. The mouth feel of this beer is fantastic. Smooth and creamy at the start and then developing a slight graininess towards the end. Nothing about the beer is out-sized, instead there’s a wonderful range of flavors here that all work in concert. The hop flavor has a ripe, earthy fruit aspect and it melds perfectly with the crystal malt sweetness that forms the foundation of the beer. This is an exceptionally balanced ale that remains continually interesting and complex from one pint to the next. And it’s a perfect session beer. At just under 5% you can easily work your way through a number of these without falling off your stool. Although you may find yourself spontaneously chirping NI!

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: Hacker-Pschorr’s Oktoberfest

There’s no shortage of choice beer flowing in Oshkosh this week, but there’s a beer on tap at Oblio’s right now that fits the season better than any other brew you’ll find. Oblio’s has been pouring Hacker-Pschorr’s Oktoberfest for a couple weeks now and there’s something about sitting down behind a pint of it at that worn bar during the chill of mid-sepetmber that seems so right it makes all those boisterous, American craft beers seem a little too brassy. It’s time to pull those gardens down and celebrate with a rich mug of amber brew.

The Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest has a shimmering copper hue with an aroma that’s part caramel and part biscuit underscored with a dash of noble hops. The beer has a medium palate with a slight and smooth caramel sweetness making it a hearty, satisfying brew that’s still very easy to drink. The beer closes with a wisp of hop bitterness and a malty, bittersweet finish ideally suited for a fall session of lager drinking.

Todd at Oblio’s says they’re going to keep this beer on for the next couple months, so if you’re looking for a new “buddy beer”, this might be a good choice. I’ve been by Oblio’s for a few of these already and it seems to get better each time I order it.

Bonus Beer: Another beer you might want to check out this fall is the Foxtoberfest that recently went on at Fratellos. This is Fox River Brewing’s take on the Oktoberfest style and it has turned into something of a local tradition. The beer was introduced in 2002 and it’s been coming back each fall ever since. Brewmaster Kevin Bowen has been kind enough to give us his notes on the beer and you can check those out here.

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: A Little Sumpin' Sumpin' Ale

After all that squawking about hops yesterday, this was an easy choice for Beer of the Week. A Little Sumpin' Sumpin' Ale from Lagunitas has been flowing at Becket’s and catching the attention of Oshkosh beer freaks who crave a snootful of hops with their ale. This is an excellent end-of-summer brew that starts with a shout of American-hop aroma. Take a nice, long whiff off it. You’ll get grapefruit juice, pine, tropical fruit... all the usual suspects are there raising hell.  But what differentiates this beer from your typical hop bomb is the smoothness of its flavor. The smell has you anticipating a punishing bitterness and though there’s all manner of “C” hop thunder in the offing, the beer finishes with a lightness that’s unexpected. The brewers at Lagunitas say they run a lot of wheat into this beer and perhaps that’s what accounts for the fluffy ending. For a high I.B.U. beer that clocks in at 7.3% this thing drinks ridiculously easy. Just one caveat: Becket’s has had this beer on for over a week now and the quick way they cycle through their taps probably means it won’t be around too much longer. If you want it, you’d better go get it. And if you miss it, don’t worry, you’ll be all right. A couple faucets over they’ve got Bitter Woman IPA from Tyranena pouring. There’s another beer that’ll fix your hop jones.

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: New Glarus Abt

There’s a strong, rich beer named Abt that just arrived in Oshkosh and it has come to hurt you. But this New Glarus Unplugged beer is so smooth and inviting you won’t mind the pain it leaves in its wake. Style-wise, Abt runs along the lines of a Belgian Dark Strong Ale and with that you know you’re in for a heavy beer. The amazing thing about this one is how lightly it carries its weight. The beer’s 9.6% ABV isn’t hidden, but it’s presented in such a mellow, rummy way that the heat of its alcohol is entirely welcome. There’s a lot going on in this beer. It pours deep, deep red with a thick aroma of over-ripe dark fruit. That aromatic heft is contradicted, though, by the beers surprisingly light, almost fluffy, mouthfeel. As the Belgians would say, this one is highly digestible. The mouthfeel is just about the only thing light about it. There’s a kaleidoscopic depth of flavor here that ranges from chocolate to sweet raisin to cola to brandied cherries. It all conspires to gently draw you in. Then it slaughters your resolve and warps time. It made my Wednesday morning come way too early.

You’ll find Abt at Festival Foods in Oshkosh residing in the high-end beer ghetto where it’s being held without refrigeration. That’s no way to treat a good beer! On the other hand, you don’t want to drink Abt straight from your refrigerator, either. Let it rest and warm for a good half-hour before you pop it open. I made the mistake of starting the first bottle a little too cold and that made the beer seem sharp and harsh. This is a beer that grows lush as it warms.

Homebrewers: If you like to play around with yeast, notice the spicy yeast character of Abt. Last Spring I brewed a Belgian Dubbel using White Labs WLP530 and that yeast seems very similar to the strain New Glarus is using for Abt. WLP530 is supposedly the Westmalle yeast and I was lucky to have a Westmalle Dubble around the house while I was drinking Abt so I opened that up, too, and found that the yeast profiles do have a lot in common. If you prefer Wyeast, their 3787 is supposed to be the same strain. Either way, this would be a fun beer to try to clone.

Bonus Beer: Just got word from Peabody’s that they have Gandy Dancer Porter, a new beer from Potosi, now on tap. I’ve yet to try this one, but the folks at Potosi say their porter is “a bit bigger, hoppier, and or roastier than their European predecessors.” If you like a good porter you might want to plan a stop at Peabody’s this weekend.

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: 1853

To commemorate the passing of August Horn, I thought it would be fitting to single out a hometown beer that harkens back to the early days of brewing in Oshkosh. It’s a nice coincidence that Fratellos in Oshkosh is currently pouring just such a beer. 1853 is a dark lager that Fox River Brewing first brewed in 2003 to help celebrate Oshkosh’s sesquicentennial. Kevin Bowen, Brewmaster at Fox River Brewing, says the beer was “styled in the tradition of Wisconsin beers for the period.” And though this is a modern beer and not an attempt to re-create the beer of that time, it’s still probably not too far off in flavor and appearance from the sort of lager August Horn would have been drinking in Oshkosh in 1853.

1853 pours deep ruby unto black and if you stick your nose into it as soon as it’s tapped you’ll catch a surprising and wonderful hop aroma that drifts up and dissipates quickly. This is an easy drinking beer with the slight sweetness of Munich malt being the dominant flavor. Overall, it’s light-bodied and fairly crisp without any of the ragged edges of roasted malt that sometimes mar beers that are this mild and yet dark. The beer finishes clean with just a touch of residual bitterness. A few pints of this would go along perfectly with a big plate of nachos.

Our Man, August Horn

But if you really want to experience this beer in a way that truly celebrates 1853, there’s only one way to do it. You’ll need to resurrect the infamous Oshkosh growler. It’ll take a little work, but I’m certain the servers at Fratellos will understand exactly what it is you’re doing and will fully cooperate with your mission. Here’s how it’s done: First you have to find a half-gallon wooden bucket. Keep in mind, this thing needs to hold beer so it’s got to be water tight. I have no idea where you’ll find such a thing. OK, now that you’ve got your wooden bucket, find a quality lard and use it to grease down the inside walls of the bucket. This may sound gross and it is, but the lard will help to keep the beer from foaming up when it’s tapped and ensure that you’ll get your full measure of pure beer. Now if you really want to make it special, take your bucket of dark, oily beer and walk about a half-mile due north of Fratellos. Get onto the Wiouwash trail and when you see Riverside Cemetery cut across the creek. That’ll put you on Oak and if you follow that to Myrtle you'll be at the site of August Horn’s grave. It’s easy to find. There’s just one thing left to do. Raise your Oshkosh growler and have a good, long drink to our Dead Homie. Peace, bitches!

Oshkosh Beer of the Week: Gumballhead Wheat Ale

Here’s something new we’re going to add to the blog. Each Thursday we’ll try (try being the operative word) to do a post called the Oshkosh Beer of the Week. It’ll be a quick note about a good beer that’s available in Oshkosh either on tap or at one of the local beer selling stores. Your thoughts on the beers featured here are always welcome and if you come across a great beer that you’d like others to know about, the comments section is always open.

Sunburn, mosquitoes, flooding and wheat beer. It’s all part of summer in Oshkosh. I can live with the other stuff, but I’ve had my fill of non-descript, light ales dressed up as wheat beers when they’re really nothing more than timid brews made with little-to-no character aimed at people who don’t much care for the flavor of beer. Here’s the remedy to all of that: Gumballhead Wheat Ale recently went on tap at Oblio's and it’s a breed apart from the typical Sally beer calling itself a wheat. In fact, you might have a hard time guessing it’s a wheat beer.

The beer pours golden and slightly hazy with an atypically thin head. But here’s where it really starts going it’s own way: The nose is all piny hops. The beer is definitely dry hopped making it an oddity among wheats. It drinks with a bright, juicy-citrus hop flavor, but it isn’t overtly bitter. Those hops match-up nicely to the slight doughiness of the wheat to make for a brew that’s easy to drink and thirst quenching without being dull. The beer closes with a pronounced dryness that clears the palate nicely. This is an interesting beer from start to finish.

Todd at Oblio’s says the tap version Gumballhead varies form the bottled variety and I’m with him on that. The bubblegum and bananas aspect of the beer that you get from the bottle is significantly muted on tap. That’s fine by me. It makes the beer much more drinkable and suitable for a good, long summer session. Finally, we’ve got a wheat that pairs nicely with our sunburn, mosquitoes and floods. Ahhhhhshkosh.