During a recent drive back from Milwaukee, I did what any self-respecting, beer-swilling Chicagoan would do. I stopped at the Mars Cheese Castle to buy some New Glarus beer.
Perched at the edge of Interstate 94, about 10 miles north of the state line, Mars Cheese Castle is a quick and easy stop for travelers in search of Wisconsin’s most essential provisions: beer, cheese and encased meats. That’s especially true of the beer, and the beer of New Glarus Brewing in particular.
Named for the small Swiss-style town south of Madison where the brewery was founded in 1993, New Glarus stopped distributing beer in Illinois in 2003. Ever since, Illinoisans have been left to make our own runs north of the border to get Wisconsin’s most legendary craft brew.
Though I’ve never made a dedicated run just for the beer, I rarely set foot inside the state without tracking down some New Glarus to bring home. That’s why I stopped at the Cheese Castle one Sunday afternoon. It’s also why, after passing a couple in the parking lot whose shopping cart teemed with New Glarus six-packs and 750-milliliter bottles, I smiled and said, “Heading back to Illinois?”
We all laughed.
Then I walked in, grabbed a sixer of New Glarus and, as I stood in line to pay, asked myself a question: Was this beer worth the effort? Is New Glarus really that good?
Sure, the brewery was rated as one of the world’s 100 best by users of the RateBeer website from 2006 to 2014 and gets similar raves on the competing BeerAdvocate website. But what was essential back when the nation had one-third as many breweries — a mere 15 years ago — isn’t necessarily so today. Chicago has developed one of the nation’s most robust beer markets, both in terms of local production and out-of-state beers imported to our taps and shelves. With a world-class selection just down the street for most of us, is it necessary to buy beer in Wisconsin?
So I went back to Mars Cheese Castle to find out. It was a Monday morning in November, and I grabbed all 11 types of New Glarus beers on the shelves. As I loaded the bottles onto the checkout counter, I asked the clerk whether he sold much of the stuff.
“It’s about 70 percent of our business,” he said.
I admit, the figure surprised me.
“Any idea how much of it comes from Illinois?” I asked.
“All of it,” he said.
Well, then.
Let me be clear: New Glarus is a very skilled brewery, and if I lived in the Great Northern Republic of Cheese, Packers and Union Busting, I’d be a regular customer. But is it worth the ride? I drove home and, bottle by bottle, found out.
Year-round beers
Spotted Cow (cream ale)
This is New Glarus’ biggest seller and the beer most commonly associated with the brewery. Though perfectly passable on a hot afternoon or as an afterthought alongside a hamburger, it is by definition not very impressive. Cream ales are intended to resemble the approachable taste of low-budget, adjunct-heavy lagers, and what results with Spotted Cow is a fine beer, but that’s about it. A Minnesota bar was busted this year for illegally selling Spotted Cow, which is the dumbest thing I’ve heard since the last time Donald Trump opened his mouth; Spotted Cow is easy to approximate on a beer menu with any number of legally available beers. It hardly seems worth risking a liquor license.
Worth the drive? No.
Try instead: There are many worthy alternatives, but the closest might be Hickster, made by Algonquin’s Scorched Earth Brewing; it, too, is a very easy drinking cream ale with little hop profile. For something approachable with a touch more oomph, try Revolution Brewing’s Cross of Gold golden ale. Or else a really cold Budweiser. Yeah, I just said that.
Moon Man (pale ale)
Enough pale ale lines the shelves of the average craft beer store that I presumed Moon Man would qualify as not worth the drive. But then I opened one. This beer smells surprisingly and appetizingly sweet — an unlikely intersection of butterscotch, cotton candy, mango, kiwi and orange. Moon Man is similarly sweet on the palate, but less intensely so. The hops seep through with very little bitterness, hewing toward a soft and gentle tropicality before landing with a clean finish. At a mere 5 percent alcohol, the approachability and unique compositon of this pale ale make it one of the very best.
Worth the drive? Yes, provided you plan to drink it fresh.
Two Women (pilsner)
Pilsner has become a stealthy hit in the craft beer world in recent years; Sierra Nevada, Firestone Walker and Goose Island have all introduced them, while Victory Brewing’s Prima Pils is a go-to for many savvy drinkers. Two Women is arguably better than all of them. (Well, let’s call it a tie with Prima Pils). This extraordinary pilsner is rife with breadiness and a gently sweet maltiness (sort of like Moon Man). Unlike many craft pilsners, there is virtually no defining hop character to this beer. It’s just a simple, clean pilsner that’s obviously made with quality ingredients. The bar to recommend driving all the way to Cheeseland for a pilsner should be high, especially with a decent selection on our shelves and a primo lager-focused brewery — Metropolitan Brewing — in our backyard. But Two Women is that good. In a more sensible world, this would be the New Glarus flagship, not Spotted Cow. If you are a habitual Spotted Cow drinker, give Two Women a try. You’ll thank me.
Worth the drive? Yes — especially in summer, when a cold pilsner from the bottle tastes just right.
Scream IIPA (imperial India pale ale)
Imperial IPAs have proliferated to the point that I find half of them quite good and the other half undrinkable. I count this one in the good half. But if any beer depends on freshness, it’s an imperial IPA, and who knows how fresh the bottles are just over the state line. I say this because I’ve been wowed by some bottles of this beer and shrugged off others. I’d pick up a four-pack at the brewery if I planned to drink it relatively quickly. Short of that, there are so many imperial IPAs out there that I’d stick with what I know is fresh.
Worth the drive? No.
Try instead: Pipeworks’ Ninja vs. Unicorn, or whatever Half Acre hop bomb just came out.
Apple Ale (fruit beer)
Other than Spotted Cow, New Glarus is probably best known for its fruit beers. Among them is Apple Ale, a brown ale that gets an addition of pressed Wisconsin apples. It’s a simple concoction that tastes simple — a bit too simple. Apple Ale is fresh and lively, but one more dimension would do wonders, whether a more robust beer base or a bit more earthiness or tartness. I’ll stick with the burgeoning cider world if I crave the intersection of apples and alcohol.
Worth the drive? No.
Try instead: For a sweeter cider that echoes Apple Ale, try Vander Mill’s ciders: Hard Apple or Totally Roasted. For a drier cider, check out Seattle Cider’s Dry or even its Semi Sweet. Also, I’ll be curious to check out Virtue Cider’s Chicago relaunch in early 2016.
Raspberry Tart (fruit beer)
Granted, this is a “Wisconsin framboise,” which means it is intended to be sweet. But it is so very sweet and lacking an important component I was expecting based on its name: tart. Raspberry Tart does show a trace of tartness and earthy funk upfront, but both give way to an incredibly long and sweet finish that makes this beer a bit too reminicent of soda or, as we say here in the Midwest, pop. New Glarus suggests drinking this beer “very cold,” which does suppress the sweetness a bit and ups its refreshing character. Even so, I don’t want more than a few sips.
Worth the drive? No. Well, maybe. I’m aging a bottle for a few months to see if a bit more tartness and complexity emerge.
Try instead: Founders Brewing’s Rubaeus hits the sweet-tart balance a bit more effectively.
Serendipity (fruit beer)
A clever amalgamation of fruit flavors: apples, cranberries and cherries mingle in what New Glarus says was a beer never intended to happen but that did because of a failed cherry crop. Rife with earthy fall-winter flavors (including a touch of cinnamon), Serendipity is an interesting and layered fruit beer that stands alone on the beer landscape.
Worth the drive? Yes.
Wisconsin Belgian Red (fruit beer)
My favorite of New Glarus’ year-round, large-format fruit beers. Made with Door County cherries, this is relatively straightforward, with the sweet-tart cherries doing the heavy lifting. But they ring with a harmony that’s not too sweet and not too tart. Flawless, and absolutely spot on with a rich meal.
Worth the drive? Yes.
Seasonal beers
Pumpkin Pie Lust (dark Weisse with pumpkin)
One of the more interesting pumpkin beers I’ve had, thanks mostly to the Weizen yeast employed, which makes for an interesting darkpumpkinweizen hybrid sort of beer. If you’re in need of a pumpkin beer, this is a respectable and creative effort. That said, it’s still a pumpkin beer. The last bottles are disappearing from shelves now until next year.
Worth the drive? No.
Try instead: Anything but pumpkin beer.
Milk Stout (milk stout)
A pleasant enough sweet milk chocolate flavor, but a bit thin and nothing you can’t find elsewhere. I’d like more stout from this beer — more roast and more coffee undertones. Alas. Available through December.
Worth the drive? No.
Try instead: Left Hand Milk Stout. Obviously. But also, Boulder Brewing’s Shake Chocolate Porter, which aces the chocolatey dark beer motif.
Fat Squirrel (English brown ale)
I recently tried an extra special bitter (ESB) from a Chicago brewery that I quite like, and it smelled like a beautiful IPA. The first taste was something of a cross between a beautiful IPA and the expected ESB. The second taste, and every subsequent taste just bummed me out; I didn’t want an ESB that tasted like an IPA. I wanted an ESB! All this is to say that a veteran brewery like New Glarus knows how to make a British style of beer that tastes like a British style of beer. Fat Squirrel tastes just like an English brown ale should — a little toffee, a little nutty and never showy. It’s a wonderfully restrained and faithful take, and if I lived in Wisconsin, I’d gladly sip this through the early days of winter. But in Chicago, there are quite enough quality brown ales on shelves. Available through December.
Worth the drive? No. But almost.
Try instead: Boffo Brown Ale from Michigan’s Dark Horse Brewing is outstanding, but I’m also curious to check out AleSmith Nut Brown Ale from California’s AleSmith Brewing, a highly regarded brewery that recently began distributing in the Chicago area.
So there you have it: four worth driving for, and seven not worth driving for. (Note: I also tried New Glarus’ Staghorn Octoberfest this fall when it was fresh, and it didn’t impress me. I would include it as not worth the drive due not only to its middling nature, but the fact that there are dozens of outstanding Oktoberfest beers on Chicago taps and shelves each fall. Add that, and our totals come to four for and eight against.)
New Glarus is a wonderful brewery, and none of these beers was an outright dud. Wisconsin is lucky to have it.
But Chicago is lucky to have one of the nation’s most robust craft beer landscapes. Most of us have all the choice we need right down the street.
Twitter @joshbnoel
