Central Waters Brewing Company turns 20!

For a middle-of-nowhere place, Central Waters Brewing Company in Amherst, Wisconsin, is pretty fantastic. As with a lot of Wisconsin breweries most of their offerings are pretty standard -- "Nothing too extreme; we emulate the Minnesotans that way yah" -- but solid. Their space itself is really nice, with a decent-sized tap room that draws a very loyal local crowd as well as a fair share of travelers. They also draw some of their heating and electrical power from their solar array, which is a big plus by me.

In 2014 I attended their sixteenth anniversary party, and have attempted to do so every year since. It's a ticketed event, and in just the past five years tickets have gone from lasting online for hours to literally seconds -- in fact, I missed last year's party because my phone was too slow over a restaurant's wifi for me to score. The party sees the release of their annual beer, a thick, viscous imperial stout that sees plenty of time in bourbon barrels. (Oftentimes they're actually a blend of BA stouts, but we won't go down that rabbit hole. For an overview of these and their other rare beers, click here.)

They also tap a bunch of CW beers rare and familiar, allow bottle shares, offer food vendors and CW merch (except for tacker signs, due to their sharp edges -- someday I'll get up there to buy one!), and generally make with the merry. The party wraps in the early evening, and at that point all of the pleasures of the greater Stevens Point area are available to you. (The first time I attended with my wife we had some awesome tapas. She kind of hates beer events so now I typically try to find a bottle share after, typically at whatever cut-rate hotel I'm staying at.)

This year's party took place on January 27. A trio of my best drinking buds were attending but I drove solo in order to undertake some side quests (a bud's butcher shop in East Troy, a few stops at different bottle shops, food of my choice) and enjoy some time on the open road with my podcasts (Norm MacDonald and Marc Maron, mainly) and music. I took a leisurely pace that got me into the Amherst area about five and a half hours after leaving the house and opted to check in at my hotel and hit a few bottle shops first in hopes that the line would dissipate before I arrived at Central Waters.

The party began at 3, and I was parked and in line around 4. As you can see below, my "no line" strategy worked brilliantly!

Hot damn, a line! As a Chicagoan I fucking love lines!

The line actually moved really well, and 15 minutes later I was inside and ready to enter another line. Except when the bar is something like 60 feet wide (obstensibly divided into three different types of pours), the "line" is more of a filthy scrum of people forming a quarter-circle slowly pushing forward for service from perhaps 20 harried volunteers. My buds were near the back of this scrum and some kind souls were all "go ahead, we're never going to get beers anyway so go be with your friends," and sure as shootin' we were in a line. Twenty minutes of that and we'd moved maybe five feet forward, but got word that the part of the serving area that was marked "boring AF year-round pours" was actually serving everything, so off we went and maybe five minutes and three clumsy drunk spills (this would become a theme; glad I wore a polyester coat) later I had a pour of the rum barrel aged coconut porter and the bourbon barrel aged vanilla stout. (The former is scheduled for bottling this year; the latter was a one-off treat.)

Unfortunately, the two beers I finally had 45 minutes into my time at the fest were decidedly "meh." Hopefully there's time to improve the coconut porter before it's bottled, because the consensus in-person and on Untappd is that it's fakey, tasting of white rum (you know, the stuff that isn't actually barrel aged) and artificial coconut. The vanilla stout was better but not great; I'm pretty sure the base for this beer is the basic Brewer's Reserve BA Stout that CW makes, and while that was a personal favorite around 2010 when I started getting heavily into beer I have since come to prefer stouts with more body than this offers. The flavor was pretty good, though.

I ran into several groups of buds on my way over to the separate area where the anniversary stout, CW XX, was being poured so I got to try a few random pours from their bottle shares. I also got spilled on a few more times; a densely packed warehouse full of drunken people leads to that kind of thing. Also, every bottle sharer ended up taking the space of two people, as there were many circles of folks surrounding their bags full of bottles. So yeah...crowded with clumsy drunks, CW was.

A CW XX crowd shot I stole from Facebook

As always, the anniversary stout did not disappoint. I don't have extensive tasting notes, as it was served pretty cold and I didn't nurse it for the half hour it would've taken to bring it to a nice 50 degrees or so to really open it up. (I'm planning to crack a bottle tonight with a few folk, and may post more about it after.)

So after maybe an hour and a half, my small crew opted to buy our bottles and head over to nearby O'so, which has the distinction of being one of the few breweries that scaled up and entered the Chicago market only to pull out a few years later. (Maybe they'll be back? It looks like they have a big expansion planned as part of a move from Plover to Stevens Point.)

The bottle line moved quickly (they've improved this tremendously since the fiasco that was CW16), and off I went to my car. Unfortunately, my assumption that the sunny mid-40s daytime temps meant it would be an easy walk through the dark fields to my car proved unfounded, as I took a big-time spill flat on my back on some unexpected ice. My night ended with a trip to a drive-through, mass quantities of ibuprofen and fitful, pained sleep (at one point it took me five tries to lie down in bed due to severe pain in the back of my left ribcage, but fortunately nothing is broken) rather than O'so, pizza and a hotel bottle share. And none of my bottles broke, so I have that going for me.

Social media was full of all manner of opinions as to the success of the party, with 60 percent of the commentariat saying too many people were overserved (there were reports of copious amounts of vomit and someone pulling a line out of a brewing vessel, among other travesties) and 40 percent being all "eh, it's beer, what do you expect?" One exec from CW posted that bottle sharing probably won't be allowed next year, which makes some sense -- it's CW's party, so shouldn't their beer be the focus?

In any case, I had fun at CW XX despite the sloppy folk and my own clumsiness. The scuttlebutt says that they really want to make a big deal out of next year's 21st anniversary party, as people born the year Central Waters was opened will finally be of age and able to attend. Hopefully, I'll be there!

Ha ha gross sexist shit in 2018 (Cosmic Brewery sucks)

Bit of a hot take as I was pressed for time this morning....

Hey Cosmic Brewery, I hope to visit California in the next few years and visit a bunch of breweries. But yours won't be one of them, you juvenile twits! (If the reviews of your beers are accurate you'll be out of the brewing game by then anyway. Maybe you can survive as a strip club?)

Care to guess how Cosmic is responding to those who criticized this Facebook post? That's right, by blocking them! Because lessons are hard. Because if boys can't be boys then they won't remain sexist classless assholes for life.

Sexism in the craft beer industry is a bigly tremendous huge deal and something I'll undoubtedly be posting about here in the future. Because it's not just about photos like this. It's about the pack mentality that sets in against women when a crowd is strongly majority male; a very good friend had her rear end grabbed repeatedly in the stinky sweaty crowd at FoBAB in 2015.

Play it cool, boys. This ain't cool.

ETA: Annnnnnnndddddddd the post is gone from Facebook and Twitter. And it looks like they lost a sponsor, Celestron Telescopes. No sort of apology put forth as of yet. When they do get around to one, it'll probably be something like this:

Wow!

This is one beautiful space at which to quaff a cider and do some grubbin'.

Vanilla doesn't have to be so vanilla

Vanilla needn't be, you know, "vanilla." (As in "plain." Though Urban Dictionary may have a more elaborate definition. It's on you if you choose to look it up.)

Neither of these two limited-run barrel-aged stouts were vanilla in any way, shape or form.

The one on the left, the 2017 Dosvidanya Vanilla Rye released at Destihl's Dosvidanya Day in Normal, Illinois, a few months ago delivered almost everything you'd hope for when you hear "Vanilla Rye." (Let's not get out over our skis; there is only one Vanilla Rye king, and Goose Island hasn't released it since 2014. It's still flippin' delicious assuming it was properly cellared and not shipped coast to coast four times last summer.) The vanilla is plentiful without verging into Mallo Cup territory and the rye gives it a touch of spiciness.

The one on the right...AWAGOO! I've only had a few BA beers from Bottle Logic, and I've had the good fortune to enjoy the 2016 release of Fundamental Observation BA Vanilla Stout twice. It's truly world class, the oak complementing the vanilla beans and a nice, thick body that gives a tremendous mouthfeel. (God I hate that term. But sometimes it's the best word available, so I use it.)

I was very happy to share these with a really good friend recently and while I'm happy to have two more bottles of the Dosvidanyas to enjoy in coming months, I'm stuck on trying to figure out what I can trade for more of that 2016 Fundamental Observation. I love the memories, but I'm always open to re-experiencing a rare and wonderful thing.

Hmmmmm

This is interesting-ish.

Chicago should be more highly rated, of course. ;)

Easy button!

When news broke that Mikerphone and More Brewing were collaborating on an imperial rye stout with vanilla and lactose, there was much excitement in the Chicago beer community. But when the January 21 cash-only $25 per bottle limit two release of Vanillanoize at Mikerphone was announced two days ahead of time, the response was more mixed. Complaints centered on the price per bottle, the short notice, the prohibition against bottle sharing in line and the fact that the release was being held on TEH LORDS DAY!

I'm not a big fan of lines, in part because I recently arrived five hours early for a release and was still 300th in line. On that particular day I was able to "double dip" by lining up again, which meant that had I been willing to settle for a single bottle I literally could've gotten there 20 minutes after the sale began and gotten a bottle while saving almost five and a half hours of my time. But I digress, sort of.

On the day of the Mikerphone-More release I was up early and monitored the situation on Facebook and Beer Advocate. (Chicago beer peeps love to talk about line length. It's just a thing 'round here. Also, every hour spent in line for a limited release entitles you to ask for more $$$ in secondary trade or cash value.) I'd decided the night before that based on the experience at the release described above I was going to spend as little time in line as possible. I opted to have my wife drive me there and drop me off, and I'd go through the line while she was off at a Starbuck's enjoying a coffee inside (the way winter was meant to be lived).

So we drove off in time for me to get into line at 10:58am, and moments later I was given ticket number 270, guaranteeing me one of the 500-something allotments. I chatted with a familiar and a few new buds during the grueling 22 minutes it took to get to the point of sale, and all was well. The Mikerphone taproom line was very long and food was needed so by 11:45 we were at More Brewing enjoying one of Shaun's stellar NEIPAs and a nice lunch. By 1 or so I was home and giggling at the many silly trade offers and sale attempts online, because god forbid one drink a beer, right?

Anyway, this was one man's experience on one day. But it's also how I plan to attend the majority of limited brewery-only releases moving forward. Cheers!

Beer: A love story in brief

A decade ago, the thought of consuming a beer all by my lonesome made me sad.

Today, it's something I do more nights than not.

Though my dogs are usually with me, and my wife is usually home. So I'm not truly alone.

And so long as I have a beer, I don't feel so lonesome.

In fact, beer is super social. And in an age when our social lives no longer necessarily involve the physical presence of other people, it's uncool but social to crack a brew or two all by myself down in my dank, dirty basement! (Actually, my basement isn't all that dank or dirty. The carpeting is ruined from the occasional sump pump issue and beer or whiskey spill, however. Someday I'll rip it up and do tile.)

Beer is much more social than bourbon, which was my first alcohol love/fascination. Around 2009 I became very intrigued by bourbon following a visit to Kentucky. I also found that the bourbon community mostly consisted of other middle-aged white dudes, which is a bit meh to me. I was, however, happy to find Pappy on the shelf at cost at a local store. (I sorta miss those days!) Also, bourbon straight is delicious but not all that refreshing, and as a new transplant to the suburbs I needed something to cool me down after mowing the lawn.

So, beer. Here she came, into me like a train, around 2010-2011. An endlessly fascinating variety was out there just as the craft beer boom began to burgeon. And in just over five years I've tried more than 4,000 different beers, ranging from single two-ounce pours at beer fests to 220 bottles and draft pours of Zombie Dust.

Between the crazy number of breweries we have and the incredible distribution to our market, Chicago is a great place to beer. And in the coming days, weeks, months and years I plan to bore the intertubes half to death with tales of beer consumed and then some. So join me in my beerventures right here on this new beer blog!