Wisconsin Beer, Cheese and Fireworks

As I travel on with Midwest week, I'm gonna write about beer.

I realize some of you might be wondering if I've hung up my paint brush in favor of hitting the road.

Yes, I'd much rather travel around than paint.  But this wanderlust is only temporary.

I toured around St. Paul in part 1 here, and part 2 here, and now I'm heading across the border to Wisconsin for contraband. 

Beer, cheese, and illegal fireworks to be exact.

I think the motto of beer drinkers in Minnesota is something like.... "out for a day on one of the 10,000 lakes?  Don't forget the beer".

Picnic?  Good excuse for a beer.

It seems everything in Minnesota revolves around beer.

Even the light rail, which twists and turns through the city (with mostly empty rail cars) sports big beer ads.

Summer in Minnesota is a reason to have a beer.  It seems so are Winter Spring and Fall, at least that's my perception.

Every occasion, every event.  It's been that way for as long as I can remember.

I pity the people who don't drink beer.  Not because they are missing out, but because they are subjected to so much of it.

Most summer weekends you can find a beer festival or craft brew tasting being hosted some place.

And everyone and their dog seems to be making beer.

Everyone's friend of a friends cousins aunts brothers sisters wife - knows someone with a craft home beer, a micro brewery pub, or a full blown brewery-brewery.

Excelsior Brewing Company, Minnetonka Minnesota

Or sometimes it's even closer than that, like your cousin or the brother in law of your sister in law.

Towns and cities from small to large have a local brew house, pub house, micro brewery, whatever they are all called - they've all got one.

How can a state with a population only upwards of the five million range, support that much beer?  

The state bird is the loon.  Yes really.  Could that have anything to do with it? 

Then there are those of us who want what we can't have for no other reason than we can't have it.

Samples on tap, New Glarus Brewery, Wisconsin

The beer you can only get across the Wisconsin border.  Like New Glarus.

So what do we do?

If you are me, first thing would be to learn how to take photos with your phone so you don't have to carry a camera.  Sorry some of these pics suck.

Next would be teaching your kids illegal/bad habits (like last week, how to gamble by betting on the ponies), so you load them in the car, take them across the state line to Wisconsin, and teach by example how to buy Wisconsin cheese, beer, and illegal fireworks.

All the while hoping when they get old enough they won't do any of those things.  Well, I guess I don't care if they buy Wisconsin cheese.

I know what you're thinking.... Bliss is going to helll for this.

Fireworks City, Baldwin Wisconsin

It's illegal to shoot good fireworks in Minnesota.  You can have all the sparklers and black smoke snakes you want, but if it goes higher than 2 feet off the ground you can't get it here.

But you can in Wisconsin.

The Minnesota government is trying to save us from ourselves.  Or maybe there are an inordinate amount of Minnesotans who skyrocket their digits into space along with illegal fireworks on the 4th of July, I don't know.

So anyhow, we set out on another day trip, this time to visit our neighbors to the east.

I really love Wisconsin.  I find it much more interesting than Minnesota even without fireworks and beer.  Probably because I don't live there.

First we stopped at Historic Casanova Liquors.

You read that right, only in Wisconsin would there be a historic liquor store as a destination.  Casanova's also has a wine bar and restaurant, and it's been there since they were selling beer out of caves carved out of rock behind their store.

They sell some beers by the bottle so you can get a taste for new or unique ones, and they also have little sticky notes next to the ones we were on the hunt for that say.... "not available in Minnesota".

Yeah, those are the ones I'm talking about.

Seriously, when friends found out we were going they put an order in with us.  Guess we're not the only ones that want what we can't get in Minnesota.  Our two oldest kids also put in orders from Wisconsin.... but for cheese curds.  They must they buy their own beer.

So much beer and cheese were loaded into our vehicle by days end, that our son said it looked like we were making a giant batch of beer cheese soup.  Hmmmm......

A couple years ago we toured the New Glarus Brewery, with George and Betty (our St. Paul tour guides).  They figured we needed to broaden our horizons so we toured the neighbor before we toured our own backyard.

New Glarus Brewery is a beautiful new place, spotless, and our guide was funny.  Employees own a stake in the brewery - New Glarus brewery workers are treated very well.

We left that Wisconsin trip hauling home beer too, just in time for Fathers Day where we hosted a beer tasting ourselves.

On that first Wisconsin trip we also went to the famous Leinenkugel Brewery and I took more crappy cell phone photos.

As new and state of the art as the New Glarus Brewery is, the Leinenkugel Brewery is vintage and nostalgic.

We loved them both, and for the most part all beers taste the same to me.

I know.... beer connoisseurs are plotting my demise right now.

 Leine's is considered a major brewery - bigger, highly distributed nationwide.  New Glarus is considered a small brewery, but seemed like a large operation to me.

Lest you think we regularly corrupt our kids, we did not have them along for either of those Wisconsin brewery tours, but here in Minnesota we have the August Schells Brewery which is fun for the whole family.

Besides finding it interesting to see how things are made, I think what I like about brewery tours is all the history that goes along with it. 

The older breweries have little museums with antiques and vintage signs I'd like to hide under my shirt and take home with me.

I don't know who's hands these are, I just know neither of them are mine.  I think they are George and Betty's.  It's sort of odd that for the first 20 years we knew them both, they never drank anything.  Now they adult-nap us and take us for beer and wine tours, and when left on their own, they stop for a tour of places like the Jack Daniels Distillery.

Just so you know, we do take the kids on tours of places like the Jelly Belly Factory in California, or places that make chocolate and baked goods, don't turn us in to the CPA.

The August Schells Brewery is also home to famous 1919 Root Beer.  You can buy it by the mini keg, which we have done for parties.

Which leads me to this.... over at that Casanova's Liquor Store in Wisconsin you can buy a Growler. 

A growler is like a to go order of your favorite tap beer, a 64 oz. mini jug.

Or in the case of the Bliss Ranch gang..... your favorite ROOT beer, and the growlers are refillable.

(Just so you have this straight... we drove to Wisconsin and bought beer that we can't get in Minnesota, and we bought root beer from Minnesota in Wisconsin that you can get here}.

We had that growler filled with some old fashioned 1919 Root beer.... and came home and had root beer floats. 

And cheese.

Next up on midwest week, making deep fried cheese curds.

Lo-cal of course.

Not.

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