An Unexpected New Glarus Encounter

They're real, and they're fan-tastic.

Following a trip to a new microbrewery in Franklin, an evening of beer bent on a surprise detour. Nancy’s friends Dave and Vickie regularly return from Wisconsin trips with the state’s best-known beer not available outside its borders. As other brewers have anxiously expanded to new states, New Glarus has stuck with Wisconsin, building its reputation through quality and elusiveness (to non-Wisconsinites).

We had to build up to main attractions. Dave handed me a Fat Squirrel, a creamy nut brown ale. Plenty of chocolate and hazelnut notes collide effortlessly in this everyday ale. There’s no question of the hazelnut’s authenticity. I've tasted enough extract through the years to make me wary of any brown ale advertising it.

With our pizza dinner, Dave unveiled New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red, the fabled cherry beer served in a 750 mL bottle with a wax-sealed cap. Billed as Wisconsin Ale With Cherries, New Glarus takes a Belgian-style ale and loads it up with a pound of Door County cherries per bottle. That is not a typo. From the first whiff, this ale is all cherries, beginning with a bouquet of lush cherry creaminess.

Aside from a touch of sourness due to the fruit, I would have a hard time mistaking this magnificent ale for anything Belgian. Neither lambic nor a standard ale brewed with cherries, New Glarus occupies a lone crossroads of cherry brews. There’s a dirtiness to this ale, a likely product of the cherries, that I love but cannot define.

You cannot escape the rich cherry fruit and the occasional sensation of cherry pits rounding it out. I have only tasted it in Rogue’s Creek Ale, also brewed with heavy doses of cherries.

Elegant, fruity and beautiful, this New Glarus has a light effervescence that charges up what could be thick, sluggish ale. With several years of aging on this bottle, the beer also possesses a slight cider character that lent a nice mustiness.

 Full as I was, I could not turn down the final beer, New Glarus Raspberry Tart. Most brewers drop in raspberry as an accent or in a lighter beer like hefeweizen. New Glarus goes full steam ahead; at times, I swore I tasted fruit pulp or puree.
The label calls it lightly hopped, but don’t bother searching for the Hallertau in Raspberry Tart. Enjoy the rich raspberry flavor and a tart fruitiness unlike any other. The opaque purple ale is a perfect nightcap or dessert beer with unparalleled fruit complexity.