Read about the 10-12 world-class, handcrafted beers that we make every year.

Read about the many prestigious awards that have been bestowed upon the brewery and its beers.

Meet Dan and Deborah Carey, the co-owners of the brewery.

January 11, 2010 Thaw Old Man Winter with New Glarus Brewing Company's Cabin Fever Bock.

Thaw Old Man Winter with New Glarus Brewing Company's Cabin Fever Bock.

New Glarus, WI
January 11th, 2010:

Seldom in life are you able to savor the quiet hush like you can during the cold Wisconsin Winter. So New Glarus Brewing Company encourages you to relax with a 'Cabin Fever Honey Bock', their first seasonal release of 2010. This easy drinking Pale Bock is brewed with Clover Honey from Pure Sweet Honey of Verona, Wisconsin.

Bock beers first appeared in the 14th century and were traditionally aged over the long winter. Some even speculate that this is how the style got its name. The German word for 'goat' is 'bock' and the goat is the astrological symbol for those born during the height of winter making these brews confident Capricorns. The warm sweetness of Bock Beer insured their reputation as delicious 'liquid bread'. They are so malty rich that these sturdy brews even sustained monks during the fasting of the Lenten Season.

New Glarus Brewing Company's 'Cabin Fever Honey Bock' takes this classic style in a brighter direction than the traditional dark German Bock. Cabin Fever is a 'Helles' or Pale Bock with a golden color and lower strength than the German Style Dark Bock. This Pale Bock is brewed with an exclusive blend of Wisconsin Pale and Caramel Malts that balance seamlessly with a unique Lager Yeast and European hops.

Cool days draw us close to the warmth of home fires. This is the season to sip away the chill and embrace quiet evenings with friends and family. Whether you reminisce the passing summer sun or thrill to squeaky steps through drifting snow, one thing is certain about winter in Wisconsin, this too shall pass.

November 11, 2009 Settle in to the Wisconsin Winter with New Glarus Brewing Company's Snowshoe Red Ale.

Settle in to the Wisconsin Winter with New Glarus Brewing Company's Snowshoe Red Ale.

New Glarus, WI
November 11th, 2009:

New Glarus beers reflect all that is Wisconsin and nothing says "Wisconsin Winter" like Snowshoe Red Ale. Whether your daily trek leads you to the wilds of Wisconsin or simply back to your front door, the warm and rich flavors of Snowshoe Red Ale help us appreciate the stillness of a Wisconsin Winter. Settle in with Wisconsin's Snowshoe Ale.

Daniel Carey (Diploma Master Brewer, New Glarus Brewing Company) welcomes us back from our daily trek in the same way that his Irish ancestors were, with a wonderfully heartwarming Irish Red Ale. Snowshoe Ale is brewed with a blend of roasted American and German caramel malts. The complicated decoction mash process ensures a rich malty backbone, which is balanced by elegant Czech Saaz and Bavarian Hallertau Hops. Try pairing this beer with Wisconsin Gouda, Pork Roast or even a Reuben Sandwich.

Expect this beer to pour a beautiful copper-red with a fruity ale body and a spicy hop finish. Then sit back and rejoice in the season. As Deborah Carey, Brewery President, likes to say, "It's these Wisconsin Winters that keep the whiners out".

November 08, 2009 Celebrate Wisconsin with New Glarus Brewing Company's Lambic-Style 'Wisconsin Cran-bic'.

Celebrate Wisconsin with New Glarus Brewing Company's Lambic-Style 'Wisconsin Cran-bic'.

New Glarus, WI
November 7th 2009:

Deborah (President) and Daniel (Diploma Master Brewer) Carey of New Glarus Brewing Company have always taken their love of Wisconsin to new heights by creating beers inspired by all that this great state has to offer. Their latest Unplugged release, 'Wisconsin Cran-bic' continues this tradition by honoring the 'wilds' of Wisconsin with a marriage of wine and beer, adding a lively little fruit to make it uniquely Wisconsin. Nowhere in the world (except Wisconsin) will you find a brew like this!

Created using spontaneous fermentation true to the original lambic style, 'Wisconsin Cran-bic' is aged in oak barrels. As a nod to all that is Wisconsin, Daniel has updated this 500 year old brewing style with the state fruit, cranberries. Wisconsin provides more than half of the world's total supply of cranberries, and is the number one cranberry producing state in the nation. To further update this authentic style, Daniel has embraced the use of wild Wisconsin yeast. The combination of these novel adaptations to one of the most unique and well established beer styles results in a brew that is truly authentically Wisconsin.

Sparkling and bright this is a Wisconsin original created for you in the traditional method employed by the Lambic Brewers of Belgium including five months of outdoor resting in oak barrels. Indigenous yeast and cranberries from the “wilds” of Wisconsin flawlessly pair to dance on your palette. Raise your glass, and toast to all the rare and delightful treasures that are to be found in your local Wisconsin 'wilderness' by embracing your wild side with this truly 'Wisconsin Wild Brew"! Cheers!

October 23, 2009 Here & Now; Beer Tax Debate Cont.

Continuation of debate on Beer Tax by Deborah Carey and Rep. Terese Berceau, check local listings for air times: http://wpt2.org/npa/HAN817_beertalk.cfm

October 22, 2009 WOLK Weekend Perspective (Beer Tax; Carl Nolen)

October 16, 2009 Here & Now; Beer Tax Debate

Here & Now; Deborah Carey debates Rep. Terese Berceau on Beer Tax, check local listings for times tonight and Saturday: http://bit.ly/2oF8f5

October 12, 2009 The Fresh Draft: Wisconsin Breweries Uniting to Ensure Your Pint is All It Should Be.

The Fresh Draft: Wisconsin Breweries Uniting to Ensure Your Pint Is All It Should Be.

New Glarus, WI
October 12th, 2009:

There are few experiences more memorable than savoring a fresh pint at your favorite Wisconsin pub. However, despite the best efforts of the brewer, the final pour makes all the difference. This is why New Glarus Brewing Company continues to drive quality in Wisconsin by uniting Wisconsin brewers, beer distributors and tap line cleaners in a quest to ensure your next beer is the 'perfect pint'. Together, for the first time in Wisconsin, they have collectively published an industry endorsed letter reinforcing the importance of regular line cleaning. Also, the American Brewers Association recently published a very informative 'Draught Beer Quality Manual'. Visit http://www.draughtquality.org/FrontPage for details.

Generally draft beer will always taste better than bottled beer.... unless the draft lines are dirty. Customers expect clean tables, clean rest rooms, and clean dishes. They should also expect clean draft lines. As Daniel Carey (Diploma Master Brewer, New Glarus Brewing Company) says "Dirty draft lines makes an otherwise great beer taste sour, flat or suppressed. That is, lacking that crisp flavor one expects in fresh beer. Dirty glassware results in an unappetizing flat appearance. The wrong blend of CO2 and Nitrogen Gas makes beer taste dull and flat, lacking foam, sparkle and crispness." For these reasons New Glarus Brewing Company recommends that taverns clean their lines every two weeks and post documentation of the line cleaning cycle in all keg coolers.

The brewery is also reaching out to companies that install, clean, and maintain beer equipment in Wisconsin to ensure the 'perfect pint'. Cleaning draft lines is a specialized process that if not done properly is ineffective. When done right, the cost for line cleaning is small compared to the resulting increase in draft sales for a restaurant and the overall enjoyment of the tasting experience.

New Glarus Brewing also employs a Draft Specialist, Jeff Schaefer, to conduct in-house draft seminars at the brewery for tavern and restaurant owners. These 6 hour seminars detail the many factors that go into creating a great pint. New Glarus Brewing Company is also using the distributor network to help train retailers on proper pour, clean glassware, and draught maintenance.

When a customer spends his or her hard earned money on draft beer it is the brewers' responsibility to insure it tastes great! Brewers work very hard to insure beer is "just right" when it leaves the brewery. Unfortunately, souring bacteria grow quickly in dirty draft lines, spoiling taste. So education and quality standards for proper tap line cleaning are paramount.

The easiest way to determine if your favorite local pub cleans their lines? Just ask! Pubs will have the information on hand, as it is part of their regular restaurant maintenance. Some draft cleaning companies even award certificates to those establishments that regularly clean their lines. A quick checklist for you;
- is the draft system cleaned every 14 days?
- is the beer carbonated properly
- does the beer taste like it does at the brewery?
You can stop by the Hilltop Brewery in New Glarus, WI to compare for yourself: lines cleaned every 14 days by Jim's Tap Cleaning Service, pushed using a McDantim Gas Blender, and beer fresh that is straight from the brewery warehouse. It is worth the trip!

Just like a properly cooked steak, sizzling on a warm plate, beer served with a proper gas blend, clean draft lines and clean glassware makes for a "Wow" experience. Once you have found a responsible pub be sure to congratulate them on a 'Job well done'!

October 08, 2009 Capital Brewery letter on Beer Tax (Assembly Bill 287)

Capital Brewery

Hello Beer Enthusiasts,

Next week Tuesday October 13th at 10AM there is a hearing scheduled at the State Capitol regarding Assembly Bill 287 that would raise the tax on all beer produced in Wisconsin.

Certainly the position of the Capital Brewery and the Wisconsin Brewers Guild is to stiffly oppose this bill from reaching law. The bill would raise the tax on breweries under 50,000 BBLS of production from $1.00 to $10.00 per BBL. The proponents for this bill have argued that this is a small amount and that the tax has not been raised since 1969.

What they have not chosen to report is that Wisconsin ranks in the top 5 in our Country with a total tax impact of >40% of the cost of beer going to one tax or another. They also report that the average (so they call us) beer consumer would not mind having the price of beer go up and that this is easily supported by residents of Wisconsin. I guess you are not average citizens as I have yet to meet a beer enthusiast that is favorable of seeing their beer go up in price.

If this would pass as a "production" tax, the reality is that all beer manufactured must be sold through a 3 tier system. Here at CBC we have all 3 licenses, but for all beer sold off our premise there is a $ multiplier added on by the distributor and the retailer. The impact of this tax will likely result in an increase of .50 cents a glass or $2.00 per case on every brand of beer.

Additionally, the State has collected nearly 400 million dollars over the last 40 years and has yet to allocate monies to these initiatives. Why not....,I would like to know. Now they are pursuing taxing all of us to support new spending of unproven programs, during the worst recession of our life time. This is a bad idea.

We need to stop this now. If you wish to take action on this, please reference the links below and do the following:

Contact your representative and express your point of view - they will appreciate it

Tell your friends that are not on this list

Attend the hearing next Tuesday at 10:00 AM (see below) plan to arrive early and register your point of view.

Next time you visit our Brewery, please let me know your thoughts and of any questions that you may have. I would be glad to hear from you.

Cheers!

Carl Nolen
President
Capital Brewery
Wisconsin Brewers Guild

Members, Committee on Public Safety:
http://www.legis.wisconsin.gov/w3asp/commpages/IndividualCommittee.aspx?COMMITTEE=Public+Safety&HOUSE=Assembly

Meeting Notice on AB 287:
http://committeeschedule.legis.state.wi.us/files/HearingNotices//09-10-13-1000-2009APSA-12331.html

September 26, 2009 2009 GABF Winners Announced!

September 16, 2009 New Glarus steps up big time with an old-school English porter

New Glarus steps up big time with an old-school English porter

By TODD HAEFER • For The Post-Crescent • September 16, 2009

Reddit
Newsvin
New Glarus Old English Porter

New Glarus Old English Porter
New Glarus Brewing Co., New Glarus, Wis.
www.newglarusbrewing.com)
5.5 percent ABV

If you enjoy the porter style, here’s a beer that will change all that you thought you knew about the ale.

New Glarus owner and brewmaster Dan Carey based his recipe on writings that talked of English porters in the late 1700s to the mid-1800s differing from the typical brown ales by having strong wine-like properties from adding soured beer to a batch of fresh beer. The drinkers of the time appreciated this quality. The beers also had a touch of smoke in the flavor.

My favorite porters and imperial stouts, such as those made by England’s Samuel Smith, are ones that have these qualities. Carey’s interpretation, however, takes this to a new level.

The color and body of New Glarus’ beer are typical of the porter style, but that’s where the similarity ends. Instead of a strong roasted grain profile, a main taste element in today’s porters, the first taste is of a smooth, nutty malt. This is quickly masked by a strong acidic, vinegary sourness. Some oak barrel aging results in a dry finish.

If you let the beer warm a bit and can get past the sourness, the malt flavors, including smoked malt, become more prominent and result in a complex beer that keeps rewarding the taste buds. Be warned, though — the sourness is strong, as in Belgian lambic strong, and not what the typical taster expects in a porter.

The beer’s character reminded me a lot of the Belgian sour ales I’ve tried, although lacking in the strong fruity, cherry afternotes in the best ones, such as Vichtenaar, that help balance the acidity. It’s too bad we can’t use a time machine to go back to Victorian England and taste what the beers were like at the time.

New Glarus is still only available in Wisconsin. Old English Porter is part of the one-off Unplugged series, so supplies will likely not last long.

Beer Man sez: New Glarus’ porter is not for the faint of heart, but a rewarding experience for the adventurous.

TODD HAEFER of Scandinavia, Wis., gets paid to drink beer and write about it for Weekend. He can be reached at beerman@postcrescent.com. Read past reviews at www.postcrescent.com/beerman.

September 02, 2009 Inc. 500|5000 Honors New Glarus Brewing Company for 3rd Year in a Row

Inc. 500|5000 Honors New Glarus Brewing Company for 3rd Year in a Row.

New Glarus, WI
September 2nd, 2009:

Inc. 500|5000, which earns their name by tracking the fastest growing private companies in the United States, began in 1991 with the 100 fastest growing private companies in the nation. In 1992, they expanded this listing to include the Top 500 fastest growing national companies. In 2007 they expanded their listings even farther, with the Top 5000 fastest growing private companies in the United States, living up to the name that we know them by today. Due to their rapid growth, New Glarus Brewing Company was recently recognized as one of the Top 100 Food and Beverage Companies in the United States by Inc. 500|5000 for the 3rd year in a row.

New Glarus Brewing Company began humbly but quickly. Deborah Carey (President, New Glarus Brewing Company) raised the capital and founded New Glarus Brewing Company in May of 1993. In June, 1993 Daniel Carey (Diploma Master Brewer, New Glarus Brewing Company) rolled out the first barrels. The combined efforts of Deborah and Daniel Carey placed New Glarus Brewing Company as one of the fastest start-ups of a microbrewery in the United States. From their humble beginnings (New Glarus Brewing Company produced 3,000 barrels the first year), Deborah and Daniel Carey have continually expanded, providing more and more of their friends in Wisconsin with their world class brews.

New Glarus Brewing Company is proud to rank among the Top 100 Food and Beverage Companies in the United States, as well as the Top 5000 fastest growing private companies in the nation for the 3rd year in a row. The research firm Sageworks states the Industry Benchmark growth for this three year period is 20.47%. During this period, New Glarus Brewing Company showed a 110.6% growth in the last 3 years. This is despite the fact that New Glarus Brewing Company continues to distribute in Wisconsin exclusively. Therefore, the credit for this accomplishment lies not only on the shoulders of Dan and Deb Carey, but much of this honor is due to the continual support of all their friends in Wisconsin. Cheers!!

September 01, 2009 Food Manufacturing; Crafting a Better Brewery

September 01, 2009 Toast the Harvest Moon with New Glarus Brewing Company's Staghorn Octoberfest

Toast the Harvest Moon with New Glarus Brewing Company's Staghorn Octoberfest.

New Glarus, WI
September 1st, 2009:

Traditionally, Octoberfest beers were brewed to be enjoyed during the fall, allowing all to celebrate the hard work that had passed in the summer months. New Glarus Brewing Company's latest release, Staghorn Octoberfest, allows all their friends in Wisconsin to partake in this enjoyable celebration.

Prior to the invention of refrigeration Octoberfest (or Märzen) beers were brewed in March, to avoid the bacterial growth that occurred in beers brewed during the hot summer months, yielding the name. These beers were kept on ice and/or lagered during the summer to protect them from the summer's heat, yielding a delicious reward in the fall for all the hot summer month's work. The first Oktoberfest was a celebration of King Ludwig's marriage in Bavaris, which is celebrated the last two weeks of September. Nowhere is this celebratory reward enjoyed more than in Munich, where they enjoy festivals that include music, food, and drinking in tents during the Octoberfest celebrations. The Village of New Glarus continues this tradition with their Octoberfest celebration on September 26th (you can find more information on this event at; http://newglarusbrewing.com/EventInfo.cfm?EventID=110). New Glarus Brewing Company will continue the traditional festivities with the Jimmys live music at their Hilltop brewery. New Glarus Brewing Company invites you to join in the celebration and toast the harvest moon with their latest offering, 'Staghorn Octoberfest'.

True to style, New Glarus Brewing Company's 'Staghorn Octoberfest' is brewed using the time honored methods and an extra slow lager to release the smooth flavor of roasted malts. You will find absolutely no additives, preservatives, or artificial agents of any kind in this bier, and over 1,100 lbs. of malted barley in every handcrafted batch. 100% natural, great Midwest barleys, the world's most expensive hops, fresh yeast from Germany, and clear Wisconsin water make Staghorn Octoberfest "Wisconsin's Real Red". Expect this bier to pour with a rich head of foam that will enhance its incredible spice bouquet. 'Staghorn Octoberfest' combines a smooth amber body with a clean crisp finish. Be sure to hold this one up to the light of any harvest moon and enjoy "Wisconsin's Real Red".

August 26, 2009 The Full Pint Interview With Dan Carey of New Glarus Brewing

Interview With Dan Carey of New Glarus Brewing

Submitted by Dan on August 26, 2009 – 11:41 am

TheFullPint.com’s Dan takes time to speak with Dan Carey of New Glarus Brewing. After TheFullPint.com got to try many New Glarus beers by means of Internet trade, we had to talk to the man behind some of the best beers made in the country, if not the world.

Topics of discussion include the new R&D Series, the Unplugged Series, making craft beer for a target audience, and much more. Make sure to find out more about Dan Carey and New Glarus Brewing by following this link, before or after listening to this interview.

Click for The Full Pint Interview with Dan Carey of New Glarus Brewing Company:

August 26, 2009 Bounty of Green County

August 06, 2009 Tour de Brew: New Glarus Brewing Co.

July 30, 2009 New Glarus Brewing Company's Old English Porter

New Glarus Brewing Company's Old English Porter

New Glarus, WI
July 30th, 2009:

New Glarus Brewing Company continues to demonstrate that the art and science of brewing go hand in hand. The innovative "Porter" style beer of 1870's England was a notable example of that unity and Dan Carey (Diploma Master Brewer, New Glarus Brewing Company) has re-created that 'Old English Porter' with his newest Unplugged Series release.

Throughout the Industrial Revolution England was full of new brewing methods and revelations. This was when brewing was first combined with science. Due to the rapid scientific advances in chemistry coupled with new technologies (such as accurate thermometers), it was widely recognized that brewing was a task that, in order to be done well, must be done by someone not only skilled in the art of brewing, but also scientifically knowledgeable.

The Porter's invention in England was a revolution for the brewing industry. Prior to this time Porter beer was not aged by the brewer, it was aged at the tavern. The Porter's particularly tart characteristics improved with age, and this resulted in it's excellent traveling capabilities and also allowed it to be brewed in large batches. Both of these attributes made this style readily available, leading to it's immense popularity with the working class. It is from these working people, the Porters, that the name of this style originates. Strikingly enough, this is similar to the way in which the Green Bay Packers name originates with the meat packers of Wisconsin. In honor of this fusion of science and brewing in England, New Glarus Brewing Company's Dan Carey has created his most recent Unplugged Series brew, 'Old English Porter'.

'Old English Porter' offers a unique interpretation of this classic beer style. The slightly roasted malt character combines with a touch of sweetness and wine like acidity that was popular in Porters of this period. To achieve this, it was brewed with mostly floor malted English malts which include the famed pale ale malt, Maris Otter. A touch of smoked malt produced by Briess Malting Company (of Chilton, Wisconsin) was also used, adding interesting depth to the character of this brew. To add to the authenticity of this brew, half of the batch went through a souring fermentation in the traditional way. This also helps to promote the characteristic wine-like acidity. Finally, the beer was aged on wood to extract sweetness from toasted oak. The end result, 'Old English Porter', is a tasteful tribute and a welcome addition to this ever changing and revolutionary beer style. Like all of the Unplugged Series, this 'Old English Porter' is a one-time limited release, which you can find in stores and taverns throughout Wisconsin.

July 22, 2009 The Brewery That Laid the Golden Ale?

July 08, 2009 Take a Tour of Wisconsin Microbreweries

July 06, 2009 Buy Local. Drink Yokel.

New Glarus, WI —

Buy Local. Drink Yokel.

In November of 2008, in a question that may shock many, New Glarus Brewing Company asked ‘What would you like us to brew for you?’ The more popular response by their fans has led to the release of their latest seasonal offering, ‘Yokel’.

New Glarus Brewing Company is an unusual company. Run by a husband and wife team, and only distributing in Wisconsin, New Glarus Brewing Company surprises many. Rarely would a company allow their fans to contribute in such a direct way to the products that they are offered. But New Glarus Brewing Company does, having a vote each year to allow their fans to determine which beers they would like brewed for them, and is the only company in Wisconsin to do so. The results of that vote last year have happily led here, to New Glarus Brewing Company’s ‘Yokel’.

Yokel is a “Zwickel bier”. The term “Zwickel” comes from the German word referring to the “Tap on a Beer Vat”. Zwickel Bier is therefore a beer served directly from a lager tank with no other processing ….. as fresh and natural as a lager beer can get. Being served beer directly from the lager tank is traditionally a special privilege reserved for those lucky enough to be favored by the brewmaster. New Glarus Brewing Company extends this privilege to all their fans with Yokel, one of the most voted for brews in the vote for this year’s line up in November of 2008.

Yokel is inspired by the German traditions of small village breweries – simple and pure beer. A whole beer straight from the tanks, it is smooth, unfiltered, and without pretense. Wisconsin, German, and English barleys and the finest Bavarian hops combine in classic German brewing methods to create this Golden Lager. Additionally, Yokel is naturally cloudy and rich in vitamins from the yeast. Expect this beer to be smooth, as well as rich and malty. It is the perfect companion for a hot summer day. Remember, ‘Buy Local, Drink Yokel’.

July 06, 2009 New Glarus Brewing Company’s ‘Organic Revolution’ Supports the Organic Movement

New Glarus, WI —

New Glarus Brewing Company’s ‘Organic Revolution’ Supports the Organic Movement

All of the beers at New Glarus Brewing Company are brewed to be pure and natural, but ‘Organic Revolution’ goes a step further. Those looking for a refreshing way to support the Organic Farming Movement will delight in this complex and assertively hoppy golden ale. But now ‘Organic Revolution’ will have a little something extra.

‘Organic Revolution Ale’, one of New Glarus Brewing Company’s eight year-round offerings, is as pure as beer can get. Made with organic Pilsner and Caramel malt, organic German Hallertau Hops, and absolutely nothing else. ‘Organic Revolution’ is even 100% naturally carbonated in the bottle, which is an uncommon practice. The barley is grown organically, then is malted organically in Wisconsin at Briess Malting of Chilton. Another unusual aspect of this beer is the use of 100% organic hops as this is, surprisingly, not required by the USDA. New Glarus Brewing Company believes the inclusion of all natural organic ingredients is the best way to support the Organic Farming Movement. “This is important to us”, Dan says, “This is the best way to protect our food chain, and a great way to support small, local farmers”.

On May 14, 2009 Robert Caldwell, the Midwest inspector for Oregon Tilth, re-certified ‘Organic Revolution Ale’ after a complete brewery inspection. Oregon Tilth works for the USDA to certify both producers and brewers. ‘Organic Revolution Ale’ has been certified wholly organic since 2008, and the ‘Oregon Tilth’ name appears on newer bottles. Perhaps some wonder why the USDA stamp has not appeared on the label. “We have the option to write it out or use the seal” Deborah Carey says, “We thought wrongly that the USDA seal was rather corporate looking and not keeping with our message. This omission has confused some people, so we will start utilizing both the USDA and Oregon Tilth stamps on our future labels”.

So you can look forward to the same great flavor celebration in ‘Organic Revolution’ that you have come to know and love, with the small addition of a USDA stamp on the label from now on. Dan and Deb Carey have always believed that the only way for the Organic Movement to succeed is for all of us to support it. So raise your glass and toast to Wisconsin’s common sense Revolution!

June 25, 2009 MBR Interview with Randy Thiel Part 2

Beer Talk Today

Tuesday evenings at 9pm on WSUM 91.7 in Madison

Thursday June 25, 2009
MBR Podcast 6/25/09

On part two of this week's podcast we continue our discussion with Randy Thiel, the Director of Quality Control for the New Glarus Brewing Company and former Brewery Ommegang brewmaster. We discuss brewing with sugar, the New Glarus grand opening, the new R & D series of beers, the Knights of the Brewers Mashing Fork, some Brussels history, and his go to cheap beer.

Click for MBR Interview with Randy Part 2:

June 23, 2009 MBR Interview with Randy Thiel Part 1

Beer Talk Today

Tuesday evenings at 9pm on WSUM 91.7 in Madison

Tuesday June 23, 2009
MBR Podcast 6/23/09

On this week's podcast we interview Randy Thiel, Director of Quality Control for the New Glarus Brewing Company and former Brewery Ommegang Brewmaster. In part one we discuss his beginnings as a homebrewer right here in Madison, his beginnings with Ommegang, the "slightly pornographic" Three Philosopher's essay contest, what his job and New Glarus entails, his favorite New Glarus beer, and the New Glarus Unplugged Imperial Saison.

Click for MBR Interview with Randy Part 1:

June 15, 2009 Wisconsin's biggest little brewery gets a little bigger

Wisconsin’s biggest little brewery gets a little bigger

By Noah Davis • Jun 15th, 2009 • Category: beer events

By Tim Cigelske

The gas station in unincorporated Paoli, Wisconsin, is like any small town gas station.

Inside, you can take your pick of frozen pizza, various junk foods, and an entire wall of Budweiser, Bud Light, Bud Lime, Miller Light, Miller High Life, MGD and… Oh, wait– what’s this? New Glarus Brewing Co.?

One of these beers is not like the other.

Make way, Miller. Watch out, Bud. And memo to Wisconsin’s gas stations, liquor stores, and beer vendors: Start clearing more room for the upstart craft brewer from south central Wisconsin.

“We’ve been growing 20 percent per year,” says brewmaster Dan Carey, which includes a production of about 75,000 barrels last year. Its 2008 sales volume ranked 21st in the nation among craft brewers (just ahead of Dogfish Head), according to the Brewers Association.

OK, OK. So New Glarus is not out to single-handedly battle the major brewers. For starters, you can
still only find its signature Spotted Cow and its terrific full line of craft brews in Wisconsin (hence the proud slogan “Drink Indigenous”).

But make no mistake, its thumbprint just got a little bigger. June 13, 2009, is a bit of a historic day in Wisconsin brewing history, for this is the day New Glarus hosts the seven-hour grand opening party for its new, second brewery complex.

And holy (spotted) cow, do they know how to celebrate. A live band encouraged crowds to dance, long lines formed for souvenir pint glasses of beers on tap, and crowds backed up their vehicles to the gift shop to stock up on crates of beer.

The $20 million, 75,000 square foot, 100,000 barrel-capacity (with ability to expand) Hilltop facility looks like an Old World village, complete with towering stone walls and mini waterfalls. It appears like a castle rising up over the countryside, maybe no coincidence since Carey served his apprenticeship in Munich.

Founded in 1993, the brewery reached a point by 2005 where they would soon run out of room for their operations in an old warehouse, so they built a second complex in a cornfield on the outskirts of the quaint Swiss-influenced town. They broke ground in 2006 while running at capacity at their original brewery.

The expansion didn’t come without a steep price.

  Dan Carey

“It was like waging a war,” Carey said. “You win some battles, you lose some battles. And it nearly killed us.”

There were no utilities, no electricity, no roads. They had no legal department, no marketing department and no accounting department. The herculean task of building a brewery from scratch fell squarely on the shoulders of Dan and his wife, Deb.

The job would be difficult enough under the best of circumstances, but then prices in construction materials went haywire. Dan and Deb worked seven days a week to deal with problem contractors and government regulation while continuing production at their original brewery.

“There were points we were dubious it was even going to happen,” Dan says wearily. “There were so many obstacles.”

The growing pains may have left a few scars on the Careys. But for Wisconsin beer drinkers, it’s a welcome new era for New Glarus.

– Tim Cigelske writes DRAFTMag.com’s Beer Runner blog.

June 10, 2009 New Glarus Brewing to celebrate grand opening of Hilltop Brewery this weekend

Originally published in:

New Glarus Brewing to celebrate grand opening of Hilltop Brewery this weekend

Susan Troller June 10, 2009

 Dan and Deb Carey, founders of New Glarus Brewing Co., 
 are welcoming visitors to the new $20 million   Hilltop Brewery. 
 - Mike DeVries/The Capital Times

Spotted Cow, Wisconsin's most popular craft beer, has an astonishing new home.

Open just a week, the New Glarus Brewing Co.'s new Hilltop Brewery is up and running, and eager beer fans have already begun exploring the state-of-the-art brewing plant and the new gift shop.

With both exterior and interior spaces that invite comparisons to famous destination breweries like the Guinness headquarters in Dublin, the Hilltop Brewery is poised to burnish the Badger State's growing reputation as the Napa of the North when it comes to craft brewing.

Deb and Dan Carey -- founders, owners and operators of the brewery -- are hosting a grand opening on Saturday, June 13, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tours of the $20 million expansion are free, and there will be music in the afternoon featuring the Jimmys. Dancing is encouraged.

The Careys said even they are a little dazzled by the project, which has basically doubled the brewery's output from about 65,000 barrels to around 130,000 barrels per year. They anticipate sales of more than 80,000 barrels in 2009, sold exclusively in Wisconsin.

"It's been a pretty exhausting project, but we knew it would be from the beginning," Deb Carey admitted.

Trained as an artist, her vision is stamped indelibly over the look and feel of the entire project, which is sited on 30 acres just outside of the village of New Glarus in northern Green County.

She's been the marketing whiz behind its meteoric rise, with sales growth in double digits every year. The brewery's flagship beer, Spotted Cow, has become the state's most popular craft beer, according to Steve Frank of Frank Beer Distributors Inc.

Dan Carey is the brewery's innovative and highly regarded brewmaster, with a slew of international awards contributing to his world-class reputation.

The design of the new buildings on the hill pays tribute both to the barns and farm buildings of the surrounding countryside as well as to the classic architecture of Northern European communities, where many of the finest brewing traditions arose.

Casual visitors will love the views; the impressive limestone rock work, including a small waterfall and pocket gardens; and a quiet, formal garden that feels more like a monastic retreat than a rollicking, traditional beer garden.

But the real fun is for brewing fans at all levels of interest and experience.

One spacious room is outfitted with Spanish slate floors and four large copper-clad kettles purchased from two now-defunct breweries in Germany. Under lighting that wouldn't be out of place at a gallery, the kettles glow like art objects, and each serves a different purpose at the beginning of the brewing process. Glass portals allow visitors, as well as the brewing team, to see right inside the kettles at work.

Each kettle was re-engineered with state-of-the-art stainless interior fittings and multiple mechanisms to ensure flawless operation as well as energy savings.

Visitors are also likely to enjoy what's known in brewing circles as "a stairway to heaven." The steps lead toward the top of the plant to a landing area, where visitors can peer through a large window into a sterile room and watch yeast busy at work in an open fermentation tank.

And then there's the bottling site, where the smell of the beer is delicious and the orchestrated movement of the bottles shuttling along the conveyor belts has the kind of zany but relentless pace that might remind some of a Saturday morning cartoon.

"We designed it (the brewery) so people can see what we do here. It's very transparent, and it's fun to share," Deb Carey said.

Although she has dozens of future plans for things like art on the walls, an audio tour for Hilltop visitors and displays to chronicle the brewery's history, she said she's ready to open the doors, even if every detail isn't complete.

Meanwhile, the original New Glarus Brewing Co. Riverside Brewery just outside of the village will remain open, and visitors can tour that facility with an audio tour.

"For anyone who really wants to learn about brewing, I'd probably suggest going to the Riverside Brewery first and taking the self-guided audio tour there, and then coming up to the Hilltop to see what we're doing up here," she said.

Together, both tours should take an hour to 90 minutes. While the tours are free, there is a charge of $3 for beer tastings that cover a sample glass and a coupon good for beer at several nearby New Glarus eating spots.

As for Dan Carey, he and fellow brewmaster Randy Thiel (who is also the brewery's quality control director) are busy fine-tuning the production end of the new plant so that the beer being produced meets their lofty standards.

But both remain committed to exploring new flavor profiles and intriguing ideas, pushing the envelope on their craft.

"We call it the R & D part of the business," Deb Carey laughed. "It might be research and development, but it's also Randy and Dan. Some of what they come up with will only be brewed in small batches, and only available at the brewery," she added.

May 27, 2009 New Glarus Brewing Company Opens the Doors to their New Hilltop Brewery!

New Glarus Brewing Company Opens the Doors to their New Hilltop Brewery!

New Glarus, WI
May 27, 2009:

Deborah and Daniel Carey invite all of their Wisconsin friends to the highly anticipated Grand Opening of their new state of the art Hilltop Brewery June 13^th. The public will finally be able to tour the new Brewery and Gift Shop as well as sample freshly brewed beers. Saturday afternoon The Jimmys will be performing their original Blues and R&B to welcome visitors, so bring your dancing shoes! Opening hours are 10:00 AM-5:00 PM. Tours are free.

New Glarus Brewing Company began breaking the rules in 1993 when it became the first brewery in the United States to be founded and run by a woman, the current company President, Deborah Carey. Beginning with just two beers, New Glarus has gone on to brew over 50 different beer styles. Increased demand for these unique brews has led to a 10% increase in sales this year alone, so rest assured that their original Riverside Brewery will continue brewing new and exciting beers. The new Hilltop Brewery added 100,000 barrels of capacity to the 30,000 barrels already produced at the Riverside Brewery. They anticipate sales of over 80,000 barrels in 2009, all sold exclusively in Wisconsin.

Those anxious for a look at the Hilltop Brewery may explore the $20 million expansion at their leisure everyday between 10 and 4:00. The Hilltop Garden offers a relaxing environment to enjoy samples of New Glarus beers afterwards. For those that wish to take a taste of New Glarus Brewing Co. home with them, the gift shop will also be open until 5:00 PM. Or head into the Village and enjoy New Glarus beers with your friends under the tent as the New Glarus Polka Fest. Deborah and Daniel invite their friends to explore the quaint Village of New Glarus, including the many ethnic shops and top quality restaurants.

www.newglarusbrewing.com

www.swisstown.com

May 19, 2009 Brew Notes Summer Beer: Crack'd Wheat

May 17, 2009 BREWPUBLIC: Interview with New Glarus' Dan Carey

Interview with New Glarus’ Dan Carey

New Glarus Brewing Company, located in the Wisconsin town of the same name, is a brewery whose reputation speaks for itself. Founded in 1993 by husband and wife team Dan and Deb Carey, the brewery has evolved from a makeshift dairy farm brewery into a world class operation that is a must visit for true lovers of hand crafted beer. Bolstered by a word of mouth reputation and an unbridled passion for what they do, New Glarus produce a spectrum of beer styles that have garnered the acclaim of the international brewing community. Perhaps most notable of New Glarus’ repertoire are the Belgian and Germanic beers that add to the rich European heritage of the area. The brewery’s Wisconsin Belgian Red is a tart and sweet kriekbier brewed with whole Montmorency cherries, Wisconsin wheat, and Belgian roasted barleys is a little slice of heaven tucked away in the rolling hills of the Dairyland.

While most folks are encouraged to take advantage of the self-guided tours
10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, we were fortunate enough to set up a private tour with Dan himself. A walking brewing encyclopedia, Dan was so down to earth and unpretentious, it was quite refreshing to meet someone so accomplished with such a down to earth approach to people while maintaining the highest standards of his craft. While most folks refer to head brewers as brewmasters, Dan really is that, graduating at the top of his class as the valedictorian of Siebels Institute of Technology’s brewing program in 1987. He could have used his knowledge and powers for self-adulation, but from talking to others around him and from our own experience, it was evident that his primary focus was to make the best beer possible while bringing people together in the process. His hard work and focus is the reason why New Glarus is so well known around the world despite not being well promoted or sold outside of the state of Wisconsin. He attributes others to his success and humbly strives to expand his palate and the palate of others. If only more brewers were like Dan, the brew public would be a better place.

Here is an interview we conducted with Dan Carey of New Glarus Brewing, a undeniably true American original.

What inspired you to open a brewery in New Glarus, Wisconsin?

Dan Carey: Well, I’ve worked in the food business all my life. I’ve studied brewing at UC Davis. I graduated in 1983 and I’ve worked for other people, and I was working for Anheuser-Busch in Fort Collins, Colorado. My wife (Deb) is originally from Milwaukee and she really wanted to come home to Wisconsin. So, we thought about building a brewery in Wisconsin, and we looked at different areas around the country because in 1993, in your area (Portland, Oregon), there was already a lot of breweries. There was probably twenty breweries in the Portland area, and maybe a handful in Seattle. So, we looked at three areas. We looked at Bellingham, Washington, we looked at Atlanta, Georgia, and Madison, Wisconsin. The reason we looked at all of those places is because there wasn’t a lot of breweries, there was a well educated population with kind of chauvinistic buying tendencies-”buy local, local ingredients, local products.” We thought Madison was a really great market, but we didn’t want to live right in town, so Deb drew a radius around Madison of thirty miles around town and said “Go find somewhere to live.” So I came out here and drove around, and found New Glarus and thought this was a really cool little town. It reminded me of when I was an apprentice brewer in a small town near Munich that was a lot like that. So we packed up like the Beverly Hillbillies and moved to Madison, moved to New Glarus. I am originally from the city of San Francisco, and I really like it here. It’s very peaceful.

How’s the winters treat you being that you are from California?

DC: I like the cold. I like the cold more than the heat. And really, it’s not as bad as people think. Like when it’s really really cold…I think last year the coldest it got was about 4 below at around 5 o’clock in the morning. It’s not really that bad. We used to live in Montana and I remember one day it was like 52 below, no wind, just perfectly still…so, it’s not that bad. I like it. I like the cold weather. Deb says it keeps the whiners out. I don’t mind it at all, it’s a small price to pay.

How did the Belgian style beers like the Wisconsin Belgian Red made with Montmorency cherries and the Raspberry Tart become beer geek staples for New Glarus?

DC: Well, only about three percent of our beers are the fruit beer. We don’t make a lot of it. We’re known out of Wisconsin for our fruit beer, but in Wisconsin, it’s a small part of our business. And where the whole idea for that came from is that I was an apprentice brewer at a small brewery near Munich-the Ayinger Brewery-I think people know that brewery. When we were there, we went on vacation to Belgium and we went to visit breweries around Brussels. I really liked the Liefmans and Lindemans fruit beers. It took about six years of pilot brewing and homebrewing to make a recipe that really worked. It’s a unique process. It’s not really how other people make fruit beer. It kind of all came together, and that was one of the reasons we built the brewery. But it’s not really a huge seller for us. People outside of Wisconsin think about us as fruit beer brewers, but… We actually have a Lambic beer that we are making. It’s still in the fermenter and we’re going to transfer it. We have two 3,000 gallon oak tanks and we’re going to transfer it into them. We’re thinking about making a gueuze, a framboise, a cherry, and maybe an apple or grape. It’s a traditional spontaneous fermented sour beer. That’s still very young, but we can go out and taste it later. It’s not there yet, but it’s showing potential.

I spoke with Karl Ockert, brewmaster of BridgePort Brewing, during the bottling of Stumptown Tart (Marionberry beer aged in Pinot Noir casks), and he said he had spoken with you about regarding getting ideas for a tart beer. He said “Dan told me ‘You can ask me about anything in the brewhouse, just not about the Belgian Red.’”

Seems like a lot of people are coming around. It would seem now that you were ahead of the curve as far as Belgian-style beers are concerned. When you were doing it early on, there wasn’t a lot of other brewers doing it.

DC: That’s the funny thing. When I read about such-and-such a brewery being the first to make sour beers in whatever 1996, or 1998…And I am thinking: we were making sour beers in 1993. When we first opened we were doing sour beers. So it goes. We don’t have a marketing wing or whatever.

How far are your beers distributed? Is it Wisconsin only?

DC: Yeah, only Wisconsin. We try to stay small.

How did you develop the yeast for your Belgians?

DC: It’s a blend, a bacterial fermentation. Our yeast is a standard ale yeast but it’s a souring fermentation. So it’s more akin to like a Rodenbach type of a beer. But, like I said, we’ve got a Lambic that’s started with two types of Brettanomyces, an ale yeast and a couple of different bacteria. That’s only going to be sold out of the brewery, though. That will be a kind of secret series where we only do a small amount-200 barrels. We’ll bottle it up and sell it out of the gift shop. That’ll be out this summer probably.

So this new series, this is different from the Unplugged series?

DC: Yeah. It’s a step up from that. It’s called the R+D Series because about a year ago we hired Randy Thiel. He was the brewmaster at Ommegang. He’s now our lab manager. So he and I are working together.

What is your production size?

DC: We’ll go through about 80,000 barrels this year, maybe 85,000.

It was seem evident that you are a destination for craft beer geeks. What is the most unique place a visitor has traveled from to see your brewery?

DC: As you know by now, we are out in the middle of nowhere. We had a guy from Nigeria, a brewer, from Tusker Brewery. That’s pretty wild. Lot’s of people have come from Switzerland because this is a Swiss town. There is a brewing group, they have a master brewer’s class in Madison. They give seminars and there are people from all over the world like Japan, Japanese brewers, Australian, New Zealand. That’s probably the farthest away-guys from New Zealand, Australia.

Being a brewery that only has distribution in Wisconsin, how do you attain worldly acclaim?

DC: I don’t know. Because we don’t really advertise. If you notice, we’re not in the trade journals. We don’t have pictures in…I think you guys must know a lot of that come from press releases. People like me go to or do beer dinners, beer shows or tastings. We really don’t do that. We’ve always just tried really hard to make the best beer that we can and hope that things will follow from that. So…I don’t know why. But I would hope that the beers speak for themselves. Because, one thing that I think we do really well is we make a whole range of beers all the way from a light lager, an American style lager, all the way to a Lambic and everything in between. And we try really hard to make all of them really good. I think that with this age on the Internet that things can travel very quickly. We have two draft horses, two big Fresian draft horses. They are huge, huge horses. They used to live out here, but now they are at the new brewery. When we were wanting to get them here, we had actually bought the horses and didn’t realize that the village would have a problem with it because we’re out in the country. All of a sudden, the village said “You don’t have a permit to keep these horses.” So it was this big fight. These guys in town who make swords, armory in town. They make swords and helmets for…whatever. They are all into kind of medieval things and they thought (the horses) were really cool. They would come to the meetings. A lot of people were behind us. It was kind of a big fight. Finally we won. They gave us a permit to have horses in the village limits and I was over in Bamberg (Germany) at this little random brewpub. I was sitting there just by myself. It wasn’t a beer festival or nothing. I was just drinking beer, and this guy walked up to me in lederhosen and stops and looks and me and says “I heard the village okayed the horses. Good job.” And he said it in perfect English. This was at this little brewpub with a five hundred year old brewery in Bamberg and it made me laugh because here I am kind of hiding out as far as you can be from New Glarus and somebody recognized me. And I said “How did you know this?” And he said “Oh, I saw it on the Internet.” The power of the Internet-the world is very small.

Do you have a sense of what the microbrew community in Wisconsin is all about? Is there a Wisconsin Guild, club or something of this nature here?

DC: Of course there’s homebrew clubs. The biggest one is in Madison, the Brewers and Tasters Guild, and they put on a beer festival every year that is a lot like the one you guys have in Portland (Oregon Brewers Festival) down by the river. This one is by Lake Monona, which is a big lake by Madison. It’s called The Great Taste of the Midwest. It’s really cool. All of the Midwest breweries are there. There’s…I don’t know…maybe 5,000 people. It’s a one day festival. That’s a big deal and a lot of fun. There is a brewers guild, but they mainly deal with political issues. Wisconsin is changing a lot, a lot like the rest of America. One thing about Wisconsin, it’s this little island and people on the coast don’t really know that much about Wisconsin. It’s flyover country. Everybody’s kind of heavyset. It’s a little bit dull, they eat Velveeta cheese and they’re not very sharp and they vote Republican. But Wisconsin is a little island of progressiveness. In fact, I think Wisconsin had a socialist governor for a really long time. It’s a very progressive state that has been historically progressive. The people in WIsconsin are very highly educated. They’re very well traveled but it’s like this secret little place that nobody knows about. People are very open minded but they are parochial in their buying habits. When we first came here, Miller Lite was by far the biggest seller. Every bar had Miller Lite. But that’s changing. Portland’s been not like that for twenty years. You walk into any pub in Portland and you can pretty much have a whole genre of beers. And that is starting to happen here in Wisconsin. Since we started, we’ve seen people’s palates become much more adventurous. People in Wisconsin have generally liked a sweeter tasting beer, but that’s changing. It’s changing very rapidly. Everybody in Wisconsin is of German ancestry, so one of the problems with having Pilsners is that when people want a Pilsner, they will buy Spaten or Paulaner. When you make a Pilsner here, you’re competing against people’s perceptions of what a beer should be. For example, we make a range of weissbiers-heavy weissbiers-and we’re considered on Ratebeer.com as doing well with our wheat beers. Our wheat beers are a little bit stronger than German wheat beers. When you make a German beer, you don’t start at the starting line, you start about ten yards back because the perception is always a little bit skewed. Let me give you an example. I read an article where someone wrote in to Wine Spectator, I think it was, saying “We were just over in Tuscany and we had this red wine sitting in a veranda overlooking the vineyard and the wine was just absolutely the best wine we’ve ever had.” So we bought a case, and we brought it home, and it’s not that good. So we were wondering if something happened while the beer was in the hold of the airplane. Could the change in altitude have screwed up the wine? Then we realize, “Hello! You’re sitting in a 500 year old vineyard with a castle in the background eating fresh oven-baked pizza! Of course the wine tasted wonderful! So, you have to deal with people’s perceptions. When you make a Germanic-style beer, you have to be better just to be equal. So, our weissbiers are generally a little bit bigger than what you would find in Bavaria. So then people say “Yeah, that’s just like the beer in Bavaria.” But they don’t realize that it’s about four degrees Plato heavier. But it’s their perception. As another point to that, I had a beer that was a bourbon barrel stout at the Great Taste of the Midwest where someone said “Here, taste this.” I thought “Oh my god. This beer is absolutely the best beer I’ve ever had. It’s just wonderful. Wow.” And the brewer was like “Well, you like it so much, here, take a bottle.” Cool, so I took a twelve ounce bottle home, put it in the refrigerator. Okay, it’s Friday night, I’m gonna drink my beer. I brought it out, let it sit on the counter for thirty minutes. Got it 55 degrees, just perfect, open it. I got about half way through the bottle and I thought “You know I don’t think I can drink any more of this. It’s just too much.” But the one sip was like “Wow!” That’s the other problem with beer-drinkability and complexity. Drinkability is one thing and complexity is one thing. They both have their merits. This stout was eminently complex but lacked drinkability but you go to a beer like Coors Light or Bud Light and I can drink it because it tastes like water but I really don’t want to. In the middle is where, I think, you find the best beers. Often those are the ones that the beer geeks don’t often note. Because to drink beer, you have to be in the environment and there has to be more to it than just drinking beer.

What exactly is the thought behind your Unplugged Series and how did it come about?

DC: In order for a brewery to be a viable entity, it has to be profitable, there’s no question about it. When we brew beers, we don't particularly push one over another. But some beers sell more than others. That’s not our fault because we don’t advertise. We have like zero advertising budget, I mean, look around. We have none. So, certain beers sell over others and it’s the lighter beers that sell. Most people don’t like the taste of beer. They gravitate toward the lighter beers and they sell. When that happens, you are in danger of losing the respect of the geekdom. Two things happen. One, I like to brew different kinds of beer. I like to brew different beer styles. Beer geeks like different beer styles. So we said, the further we go toward the light styles of beer, we have to bring it back in balance by making beers that are kind of interesting and relevant to the beer geeks. It’s a good learning experience for us because it helps us become better brewers. The idea behind the Unplugged was having no concern for marketability of the beer. So, it’s sort of a personal statement and the term “Unplugged” means like when Neil Young…when you go to a Neil Young concert and hear “Southern Man” and whatever, but if you go and hear him play at a little half moon bay in California in the middle of nowhere, and he’s with thirty people in the audience, he’s playing whatever strikes him. That’s the idea behind the name “Unplugged.” It’s whatever strikes us to make something interesting. When we first started making it, we made the Double IPA and everybody’s making double IPAs. So then we said, “We’re really gonna do our own thing.” So we went off in our own little world and made our own beers. For example, I made a beer called Bohemian Lager, and, well, it’s not double, triple anything. It’s not 400 bitterness units. It’s not 25 degrees Plato. It’s just a beer, but what’s unique about it, we made it will real undermodified Moravian barley and Saaz hops. It’s a triple decoction. It’s fermented in unlined oak tanks. It’s krausened. It’s a real traditional old fashioned Bohemian lager like was brewed before the fall of Communism. That was kind of cool because when you drink it, it’s not like this rush of Cascade hops or alcohol or whatever, but its not something that you normally see. We try to do things that are a little bit different, a little bit weird to shock people. So, to make a Bohemian Lager and say this is an extreme beer, it kind of makes people think “well wait a minute, this is a Pilsner. How can a Pilsner be an extreme beer? It’s not 100 bitterness units. It’s not dry hopped with ten pounds per barrel. Why is it extreme?” Well, nobody makes beer like that anymore. So, in other words, what I am trying to say, it is a way to experiment and really be outside the box. Not the “outside of the box” as defined by…

Extremism.

DC: Exactly.

If you are New Glarus, what is Old Glarus?

DC: Good question. Glarus is a canton of Switzerland. The Swiss are kind of
a unique people. They were having hard times in the 1840s and the government of Glarus sponsored some families to move to America because this was the frontier. They set up a homestead in this area. So they came over and built the village of New Glarus from Old Glarus, and those families still live here. This has very strong ties to Switzerland. There’s a lot of Swiss people who live here. A lot of immigrants come here from Switzerland. In fact, a lot of the old people still speak and old dialect of Swiss. It used to be that Swiss people would come here to study the language because when they came here, the Swiss that was spoken had sort of stopped growing. So they have that old “Methinks thou ist..” Kind of like a Biblical English type of Swiss. It’s kind of like that town in Central Washington, Leavenworth with that sort of Bavarian look. It’s somewhat like that. These people are the original Swiss families that moved here 150 years ago. They are the great great grandchildren of those people. They came here to start dairy farms.

That’s all the questions for now, Dan. Thanks so much for the interview!

DC: Okay. Why don’t we go taste some beers and walk around this brewery and then we’ll go over to the new brewery because the new brewery is pretty much state of the art.

Following our sit down question and answer session with Dan and the original Riverside brewhouse, he led us back to the facility’s laboratory where he lined up and impressive assortment of year-round offering, one-offs, and Unplugged series brews. He asked “Which ones do you want to try?” Without hesitation I replied “All of ‘em.” Then we went down the line and quaffed away as he graciously described each brew. Here is what he had to say:

Totally Naked: A summertime favorite in Wisconsin. Dan describes it as “a very light beer, but a hard beer to make that shows the whole range. It’s a light American lager, like 8 bitterness units.” As for adjunct, this beer’s malt bill is made up ten percent of corn. Dan says “When this beer comes out in the summer, the Bud Light drinkers take to this beer. It’s for those people who really want to join the microbrew movement but can’t stomach an IPA.”

Spotted Cow: “Our number one selling beer. It’s unfiltered, light, sweet, kind of fruity ale.” You will find this beer at most taverns in Wisconsin.

Stone Soup: “An abbey single.”

Berliner Weiss: “It’s a Berliner Weiss. Kind of sour, tart, easy drinking beer.”

Dancing Man Wheat: From the Unplugged Series. “This is a summer hefeweiss.”

Cracked Wheat: Also an Unplugged brew, Dan says “I’ve never had (Three Floyds) Gumball(head), but I’ve heard it somewhat compared to Gumball. Brewed in open fermenters, this is about 30 bitterness units and dry-hopped with Amarillo, so it’s pretty wild.”

Fat Squirrel: “A nut brown ale.”

Hearty Hop: A Wisconsin-style IPA if ever there was one. “The West Coast IPAs are very bitter. Ours is purposefully not. It’s dry-hopped and it’s aromatic, but it’s a little bit more malty. People here are like ‘Wow. It’s nice not to be kind of slapped in the face with hops.’”

Coffee Stout: “You know, a coffee stout.”

Imperial Saison: “It’s pretty wild. That’s our new beer that is made with ginger, corriander. It’s a lactic beer made with a special yeast strain from Belgium that is very much like apricot.

After our little tasting session with Dan, we headed up the road to the brand new production facility.It is projected that a tasting room and beer garden will be open to the public some time this summer. There at this one of a kind, state of the art brewery, we're shown around by the friendly Scott Noll, a charismatic facilities manager for the company. Scott informed us that New Glarus is currently cranking out 1,000-1,400 barrels per week, of which about half is kegged and the other half bottled. A new filler acquired from New Belgium of Fort Collins, Colorado fills bottles at an alarming rate and a state of the art automated kegging line fills about 63 kegs per hour. “I was a Bud Drinker” admitted Noll “I’d drink a Spotted Cow here and there. But since being here for the past three years, I’ve become a beer snob.” The attitude and work ethic the Careys exude seems to be infectious. “Everybody here is instilled with the idea of doing the best possible job they can and getting better all the time.” he said. “They really care about their employees and in turn we feel the same way. I make a living wage at New Glarus and can take care of my family.” He continued “It costs less for me to insure my family here than when I was in the army.”

After a spectacular day in the presence of great folks and great beer, we reluctantly headed out of town and left with the kind of feeling that very few breweries can resonate. New Glarus is a one of a kind brewery founded by folks who never forgot where they came from and continually pursue new and inventive directions in which to take their art. -AD

“He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands, his head and his heart is an artist.”

-St.Francis of Assisi (from the New Glarus website).

This post was written by Margaret and Angelo on May 17, 2009

May 11, 2009 American Craft Beer Week!

You can learn more, and sign the Declaration of Beer Independence at www.AmericanCraftBeerWeek.org

Cheers!

May 09, 2009 New Glarus Brewing Co. Offers a Refreshing Welcome to the Summer with Imperial Saison

New Glarus Brewing Co. Offers a Refreshing Welcome to the Summer with Imperial Saison

Randy Thiel and the latest New Glarus Brewing Co. Unplugged release, Imperial Saison.

New Glarus, WI
May 11, 2009:

Daniel Carey, an innovator in craft brewing and Diploma Master Brewer of New Glarus Brewing Co., continues to treat us with his Unplugged series. The latest Unplugged creation, Imperial Saison, is a collaboration between Daniel Carey and Randy Thiel, New Glarus Brewing Co.'s Laboratory Manager. The fruit's of this venture have produced Imperial Saison, a shout of apricot and peach in a bottle. Saisons were traditionally brewed to refresh workers during harvest season, and holding true to the tradition of a little hard earned refreshment, Imperial Saison is New Glarus Brewing Co.'s latest offering to help wipe winter from your brow.

New Glarus Brewing Co. has been offering world-class, handcrafted beers since it's inception in 1993. The complementing roles of Deborah Carey (Founder and President) and Daniel Carey (Founder and Diploma Master Brewer) have led to a wide variety of award winning selections from New Glarus Brewing Co., the latest series of which are the Unplugged brews. The Unplugged Series has allowed Dan Carey an outlet to experiment and push the envelope with flavor and style in ways that show why he is deserving of the title 'Innovator in Craft Brewing' (2006, Russell Schehrer Award, Brewers Association), Tastemaker (2007, Forbes Magazine), and is consistently considered one of the top brewers in America (2003, 2005, 2006 Brewer of the Year, Great American Beer Festival, 2008 Top 10 Micro Brews, Men's Fitness Magazine) while always respecting the organic nature of beer with all natural ingredients.

The most recently released Unplugged brew, is a collaboration between Dan Carey and Randy Thiel. Randy (Laboratory Manager of New Glarus Brewing Co.) is one of only 14 Americans to be a member of the "Le Chevalerie du Fourquet des Brasseurs", the "Knighthood of the Brewers' Mash Staff", an elite group of brewers and other beer experts that are direct descendants of the ancient Brewers' Guild of Belgium. The Imperial Saison was Randy Thiel's original idea, and Dan and Randy have taken the seeds of that idea, and created a masterful example of the Saison beer style. Imperial Saison is their show of appreciation to all the hard workers, especially in these trying economic times.

Saison is the French word for 'season'. This beer style originated in Wallonia, the French speaking district of Belgium. In Belgium, each brewer had their unique interpretation of Saison, but originally it was a farm house ale brewed to quench the thirst of field hands as they labored under the hot sun. New Glarus Brewing Co.'s version is an 'Imperial', meaning it is brewed to an original gravity of 20 degrees Plato; about 20 to 40 percent stronger than most. Their use of a very unique ale strain, captured in Belgium, contributes to a wonderful apricot nose. Dan brought New Glarus Brewing Co.'s own Lactobacillus bacteria from Germany to create a palate cleansing, natural tartness to counter the rich German malt and aromatic Styrian Golding hops. Imperial Saison is spiced in the traditional way with Grain of Paradise and Ginger. Lastly, it is bottle fermented to impart that extra complexity and to insure the superior shelf life that is expected in all New Glarus Beers. The easy drinking nature of the beer belies its "Imperial" alcohol content of over 9%.

Dan and Randy believe that a hard day's work should be both rewarding and enjoyable, and with Imperial Saison, have created a refreshing brew that holds true to both. The Imperial Saison is the first example of the fruit's of their joint venture to reward all New Glarus Brewing Co. fans for their hard work. Dan and Randy's refreshing offering will be available in 4-packs or cases. However, just as the seasons change, leaving only a whisper of their passing, and as with the entire Unplugged series, Imperial Saison is a transitory brew, so enjoy this limited edition while it lasts!

May 08, 2009 New Glarus Brewing Co. Adding a New Unplugged Kegging Line

April 30, 2009 Beer Tax Poll

Hello Friends,

Wisconsin is considering raising our State beer tax from $2 to $10.00 a barrel. The Milwaukee paper is taking a poll asking people to vote on this proposal. Feel free to add a comment.

http://www.jsonline.com/polls/44000507.html

Some issues I have with this tax.

· Targets small brewers, taxing only those under 300,000 barrels. Miller, Leinie’ s and City Brewing are exempt creating an unfair price advantage for big brewers.

· Increases the price of a case of beer $1 to 1.50 at retail not cents a bottle as this bill’s creator states.

· Beer is a beverage of moderation, why not liquor and wine?

· Taxes Wisconsin produced beer but not beer brewed elsewhere and sold in Wisconsin. A good reason to brew even more Miller and Leinie’s in Ohio and bring it back tax free.

· Taxing Agricultural manufacturers during a recession is irresponsible. We should not be forced to pay taxes instead of creating jobs.

· The Federal Gov is proposing to reduce beer tax recognizing that we are a valuable part of the nation’s economy and we brewers have been hit with increasing health care, raw material and transportation costs.

· If we need money for health care– why not a Big Mac Tax to help with cancer, diabetes and heart attacks? Maybe it is time for real Health care reform.

New Glarus Brewing Company is proud to be Wisconsin owned, Wisconsin brewed and create Wisconsin jobs. Please pass this on.

Best Wishes,

Deb Carey

Founder/President

New Glarus Brewing Company

April 27, 2009 New Glarus Brewing Co. Recognized for Energy-Efficiency Achievements

New Glarus Brewing Company recognized for energy-efficiency achievements

Microbrewer given Shared Savings Award for energy conservation and being green. In this photo, from left to right: Dan Carey (Founder and New Glarus Brewing Co. Master Diploma Brewer), Deborah Carey (Founder and President of New Glarus Brewing Co.), and Dale Burgenske (Alliant Energy Strategic Account Manager).

MADISON, WI – April 27, 2009 – New Glarus Brewing Company has received a Shared Savings Award in recognition of significant achievement in energy efficiency and conservation. The award was presented to the microbrewer by Alliant Energy Strategic Account Manager Dale Burgenske on April 22. Shared Savings is an award-winning business energy-efficiency program that New Glarus Brewing participated in to save energy and benefit the environment.

“New Glarus Brewing Company is very deserving of recognition for the steps it has taken to realize sustainable energy-savings within its operations,” said Chris Schoenherr, Alliant Energy Director of Sales and Strategic Accounts. “We are proud that they are committed to being a green organization and we are pleased to give them our Shared Savings Award.”

New Glarus Brewing Company utilized Shared Savings to save a significant amount of energy when it built its new, 75,000-square-foot brewery and also its new energy-efficient wastewater treatment facility. Implementing green building practices and equipment into the construction saved 2,224,547 kilowatt-hours of electricity and 195 KW of energy savings. The project removes the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of 293 passenger vehicles from the road or saves enough energy to power 145 average-sized homes for one year.

“We are pleased to be recognized by Alliant Energy for our achievement in energy efficiency,” said, Deborah Carey, New Glarus Brewing Company President. “When we planned our brewery building and wastewater treatment facility, we worked to incorporate energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly design so we could reduce our energy use and environmental impact.”

New Glarus Brewing Co. is an exclusive group of just ten award winners from WPL's utility service territory. Award winners implemented energy-savings improvements resulting in considerable energy savings, demonstrated a unique application of energy-saving technologies or overcame significant barriers in carrying out their energy efficiency projects. Together, the ten selected award winners saved 9,950,033 kWh of electricity and 324,574 therms of natural gas via their recent Shared Savings projects. The energy saved is enough energy to power 995 homes, heat another 405 homes and remove the equvialent annual greenhouse gas emissions of 1,600 passanger vehicles- an impressive accomplishment!

As with any business, cash is important and paying for the energy-efficiency measures takes upfront dollars before the long-term gains can be realized. That’s where Shared Savings stepped in to assist the company. The program is an initiative that assists industrial, commercial and agricultural customers with identification and implementation of energy efficiency projects - and invests the capital to finance them.

“I met with Deborah and Dan Carey early on as they were sketching out plans for their brewery and wastewater treatment facility and they were very interested in environmental stewardship and wise energy use right from the start,” added Burgenske. “It ended up that financing available through our Shared Savings program was a perfect fit for getting their project accomplished.”

New Glarus Brewing Company began operations in June 1993 and wasted no time establishing itself as a world-class operation with many prestigious awards bestowed upon the brewery and its beers. In 1995 and 1999, the New Glarus Brewing Company was named one of the World's Ten Best Breweries at the World Brewery Championship. This competition involved more than three hundred breweries from 28 countries who submitted over 700 beers.

More recently the brewery was named Midsize Brewery of the Year in 2005 and again in 2006 at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado. Dan Carey, Diploma Master Brewer, was also named Brewer of the Year in both 2005 and 2006 at the Great American Beer Festival.

Through its Shared Savings program, Wisconsin Power and Light Company, an Alliant Energy company, has helped thousands of Wisconsin business and farm customers cut energy usage, save money and preserve precious natural resources for over 20 years. More than 2.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity have been saved over the last seven years with the program – that’s equal to the energy produced by a 280-megawatt power plant.

Business and farm customers interested in the low-cost financing available through WPL’s Shared Savings program are encouraged to visit www.alliantenergy.com/sharedsavings or call 1-866-ALLIANT (255-4268) for more information.

Alliant Energy is an energy-services provider with subsidiaries serving approximately 1 million electric and 400,000 natural gas customers. Providing its customers in the Midwest with regulated electric and natural gas service is the company’s primary focus. Wisconsin Power and Light, the company's Wisconsin utility subsidiary, serves approximately 450,000 electric and 175,000 natural gas customers. Alliant Energy, headquartered in Madison, Wis., is a Fortune 1000 company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LNT. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.alliantenergy.com.

April 17, 2009 Beer Industry Economic Impact in Wisconsin

April 15, 2009 Coffee Stout & Iced Barley Wine Review

From the April/May Celebrator Magazine (New Releases):

March 28, 2009 Higher Beer Taxes hit Wrong Target

March 01, 2009 The Importance of Drinking Local

January 01, 2009 Distribution Models: Local vs National

December 10, 2008 BellaVitano

BellaVitano

A new line of cheeses created by the master cheese makers at Sartori Foods in Plymouth, Wis., are capturing some serious attention these days by cheese buyers, judges and people like us who just like cheese.

The now award-winning line of Sartori Reserve BellaVitano artisan cheeses (a bunch of them won medals at the World Cheese Awards in Ireland this past October) combine the rich and fruity creaminess of young cheese with the appealing crunch that only comes with premium aging.

Think of the rich, craveable taste of an aged, premium Cheddar, balanced by a full-flavored Parmesan, and you have this uniquely delicious artisan cheese. I picked up a a half a pound for a friend who was having a dinner party and she called me the next day, practically so happy she was crying. See what I mean? This cheese moves people.

And, the news just keeps getting better – four new distinctive BellaVitano varieties are now available in both wedges and wheels.

Raspberry BellaVitano. This premium cheese won Best New Cheese and Best American Cheese at the 2008 World Cheese Awards in Ireland. It is soaked in New Glarus Raspberry Tart Ale to bring out fruity notes. This is my new favorite cheese. I could literally sit and eat this cheese until I get sick. It's that good.
Black Pepper BellaVitano. Created for the most discerning cheese enthusiast, this variety is coated in cracked black peppercorns. It won a Silver Medal at the 2008 World Cheese Awards.
Merlot BellaVitano. Soaked in fine Merlot for hints of berry and plum, this extraordinary cheese carries a pleasing flavor and texture.
BellaVitano Gold. Inspired by a traditional Italian farmstead cheese, Bella Vitano Gold combines the fruity flavor of a premium Parmesan with the creamy smoothness of fine Cheddar. It won a Gold Medal at the 2008 World Cheese Awards.

These cheeses are becoming available at more and more stores across the country, so I would really encourage you to ask for them. The raspberry and merlot - especially for their color and table presentation - will make really excellent holiday cheeses.

Happy eating!

Posted by cheese underground lady at 6:44 AM

December 02, 2008 Most Wonderful Time of the Beer

November 19, 2008 Beer Here - ALT from New Glarus Brewing

November 01, 2008 The brewery the Careys built; New Glarus moves: by Daniel Carey

October 16, 2008 MBR Interview with Dan and Deb Carey Part 2

originally posted on:

Beer Talk Today

The official blog of Beer Talk Today, the beer radio show on 91.7 FM WSUM in Madison.

Thursday, October 16, 2008
MBR Podcast Week 8 Part 2

The second part of our interview with Dan and Deb Carey of New Glarus brewing company. In this installment we talk about their new Alt beer, the unplugged Imperial Weizen, Bohemian Lager and Berlinner Weiss, their new R and D series, and our thoughts on our time at New Glarus.

Click for MBR Interview with Dan and Deb Part 2:

October 14, 2008 MBR Interview with Dan and Deb Carey Part 1

originally posted on:

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
MBR Podcast Week 8 Part 1

This week we got a chance to go down to beautiful New Glarus Wisconsin and interview the Dan and Deb Carey, the brewmaster and owners of New Glarus Brewing Company. In this first installment, we discuss their background, the beginnings of their brewery, Dan's rejection of beer styles, their new brewery, their Octoberfest beer, their fruit beers, our homebrew and long boarding from Madison to New Glarus with a bottle of Raspberry Tart and a box of hard boiled eggs, and spies.

Click for MBR Interview with Dan and Deb Part 1:

October 12, 2008 The Careys on Spotted Cow

originally posted on:

Beer Talk Today

The official blog of Beer Talk Today, the beer radio show on 91.7 FM WSUM in Madison.

Sunday, October 12, 2008
Spotted Cow - Matt Lange

Dan and Deb Carey of New Glarus Brewing Company on their best selling beer, Spotted Cow.

Click for MBR Interview The Careys on Spotted Cow:

September 01, 2008 New Glarus Dancing Man - Superb

Modern Brewery Age Weekly E-Newsletter •Volume 59, No. 35• September 1, 2008

By Pete Reid, editor of Modern Brewery Age; with regular panelists Gregg Glaser, editor of Yankee Brew News, and Tom Conti and Robert Lachman of the Yankee Brew Newstasting panel. Joining us each week is a rotating cast of tasters, to include Dr. Steve Victor, formerly of Yale University; Commander Von Bair, USN, ret.; expat-Briton Gerry Nicholls, graphic designer Phil Simpson, videographer Paul Lin; Neil Balkun, beer buyer for Ancona’s Wines & Liquors, Redding, CT, Greg Zannella, field sales director for Northeast Beverage of Orange, CT, and Michael Anstendig, a writer for New York Magazine on-line. Since taste is subjective, we include descriptive comments from each taster. We rate a top beer in each tasting, and rank it “Five Mugs.” Beers that are almost on the same plane are “highly recommended” and get four mugs. Other beers are recommended based on their strong points, but don’t get a mug rating.

New Glarus Dancing Man
New Glarus Brewing Co.
New Glarus, WI

"Five Mugs" =Top beer of the tasting, superb in every respect.

Dancing Man Wheat is a very Bavarian hefe weizen that comes in at 7.2% abv.

A spot-on Bavarian hefe-weizen from the New Glarus Brewing Company. This is a great yeast, surely straight out of Bavaria. Lots of bubble gum and clove all the way through. But it’s not all phenolics, this beer is very creamy and refreshing. Dan Carey of New Glarus is the most focused of brewmasters, probably a trait he learned brewing at A-B. When he makes a cherry beer, it’s cherry. And when he set out to make a hefe weizen, and he made one that rivals
the best of the Bavarians. This one could take medals at the European Beer Star. The only stylistic oddity is the alcohol content of 7.2% by volume, which pushes it into Imperial Hefeweizen territory.
“Bubble gum aromatics in the nose big time!” said Gregg Glaser. “That bubblegum flavor is there as well, but it’s not unpleasant,” said Michael Anstendig. “That clove is strong,” said Robert
Lachman, “I like the beer, but the clove kind of takes over the back end of the beer.” “Like that clove gum, from Beeman’s” said Phil Simpson. “I like it.” “I feel like I just came from the dentist,” said Tom Conti. “It’s great beer and it freshens your breath too!”

July 11, 2008 New Glarus Brewery Just Keeps Getting Better

July 10, 2008 New Glarus Brewing: The Brewhaus the Careys built.

July 10, 2008 Beer Here- Organic Revolution from New Glarus Brewing

July 01, 2008 A Drink with Dan Carey

June 01, 2008 Ode to Spotted Cow

March 31, 2008 My Gateway Beer

My Gateway Beer

By Jasmine · March 31st, 2008

Everyone has one. That beer that tipped the balance in your life away from Bud Lite and over towards the world of craft beer. Mine was New Glarus's Spotted Cow.

I was a student at UW-Madison. My new friend Jen brought me to a place on State Street that she claimed had great burgers–it was far too dingy for any of my roommates to want to hang out in so I’d never paid any attention to the place. We sat in a tattered green booth, ordered burgers and then, because Jen told me to, we both ordered Spotted Cows. Row of New Glarus Bottles

The bottles are beautiful, with a cow on the label (of course) and their distinctive green paper ring around the neck. I’d never tasted anything so lovely. Sweet and with actual flavor - it was a beer that I WANTED to drink, instead of just seeing how many I could suck down before I couldn’t take it anymore. For many years, though, I was stuck here. I declared unfiltered wheat beers my favorite kind of beer and ordered it everywhere I went.

If Spotted Cow was my gateway drug, then New Glarus was my dealer. When Joe and I first started dating in New York, I would go home for a family visit and return with my suitcase half-filled with their Fat Squirrel - a creamy, nutty brown ale - for him to try. The only reason I didn’t fill it completely is because I needed clothes for padding.

Two winters ago, we flew directly into northern Wisconsin, bypassing Madison (the only place you can get New Glarus’s beers) entirely. So I called up my cousin who was going to school there and asked if he could get us a few bottles of their Wisconsin Belgian Red. I’d heard so much about this beer. It is consistently rated among the top beers anywhere, winning gold and silver medals all over the place for years now. I couldn’t believe I’d never tried it. I had to have it. My cousin managed to smuggle two bottles into the trunk of his car and over to my parents’ house on the day of our family Christmas party.

Belgian Red is tart and sweet at the same time. The label calls it the perfect marriage of wine and beer, and, with a pound of Door County (that’s in Wisconsin, folks) cherries in each bottle, it is more drinkable than any fruit beer. Even my mom liked it.

Finally, after all these years of my love affair with New Glarus, I got to visit the brewery last summer. First we ate lunch in the town of New Glarus, known as Wisconsin’s little Switzerland. It’s a tiny place, with a historic “old town” section and brown and white houses with scalloped roofs. The very first restaurant we walked into had a shining row of New Glarus taps. They served nothing but. Next to my Weiner schnitzel and handmade deep fried cheese curds, I got to try Belgian Red on tap. The head is a light red-brown and the smell is all cherry. It was one of the more divine moments of my beer drinking career.

The brewery tour is a self-guided audio tour, but is excellent and extensive. And at the end, of course, you get to taste three beers. I tried the Uff-da Bock, Yokel lager, and, my new favorite, Dancing Man Wheat. Dancing Man Wheat is citrusy, malty, rich and refreshing. One of the best hefeweizens I’ve ever had. So, while I hope my journey hasn’t ended, you can see it has come full-circle.

March 13, 2008 Rolling Stones Magazine Article

March 10, 2008 Crafted with Success

March 06, 2008 Made in Wisconsin: New Glarus Brewing Company Tour

03.06.08 | Made in Wisconsin: New Glarus Brewing Company Tour

As part of WisconsinEye’s Made in Wisconsin series, we had the opportunity to meet and visit with the owners of the New Glarus Brewing Company in New Glarus Wisconsin. Join us as we take a tour of the brewery, learn about its 21 million dollar expansion, and in the process discover what makes New Glarus Brewing Company unique to our Wisconsin Community.

November 21, 2007 New beginnings at the New Glarus Brewery

October 11, 2007 Small Breweries Beating Out Big Ones in Sudsland

August 09, 2007 Beer Man: New Glarus wheat brew is so good, you'll want to dance

Beer Man: New Glarus wheat brew is so good, you'll want to dance

August 9, 2007

Dancing Man Wheat
New Glarus Brewing Co., New Glarus
www.newglarusbrewing.com

Dancing Man Wheat is one of those beers that make you feel like you’ve never really tasted beer before.

I’ve enjoyed German wheat beers for nearly 30 years now and have certainly had many good ones. But Dancing Man, from the New Glarus brewery, is a revelation that makes many of the German efforts pale in comparison.

Sure, Dancing Man has the high carbonation, sweet malt flavor and banana-clove aroma that is common to the style, but it goes a step further with a bold body that is not often found in the category, along with a 7.2-percent alcohol content.

Dancing Man first catches your eye with its intense orange color and lively carbonation. The fruit and spice aromas are strong – more than typical, but not overpowering. Adding to the fragrance are bready, biscuit-like wheat notes.

The body is creamy and full without seeming thick, yet still retains the high weiss carbonation. The malt flavor is strong and the banana aroma transfers into the flavor, but is not overdone.

I tried my first sample after I drank another beer and the alcohol strength was not apparent. It was more noticeable a couple of days later after I tried a Dancing Man by itself, but it is blended in well. This would still be an excellent beer even with a lower alcohol content.

New Glarus co-owner Deb Carey recently told me that she notices many American microbreweries seem to only go halfway with their beers.

I understood what she meant. I’ve had many beers that fall far short of their announced intention – German-style wheat beers with thin bodies, wimpy carbonation and little banana-clove aroma. There are English-style ales that just taste like your run-of-the-mill American pale ale or Scottish-style ales that have nothing in common with the style except color.

Whether this is because of breweries trying to make a product on the cheap or just not being good brewers is hard to say.

I’m just glad that New Glarus is not part of that group.

Beer Man sez: Dancing Man Wheat is a world-class German-style wheat beer.

Todd Haefer of Scandinavia gets paid to drink beer and write about it for The Post-Crescent. He can be reached at beerman@postcrescent.com. Read past reviews at www.beermanblog.com.

August 07, 2007 New Glarus brewery to build addition

May 10, 2007 Aging with Oak

Basic Brewing Radio™

At Basic Brewing Radio, we're all about home brewing. Each week, we hope to bring to you interesting interviews with people who can shed light on the hobby, share an interesting story, or give expert advice to help us all become better home brewers.

May 10, 2007 - Aging with Oak

Dan Carey, Brewmaster of New Glarus Brewing Company in New Glarus, Wisconsin, shares his tips on aging beer on oak chips and in oak barrels.

Click for Basic Brewing Aging with Oak:

May 10, 2007 Wisconsin Unplugged

Wisconsin Unplugged

-Stephen Beaumont

May 10, 2007 -- “A few times a year, we will cut Dan loose to brew whatever he chooses, uncensored, uncut, unplugged.”

So reads the label of the beer called Enigma, from the New Glarus Brewing Company of New Glarus, Wisconsin. The “Dan” of which that text speaks is Daniel Carey, an innovative and exciting brewer if ever there was one, and also the owner, with his wife Deborah, of the brewery.

So what is Enigma? Simply, a lot. In the nose, the oak in which it was aged is immediately apparent, with woody, vanilla and toasty notes apparent. Then there’s the fruit – whole cherries, the label goes on to say – which lurks in the background at first, but emerges slowly and steadily as the ale warms.

In the body, there’s even more going on, in the form of a near-seamless interaction between tart fruit – made tarter by the judicious use of Brettanomyces, I would guess – caramelly malt, vanilla, funky spice and, finally near the end, a slight jolt of alcohol. The impact of the barrel could be a little more reserved, but to make such a quibble seems petty in the face of such deliciously integrated complexity.

And so, with one success enjoyed, I turn to ‘Unplugged’ number two: Belgian Quadruple.

Medium copper in colour, one sniff of this presumably abbey-style ale informs me that the only Trappist it may have anything in common with is Orval. The nose has a soft whiff of tartness – the Orval connection – alongside deep fruity notes, vanilla and toasted oak. (At this point, I start thinking that I’ve been sampling too many bourbons lately, but no, the label speaks of both oak aging and bourbon barrels.) The body offers just enough Brettanomyces tang to balance the potentially overwhelming fruitiness of the malt without resorting to hop bitterness, and the vanilla and intense notes of black plum, raisin, bing cherry and red wine grapes meet harmoniously in the oh-so-rich, gently roasty body. The finish is warming, but despite this beer’s 11% alcohol content, hardly overwhelming.

Ever since the whole musical ‘unplugged’ phenomenon began, I have regrettably born witness to artist after artist who should be plugged right back in, and quickly. Dan Carey is most definitely not one of those. More, please.

April 27, 2007 New Glarus is brewing up some new businesss at the Port.

March 01, 2007 Drink Globally

January 01, 2007 Chance taken, leading to Spotted Cow

September 01, 2006 World-class brewery, community bank take hometown economy to next level

May 24, 2006 Pouring another round at the New Glarus Brewing Company

May 19, 2006 New Glarus Brewing Expansion Draws Raves

April 19, 2006 Carey receives award for Innovation in Brewing

January 09, 2006 In New Glarus, Demand Outpaces Production

December 06, 2005 New Glarus Brewing Overflowing the Kegs

November 13, 2005 New Glarus: Brewing A Mystery

October 25, 2005 New Glarus to Boost Capacity

October 13, 2005 New Glarus Brewing Named Nation's Best

August 02, 2005 Brew-Monkey's Interview of Daniel Carey

July 05, 2004 New Glarus Modernizes

February 17, 2004 Uff-Da, Wisconsin Song

Uff-Da, Wisconsin!
lyrics/music by Burr Settles

Uff-Da!! Wisconsin!
I drink to your Spotted Cow
your Hearty Hop can keep me warm
when the snow will not allow
your brewing skills and Edel-Pils
will never quite go stale, so
Uff-Da!! Wisconsin!
I drink to your Native Ale!

when I came to the snowy north
from the hills where grass is blue
I knew not quite what to expect
or what beverage to pursue
but fortune mine, I was to find,
ten score miles south of Harris
a family of saintly suds
from a brew-house in New Glarus

(repeat chorus)

barkley flakes and local malts
conditioned in a cask
a hint of corn for flavor
it's more than we could ask
a cloud of yeast when brewing's ceased
remains while up for sale
so have a pint of bovine beer
as I recount my tale

(repeat chorus)

the pilsner, she is special
a creation all their own
straight from south Bavaria
the special yeast is flown!
brewed with bitter barley
in the cellars it will rest
until finally we break it out
and we know that it's the best

(repeat chorus)

to please the gods of winter
we sample now the bock,
with chocolate-coffee undertones
in the style of Reinheitsgebot
naturally mahogany
both in stature and in hue
this fine make is no mistake
and I raise my glass to you!

(repeat chorus)

October 07, 2003 Congressional Record- Extension of Remarks

October 01, 2003 WisconsinWoman: New Glarus Brewing Co.

June 13, 2001 Post Messenger: Meet our neighbor... Carey Wants to Change Attitudes About Drinking

November 01, 2000 Fruit Cocktail

October 01, 2000 Conference Beer Marks the First Time Eisbock Brewed and Bottled in U.S.

July 01, 2000 Beer and Cheese

November 01, 1999 Independent Breweries in a Changing Germany

May 10, 1999 Brewing the good life

Brewing the good life
Modern Brewery Age, May 10, 1999, by Peter V. K. Reid

Dan and Deb Carey find personal and professional satisfaction making their New Glarus specialty beers.

Dan Carey is living every professional brewmaster's dream. The former Anheuser-Busch production supervisor is now the co-owner and brewmaster of the New Glarus Brewing Co., of New Glarus, Wisconsin. He owes this dream job in roughly equal parts to his own brewing aptitude and to the fortitude and spunk of his wife, Deb Carey.

Deb, a Wisconsin native, was educated in Montana and Oregon, and started her first business at the age of 16. After college, she ran other businesses - a graphics and marketing firm in Montana, and an antiques company that imported furniture from Germany. Meanwhile, during the mid- to late 1980s, Dan worked in the U.S. microbrewing industry, and then took a post with Anheuser in 1990.

"Dan and I had always talked about starting a business together," Deb says, "and we were so immersed in the brewing business that it seemed like a natural. But we knew it was a very tough business, and we had seen the problems that some of our small brewer friends had experienced."

Those problems had been one of the reasons that Dan had left the micro segment to begin with. "When I went to work for Anheuser-Busch I was a bit disenchanted with the micro business," Dan recalls. "I saw people starting to cut corners because of inefficiencies of scale, cutting lagering times, making short-term decisions. So I went to A-B because they were number one. Unfortunately, to be successful there, I would have had to move around to places like Newark, New Jersey, and that wasn't what we had in mind for our daughters. My wife was from here in Wisconsin, and she wanted to come back. I'm the artistic type, and I like to create, and you just can't be as creative in a large brewery."

And so the Carey-Carey partnership was born. "It ended up as a decision based on desperation," Deb says. "We wanted to be in charge of our own lives. I happened to be married to a fabulous brewer, so why should he be working for someone else?"

In 1993, the Careys started their small brewery in New Glarus, Wisconsin, a quiet little town just south of Madison. The brewery end was handled by Dan, and the financing by Deb. "I'm very conservative and detail oriented," Dan says, "and I'm useless at talking to bankers. Deb is the entrepreneur, she has a vision and she thrives on taking calculated chances. She pushed to get a big bank loan, and made the whole thing happen." The first incarnation of the New Glarus Brewing Company was very modest, and the company gradually built production to the 5000-barrel mark. But to keep production at that level, the brewers were working pretty long shifts. "We had a 20-barrel brewhouse that used a complicated mashing process," Dan recalls. "We were brewing three 700-gallon batches a day, four or five days a week. We really needed a bigger brewhouse, but we didn't have a lot of money to spend. We wanted something around 60-barrels, but we also wanted it to be beautiful. Fritz Maytag once said 'people want to believe that beer comes from a beautiful place' and I agree with that." So as his brewing assistants labored five days a week, Dan traveled to Germany, searching for the perfect brewhouse. "We found a lot of 60-barrel brewhouses in Germany," he recalls, "but they were either worn out or they had design flaws. Then we found a 100-barrel brewhouse at the Rauh & Ploss Brewery in the city of Selb, in northern Bavaria. The brewery had shut down and the building had been vacant for a year. But the brewhouse was in great shape, used twice a week since 1962, and meticulously cared for. At first I didn't want it because I thought it was too big, but Deb thought it was a great buy."

In the event, the Careys took the plunge, paying $24,000 for a copper brewhouse originally priced at $100,000. "Deb turned out to be right," Dan says. "It allows us to be very efficient. Instead of brewing five days a week, we can brew two or three times a week. In the beginning we said we wanted to build our brewery as if it will be here after we're gone, and this is it. We could run this for 50 years."

The Careys bought used tankage for their expansion, picking up a couple of tanks from the defunct Aviator Ales brewery to replace their old dairy tanks, and then installing everything themselves. "We didn't hire engineers and architects," Dan says. "I did the engineering and Deb did the design, and we did most of the installation m-house. It was hard, and going to Germany to buy equipment is not for the faint-of-heart. It is a lot easier just to call JV Northwest and write them a check. But we did the whole thing for about $285,000, so we were operational for about 20% of what other people spend."

The success of the installation surprised at least one industry expert. "This German brewing consultant kept calling us," Deb recalls. "He knew we had bought this brewhouse, and I guess he assumed we'd be in over our heads. When he would call, I'd tell him everything was fine, and that seemed to puzzle him. One day he actually showed up, out of the blue. He just couldn't believe that Dan was doing it himself. But Dan had installed 48 brewhouses for JVNorthwest, plus our two, so it was a pretty familiar process for him."

Part of Deb's contribution was the design of the brewery buildings. "This building is our interpretation of a Franconian farmhouse-style brewery," she says. "I'm not an architect, so we made it simple, but we love German architecture, and wanted to build something like you'd find in the German countryside."

New Glares Brewing Co.'s European architecture fits perfectly in New Glarus, Wisconsin, a community that was settled in the 19th century by a group of Swiss immigrants. "The people in town have retained a lot of their customs and language," Deb says. "If you go into the post office, you can hear some of the older people taking in Switzer-Deutsch - many of the people in their 60s and 70s are very Swiss and proud of it. It's like a little time capsule - there have been academic studies done on this town - but they have been very open to us."

The townspeople haven't been the only ones to embrace New Glarus. As the company has grown, its beers are becoming known to beer enthusiasts all over the country. "I'm always shocked by the response we get from people," Deb says. "They come up to us at events and say 'You're my heroes'. They start chanting, and kiss my hand. There are a lot of people that get very emotional about beer."

Enthusiasts are particularly fanatical about the brewery's fruit beers. Although most of New Glarus' volume is in German-style lagers, Dan Carey has also specialized in spontaneously-fermented fruit beers, like its Belgian Red. This beer, which Dan Carey calls "a marriage of wine and beer" is made with whole cherries, Wisconsin wheat, Belgian barley and Hallertau hops. It is lagered in oak wine vats and aged for a full year. "We may be known in Wisconsin for our lagers," Dan says, "but outside the state, people know our fruit beers. The Belgian Red has won every contest it's entered."

As Belgian Red has become a cult icon for beer afficionados all over the U.S., it has also won notice from the professional brewing community. Belgian Red has won numerous awards during its relatively brief existence, swiftly becoming one of the most-decorated American microbrewery brands. It made the 1995 Wine Enthusiast list of top ten beers, and took a 1996 silver medal at the World Beer Cup; a 1996 gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival; and platinum medals for world champion fruit beer in the 1995, 1996 and 1997 World Beer Championships. In addition, Belgian Red was named World Champion Specialty Beer in 1996 and 1997 at the Brewing Industry International Awards in Burton-Upon-Trent, England. This last award was especially sweet for Deb and Dan. "It was like winning an Oscar," Deb says. "Getting nominated for an award was honor enough, since we were competing with 850 beers entered by 200 breweries from around the world."

For some of the international brewers, it may be startling to be upstaged by a tiny Wisconsin brewery that is just six years old, brewing with a used brewhouse that was state-of-the-art in 1962.

According to Dan, the New Glares brewhouse was designed to make traditional German-style beers with decoction mashes. "It's not as efficient as a 1999 brewhouse," Dan says, "but a lot of that has to do with subtleties of design. We get 97% extract, where a modern brewhouse can get 99%. We have a very good mill; it's about 65 years old, and made in Dresden before World War Two. We do a decoction mash, and it helps that we get good malt. We get it primarily from Schreier, and we pay a premium for less-modified, low-protein malt."

Another key area for New Glarus has been packaging, where the brewery has sought to maximize shelf life. "The shelf life of our beer is three months," Dan says. "We tell everyone to refrigerate it, but we know in reality that it might not be refrigerated. I've seen our beer a year old in accounts, and I think that is common. We don't have the clout or the resources to pull it. So we can get upset or we can work to extend shelf life. We have worked to get real low air, .3 ml oxygen for a 12-oz. bottles, and we pasteurize it. No matter what you do, though, there's some tavern out there with a bottle that's a year and a half old. We know 99% of our beer in the trade is fresh, but that 1% scares us."

New Glarus purchased their pasteurizer used from the Frankenmuth Brewery. "All our lagers are flash-pasteurized," Dan says, "and the rest is bottle conditioned."

Other equipment in the brewery has come from all over. "We've got a line from G. Heileman, a filler from a German brewer, a labeler from a Canadian brewery, and a filter from a winery in New Jersey," Dan says. "We even got a conveyor from a distributor."

Most unusual are the 100-barrel wine vats, Italian-made and lined with Yugoslavian oak. Wooden vessels are a rare sight in a modern American brewery, but these vessels are key to making the spontaneously-fermented fruit beers like Belgian Red. "Our fruit beers are a small but important part of our business," Dan says. "People are always saying micros should try to create the $5.00 bottle of beer. Well, our fruit beers are going for $7.50 to $10.00 for a 750-ml champagne bottle."

In addition to the Belgian Red, New Glarus also makes Raspberry and Apple ales. The company's primary lager beers are Uff-Da Bock and Edel-Pils. In addition, the brewery makes Norski Honey Bock, Solstice Weiss, Staghorn Octoberfest, Snowshoe Ale and Coffee Stout. An traditional unfiltered "special invitation" Zwickel beer is sometimes made, dosed with yeast in the bottle for a secondary fermentation.

According to Dan, all his beers share a common theme. "My philosophy is to aim for the drinkability of a large brewery, and the flavor of a micro," Dan Carey says. "The big guys make a very drinkable beer, while some of the microbeers, you're done after a pint. We want to make beer that is subtle, and we want to brew what we like to drink. It's got to be good, or I'm not going to waste my time."

Most of the brands are priced in the $5.99 range, and the company depends on word of mouth and personal contact for many sales. "We're doing pull marketing," Deb says. "We approach the consumer first. We do keg tappings, beer tastings, tours, talks to local groups, you name it. We figure that every single person who drinks our beer is important. For us, one person is equal to the population of a small city for the big guys. So I'm happy to spend 10-15 minutes talking to a guy at a festival. If we make a connection with that person, we have a customer."

Deb is now working to make New Glarus a force in its region. "We'll stay local," she says. "We do ship some beer to Chicago, but we're one of the few Wisconsin breweries that doesn't ship very much out-of-state. We think local identity is part of our appeal."

"It's a hard business," Dan observes. "It's difficult to make beer day-in and day-out, and it's not real profitable unless you're big. But it's a good livelihood, and we can nurture a passion. We make money, but our lifestyle won't include Mercedes-Benz vehicles any time soon."

For Deb and Dan, though, the aesthetics of their old German brewkettle surpass a shiny SL500 anytime. Standing in the brewhouse, Deb smiles at her husband. "Life doesn't get any better than this," she says.

July 07, 1997 New Glarus buys Old-World brewhouse

August 07, 1995 New Glarus builds presence in market

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