Miracles be damned, the story carries on to another Wisconsin institution. New Glarus Brewing. So, this year I decided to be a good daughter and take off on September 14th to celebrate my father’s birthday with him since I had a full day of activities lined up on Saturday (his actual birthday) and also the day before (September 13th) was the beer release party for Stitch and Snitch at MobCraft. So I had this day off to both be a good daughter and to recover in the event that I drank too much at the release party. For the record, I did not drink too much because I’m an adult, but it was still nice to have the day off.

Although it was once again ungodly hot. Like, miserably hot. So I rode out to Monroe with my parents to check out the Cheese Days festival, which I’m sure would’ve been super cool if I wasn’t so miserably, god-awfully hot that day. After that we headed up to New Glarus because it was only twenty minutes away and we thought we should check out the brewery.

First, let me say, that this was not my family’s first venture to the New Glarus Brewery, but it has been a good ten or fifteen years since the last time we went there and no one remembered it at all. Mainly because they’ve done radical remodels of the brewery and surrounding. I guess if I am digging into the vague and repressed parts of my memory from my middle school years (which is when I believe we went out there) the brewery was small and industrial. Now it is big and shiny and welcoming to visitors. The only formally guided tours they do are on Fridays at 1pm, otherwise it’s all self guided.

We walked through and read the posters and looked in windows and admired the beautiful people just trying to do their jobs while hundreds of tourists filtered in and out to stare at them. I went up a staircase that went to nowhere. We watched as bottles shot down a line like the opening scenes in Laverne and Shirley. It was beautiful. Then afterwards we went into the beer garden for my parents to have some drinks.

The thing about the beer garden was that I didn’t understand the theme. It seemed more like a beautifully done replica of some Tuscan ruins, which doesn’t exactly scream BEER. I think, honestly they were going for a German thing, and maybe it was working, but it didn’t feel like it was working to me. To me, it was Italy. Or more accurately, the Italian Pavilion in Epcot Centre’s World Showcase. But it was Germany or something, apparently.

Anyways, I was hot and didn’t feel great. Mostly I was hungry. Profoundly and deeply hungry. But my dad wasn’t really interested in indulging my whims of food because he felt that I should have filled up more at the Cheese Festival. Which is true. This is was mostly my fault. But the thing about New Glarius is that while they do put out different beers on occassion, they are more of a tried-and-true kind of place. They have their standards and their seasonals and you know what you’re getting. Now, I was going to tell you what they had, but I just went and pulled up my notes app and saw that I do not have any notes.

What I do remember for sure, is that my dad got a Staghorn. That’s it. That’s what I remember. Again, this is not the place you go for useful or good information on beer. This is where you go to see the ramblings of a madwoman.

But on the upside, after we left, on our drive home we stopped at the World’s Largest Culver’s and I got a scoop of the flavor of the day, which was s’mores. See, I remember the important stuff.