So what else do they have in Madison, aside from cows, statues of cows, and affectionate/thieving animals? Not much, so we took a day trip to New Glarus to visit their Swissish atmosphere and ultra-fancy new brewery.
The "top of the hill" New Glarus brewery was just finished a year ago, and it's obvious they put a ton of thought into it. Firstly, it's kinda beautiful. It's also a study in efficiency: enormous copper brew kettles get their own shrine, while a dozen fermentation tanks are tucked away in an adjacent, secured, room. Across from fermentation is a yeast-culture room, where they collect and reculture their yeasts. Just down the hall there are brite tanks and, finally, an enormous Skynet bottler. Every cord and cable in the building is tucked safely away amongst the rafters, and warmly decorated, cavernous, production rooms allow for expansion and easy cleaning.
Actually, it's more than just kinda beautiful.
New Glarus has the capacity to brew a lot of beer. A lot of pretty excellent beer, actually. So why haven't you heard of it, Food Diary? Because its entire capacity (100,000 barrels per year -- 3.1 million gallons) is consumed in meeting the demand from Wisconsinites. 3.1 million gallons. And that's besides all the Miller they make, drink, throw up, and drink in that state.
Wisconsin is like a black hole of beer; the sheer volume of beer created/consumed in the state creates a kind of drunk gravity so strong that no beer can escape.
We were lucky to get out with those commemorative glasses.
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