On Saturday, August 11, I reached Nirvana. Enlightenment. I became one with the universe. How, you ask? I attended the Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison. GTMW is an annual beer festival organized by the
Madison Homebrewers and Tasters Guild. These guys know how to throw a party! And thanks to Westy, for telling me about it. Here he is with the Three Floyds Alpha King!
GTMW is always held on the second Saturday in August. In fact, this year was the 21st year of the festival. There were approximately 100 breweries from the Midwest serving about 500-600 different beers. Look at the
GTMW Program to see all the great breweries that attended. Many of the beers are listed.
It's not easy to get a ticket to the festival. You can stand in line for several hours at a Madison store on the first Sunday in May for a shot at 3000 tickets. Or you can send a check and SASE on May 1. Not before, not after. Send it before and they send it back. Send it after and you are too late. From all the requests postmarked on May 1, they have a lottery to distribute the remaining 2000 tickets. You can request up to 4 of the $30 tickets. Tickets were selling on eBay for up to $100. But don't scalp them. That will hurt your beer karma.
I attended GTMW with friends Mark (westweasel on Beer Advocate), Barry, and Carl. We enjoyed a leisurely drive from Illinois. We planned to get in line around 12:00 – the festival ran from 1:00 – 6:00. We considered stopping in Janesville for lunch, but realized we would be eating 2 hours before the festival. Instead, we stopped at McDonald's one exit before our hotel. Nothing like a greasy meal before an afternoon of beer drinking.
We parked at the Holiday Inn Express and walked the 1/3 mile to Olin-Turville Park. We arrived at 12:15 and a long line was already serpentined across a couple of soccer fields. We were in about the third leg of the line. By 1:00, the line had about 8 legs. The time went by quickly as we met some other people and discussed what beers we wanted to drink. I was surprised to see that the people behind us were drinking Budweiser and clearly more interested in becoming inebriated than in tasting good beer.
One smart idea of the organizers was to have volunteers walking around exchanging wristbands for tickets. By the time the gate opened, everyone had a wristband. This way, they could just visually inspect everyone at the gate instead of taking tickets and the line moved very quickly.
Upon entering the festival, it's awesome and awe-inspiring to see thousands of people gathered to share your common interest. There were three huge tents where the brewers were pouring beer, plus the cask tent where they were serving beer from casks and kegs at higher temperatures. There was at least one tent for food and several tents where local proprietors where selling their stuff.
After a few lines, we got smart and the four of us would each get a different beer, then share them all. So in that way, we must've had at least 60 different beers. The souvenir glass was like a tall shot glass, 8 oz. The brewers were supposed to pour 2 oz. pours, but most of them were filling it. I definitely didn't need that much beer. I tried to stick to the beers that I really wanted to try, drank only a few beers that I'd had before, and dumped out anything that wasn't great.
I don't even know where to begin...well, OK, I'll begin with the Dark Lord. We were able to try Three Floyds Dark Lord and also Barrel-aged Dark Lord. They were both thick, complex, and tasty. The alcohol was noticeable but only a tad high considering what a huge beer it is. The Barrel-aged Dark Lord was smoother than the Dark Lord and had a nice little bourbon edge to it. This was the best beer we had at the festival.
We also tried Surly 2006 Barrel-aged Darkness, which some people consider a better beer than Dark Lord. I thought it was very good and smooth, and easier to drink than Dark Lord, with less alcohol. It was a great beer but didn't match the complexity of the Dark Lord.
I enjoyed the New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red. This beer is almost more like a cherry wine. It's loaded with cherries and was a nice contrast to the huge stouts and porters that I was drinking.
more good beers to come...
We met some interesting people. You can just strike up a conversation with anyone while you're waiting in line. People were very friendly and laid back. Copious amounts of beer may have contributed to that. One of the more unusual characters we met was the Hop Whore. She was dressed as a schoolgirl with a sash that said Hop Whore on it. Apparently she won a Tyranena contest but wouldn't say what exactly that entailed. ;)
A little advice – if you need a bathroom, use one of the many porta-potties around the festival grounds. Relieving yourself on the trees or in the lake is not recommended. We saw several people arrested for doing that.
We left the festival about 5 minutes before it was over and beat the crowds heading for the exit. We walked back to the hotel, showered, and caught a cab to downtown Madison for dinner.
We had dinner at Angel's. They beer was good and the service was great. The steaks that we had were not. Other than the steaks, the food was good. Frankly, we didn't really need a big dinner and maybe next year, we'll stop at a few places and have appetizers. After dinner, we walked toward the Capitol building and down State Street. I've never been to downtown Madison, and it was really nice, almost as nice as Naperville. Fortunately, the students weren't back yet, so it wasn't crowded. We stopped at another bar, had a beer, tried not to let on that we were Cub fans as the Brewers pounded on the Cubbies, then went to the Great Dane.
The Great Dane is a huge brewpub. It's three levels, I think, or at least it seems like it. It has an outdoor beer garden that is completely surrounded by buildings. There are even some trees in there. They had some good beer on tap.
After awhile, we noticed a strange woman standing by a table of attractive women, about 30 feet away. She kept glancing over her shoulder in our direction. When we got a good look, her face looked like a man's. But she was clearly dressed like a woman although she wasn't wearing a dress. She turned sideways and two things become very clear...she had huge breasts and she was a man. And not an attractive man. Or woman. I thought she looked like the actor Rhys Ifans (the kicker in the Replacements). He/she was blond with a big nose and extremely skinny. With huge breasts. Seriously, we thought they might be balloons. Maybe I don't get out enough, but this isn't something I see every day.
One of the guys asked our waitress "What's with the guy with the big tits?" She looked over, did a double-take, and replied "I don't know!" The group of women left and the guy/girl started heading in our direction. Only a few other people had spotted him/her, all watching intently. He/she worked his/her way across the restaurant to another table of women, and by this time, everyone in the place had noticed. Our conversation centered around "Is it for real? Is it a joke? Is it some psychology student with a wacky social experiment gone awry? That would be a hard one to explain if your girlfriend was there when you returned home. "Um, Bob, why are you dressed like that?" Shortly after that, he/she left, leaving us to wonder what it was all about. Eventually we caught a cab and returned to the hotel.
On Sunday morning, Mark and Carl sent me a text message around 8:00 that they were eating breakfast. I was surprised they were awake so early. Barry and I woke up and joined them. We were amazingly not really hungover. I felt dehydrated and my digestive system was a little weird for a couple days, but nothing serious. And I had no headache. But my feet were sore from standing for 6 hours! It's a good thing that the festival doesn't end at 11:00 PM or I would've been a wreck.
We took off around 9:45 and stopped at Woodman's grocery store in Janesville. Woodman's is known for having a good selection of beer and great prices. They carry a lot of beer that is available in Wisconsin but isn't distributed in Illinois. Barry and I loaded up, buying 7 six-packs each and a few other bottles. I was pleasantly surprised that they had Smuttynose – I bought some IPA and Old Brown Dog. I also got some New Glarus Quadrupel, New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red, New Glarus Raspberry Tart (those last two in big bottles, they had no six-packs), some Tyranena Coffee Porter something or other,
The festival was very well-organized and we had a fantastic time. Kudos to MHTG!
If you are really interested in beer, I strongly urge you to attend the festival. No wait, forget that, if more people try to get tickets, it will be harder for me to get them. Never mind.
- schneid
