August 26, 2012

We drove to Middleton, Wisconsin and got a campsite at Mendota County Park.  It started to rain on us after we left this morning and stopped before we got here.  It has been really cloudy all day but it didn’t rain any more. We unhooked and drove to New Glarus Brewing.  We had been here in 2005 but they now have a brand new state of the art brewery.  We took a self guided tour and then went to the tasting room.  This brewery is full of stainless steel pipes and valves in complex arrangements – it reminded us of a refinery.  We each had a beer and then bought one more that we shared.

We drove to Mt. Horeb and went to Grumpy Troll Brewing.  As we were going to the front door I saw a man with “Brew Crew” on his shirt.  He was a home brewer and founder of Simple Earth Hops and was delivering Cascade hops to the brewery.  His name was Matt and he knew about the Foam Rangers.  We went inside and shared a beer and talked to the bartender and a couple of customers at the bar.  The beer here was really good. They told us about three more breweries to try.  We only went to one of them, Ale Asylum, and both of us got a half pint of beer.  The bartender performed a magic trick for us using cherries, bar shaker cups and a lemon. He did it really good – he must have been a magician.   If we stay tomorrow we might try the other two brewpubs.  We drove back to camp and I fixed supper and we watched a little TV.