Kyle Nabilcy
BREAKING: the Packers and the Badgers don’t care what beer I drink. It makes no difference if I drink a Texas beer or a California beer or a Wisconsin beer when I watch a game on TV. I know this. I’m a rational guy. And yet, just try and get me to open a beer that isn’t a Wisconsin beer once the opening whistle blows. I just can’t risk thinking it doesn’t matter.
Superstitions have never really stuck with me. I’ll toss spilled salt over my shoulder for a laugh, but I’m pretty sure there’s a “right” shoulder and a “wrong” one, and damned if I know the difference. I have respect for tradition, and love a meaningful gesture here and there — I run my hand across the columns inside the Capitol’s entryways every time I pass them — but don’t over-assign significance to them.
All that stands in fairly stark contradiction to how much thought I put into which beers I’m going to drink during a Green Bay or UW game. And if the game is important enough — the recent Big Ten championship game, for example, or an NFC playoff game — the seriousness of the decision becomes almost comical. I’m big enough to admit that.
I might break out a fruited wild ale from Funk Factory, or one of Central Waters’ anniversary stouts. These would have to be pretty big games, though. A Lakefront Black Friday might do the trick, too. It’s got to be a game that requires the psychic prestige of opening something special.
The aforementioned Big Ten championship game was special. I opened a Champ Rouge, one of New Glarus’ R&D releases — get it? Champ like championship, Rouge like red? Never mind that Ohio State uses its own shade of red; it was a Wisconsin beer and it made sense. I closed the game out with an Untitled Art Blackberry Berlinerweisse, which almost had enough magic to make a win happen. The underwhelming Mangoes on My Mind from 3 Sheeps might have accounted for the mid-game doldrums.
But for the little games, the middle-of-the-season games that don’t have any real juice to them, I won’t drink anything too fancy. Gotta save the juju for the games that need it. This last Sunday, the fairly woeful Aaron Rodgers-less Packers faced the entirely woeful winless Cleveland Browns. It’s the sign of a sorry-ass season when you’re not convinced your team could beat a team that had one win in its last 31 games. It was not a game that required popping god-tier bottles.
I didn’t dig deep into the cellar, but with the playoffs still on the line, I didn’t entirely throw in the towel either; I opened a bottle of New Glarus Hometown Blonde. It’s slightly special, in that New Glarus sold it only at the Hilltop brewery this year, but not so special that I don’t have a four-pack to burn through.
Hometown Blonde isn’t actually the blonde ale you might think it is from the name. It’s a classic old world Bohemian (Czech) pilsner, and it’s basically flawless: crisp, clean, golden. Like Zwickel, last year’s non-R&D brewery exclusive, Hometown Blonde is a sleeper must-have, and an eminently drinkable beer any time of year.
And though there were many plays in the Packers game that could count as the key to Green Bay’s victory, the Cleveland overtime interception that gave Green Bay the ball in prime real estate really turned the game our way. That errant pass was instigated by Clay Matthews, our own hometown blonde.
You’re welcome.
