Winter Beers

So, it's winter. Time for some hearty microbrews to sip on a brutally cold winter night. Here's some of my favorite beers that just seem to fit with the winter season:

Central Waters' Y2K Catastrophe* Ale: A delicious "barelywine style ale." As Central Waters' states in the beer's description: Originally designed for the Y2K survival kit, this beer has been proven to be a staple for anyone's emergency plan. Kosmyk Charlie's is a delightful treat, aged for a year in our cellars to create brew smooth enough to overcome any disaster.

It's very strong and very good.

*What a great name. Back in my day, we had real doomsday scenarios, none of this fake New Age misinterpretation of Mayan calendar's nonsense.

Big Slick Oatmeal Stout from Ale Asylum. Stouts are ideal winter beers, big and rich. There are a lot of good local Wisconsin stouts. This is one of my favorites and Ale Asylum is right here in Madison.

Viking Brewery Hot Chocolate: This is a December seasonal and I think is also an excellent one-of beer where you want to sip a beer slowly while relaxing. The Viking Brewery website has a good description (as you might expect, since they brew the beer):

Hot Chocolate is a Chocolate Stout made with cocoa, milk sugar and a dash of cayenne pepper for warmth.

Now that's an exciting beer...a little pepper and chocolate. [I know I picked this in the Summer Brews blog post way back when, but hey, it's good all year round]

Specher's Black Bavarian: A perfect dark beer that will make you forget about the cold. This one sometimes makes me a little sleepy, it's pretty heavy. But if you're curled up by the fireplace or under a blanket with the heat on, the Wisconsin winter doesn't seem so bad.

So there you have it. There's more out great beers out there, but these are my favorites.

Grading Madison's Snow Removal Job

I would say around a B+ (which means I think snow removal went pretty well). This doesn't take into account the condition of the roads during the Thursday morning commute(aka today) as this blog entry was written before then.

The Good: Streets were passable. You couldn't really drive at regular speeds but traffic was moving. The plows were working like crazy when the storm started to when today. That's good. [County PD was pretty decent too].

Room for Improvement: Gammon Road in between the Beltline and Watts seems to have lost a lane to the snow. That's not good. The roads seem a bit icy already. The temperature drop doesn't help either. Not sure if extra salting would have helped considering the temperature drop soon anyways.

Also Graders...why do these things even exist? I'm not an expert in snow removal, but I don't feel that these things are good at removing snow. Wouldn't a snow plow be far more effective? They just sort of move snow around and leave a layer in the road. Am I missing something about these things?

Driving notes: People were mostly driving responsibly. There wasn't a lot of traffic. The people who were out there were pretty reasonable I thought. I did see a car fish-tail 90 degrees across two lanes (luckily the road was clear) and I saw a truck catch a bit of a traffic calming circle that was covered in snow. But pretty good (B+ if I had to grade it).

Charter Cable

So, Charter Cable filed for bankruptcy reorganization, and their plan for a return to profitability doesn't include focusing on customer service though. No surprise there.
Post-bankruptcy, Charter focusing on biz services:

the focus on business services wouldn't help the company's dismal customer service ratings

Yes. That is correct. Charter Cable has terrible customer service. I mean, focusing on business services is probably a good financial call, but I'm not sure how they will make much headway when they have a reputation for such terrible customer service for their residential customers.

And don't even get me started on their direct marketing to their own customers. I get phone calls and mailers galore from them.

New Glarus's 2010 Beer Lineup

So, inspired by Fearful Symmetries' blog post covering New Glarus's 2010 beer lineup, here's my take on it. New Glarus Brewery is a very important Wisconsin microbrewery (the availability of Spotted Cow is amazing) and I think their lineup is worthy of examination. It was leaked on the Beer Geek Heaven:

1. Year-round brews that are returning: Belgian Red, Raspberry Tart, Spotted Cow, Fat Squirrel and Stone Soup.

These strike me as pretty obvious choices. The first two beers have been regulars in New Glarus's lineup for a while and are really excellent fruit beers. Spotted Cow is the brewery's flagship beer, so yeah, it's back along with partner Fat Squirrel. I've noticed Fat Squirrel appearing in several bars on tap or bottle where previously Spotted Cow was the only microbrew. Stone Soup is a Belgian ale that I never really liked. I can see why they are keeping it around though (it's more of an issue with the style - there's no accounting for taste), but compared to the beers they are dropping...well...

2. Beers no longer being made: Organic Revolution, Black Wheat, Coffee Stout, Snowshoe Red Ale, Yokel and Hop Hearty IPA

I'm disappointed to see the Organic Revolution and Black Wheat go away. I'm also disappointed to see the Coffee Stout go away, but it seems like every brewery has a coffee beer these days, so I kinda understand if they felt like they should drop it.

3. From Beer Geek Heaven: The first seasonal in January will be Cabin Fever Bock, a Wisconsin honey Bock that will obviously be on the sweeter side. February will bring the return of 2008's popular Road Slush Oatmeal Stout, then Cracked Wheat, Dancing Man Wheat, and Staghorn Octoberfest. [Also there will be Back Forty Bock near the end of the year and Totally Naked during the summer]

You know what I think? I think that Octoberfest beers are overrated. There, I said it. It's such a boring style. It's very cool to celebrate the German-heritage thing, especially in Wisconsin, but seriously, I'm not a fan.

I'm delighted to see the Stout and the two excellent wheat beers return. I'm a big wheat beer fan, and both Cracked Wheat and Dancing Man Wheat are excellent wheat beers. I'm also very interested in the Cabin Fever Bock. It'll be nice to see something sweet in the lineup.

4. A few other thoughts on the planned Unplugged beers that are planned (from Hair of the Dog): Enigma, Apple Ale, Cherry Stout, and Abt.

Cherry Stout is my favorite beer. No qualifiers here - it's just my favorite. So I'm happy to see it return. Apple Ale was also a beer I liked a lot (a very strong apple flavor. I like strong flavors in beer (and food too)).

Anyways, there you have it. It looks like it'll be a great lineup.

Get your popcorn ready (Edgewater)

So, you probably already know this but Madison's Landmark Commission denied the Edgewater redevelopment plan a Certificate of Appropriateness, which means that the current Edgewater plan would have to be scaled down significantly to be approved (Good chance it would be done-for in its current form or the plan might just be done).

In order to overturn the ruling, there needs to be 14 alders who vote to do so. The count right now is 2 on record against overturning, 2 alders who will likely be absent, and 7 in favor of overturning the ruling. There are nine alders undecided. So, in order to get to 14 votes, there will need to be 7 out of the 9 undecided alders to vote to overturn it. If you'll look at Link 2 below, the WiSJ has the breakdown of how the votes look. (Good job WiSJ on that).

The vote will take place at the Tuesday city council meeting (aka tomorrow).

From Brenda Konkel's blog, the opinion of the city attorney:

Thus, the question comes down to whether the Council finds that “owing to special conditions pertaining to the specific piece of property,” failure to grant the Certificate “will cause serious hardship for the owner.

My take: Considering the way the ordinance is written, I don't see how the City Council can overturn the Landmark Commission's ruling. The only way this could happen is if alders decide that they like the project enough to ignore the ordinance. We'll see what happens. I think it's going to be close. Should be an exiting council meeting...so, as Terrel Owens would say: Get your popcorn ready.

Links:

1. Mayor Cieslewicz's city-sponsored blog about the Landmarks Commission rejecting the Edgewater:

Um, gosh, if only the person who appointed these members would have done a better job! Oh wait...Mayor Cieslewicz appointed 5 of 7 of the members. Kind of a funny complaint. I hope his RTA appointments work out better (I think they will). Although I wonder if anti-RTA people will be copying and pasting from his blog. Good job handing the conservatives talking points Mayor Cieslewicz...or maybe he just doesn't want to take responsibility for his appointees.

2. The Wisconsin State Journal has an editorial in support of overturning the Landmark Commission's ruling. I'm especially amused at the WiSJ's focus on how "beautiful" and "stylish" the new hotel will be. I'm sorry, but considering how Madison.Com looks, I don't trust the Wisconsin State Journal's opinion on aesthetic matters.

3. Caffeinated Politics blog: Edgewater Hotel Project Needs To Be Defeated

4. Laptop City Hall has a good run down of the issue.

5. The Isthmus has a write-up on some Edgewater history and other background information:

Madison’s landmarks ordinance is not unusual. It copies language from other cities. It covers seven and a third single-spaced pages. If anything is left unclear, the city has a website and a small library of official planning books and booklets.

Charter School in Verona

Interesting news for the New Century charter school in Verona: Verona charter school considers going green.

I'm curious what exactly it means for a school to go 'green.' According to the article:

Being a "green" charter school means "you use the environment to teach all core subjects," she said.

That could mean a lot of things. Perhaps the school will be science heavy?

In any case, it'll be interesting to see what they come up with for the school.

And as always, for every article about schools that receive public funding (New Century is publicly funded):

Dean Gorrell, Verona's superintendent, said what's happening at New Century is a "microcosm" of what districts across the state with level or declining enrollment are experiencing as they make budget reductions to comply with state-mandated revenue caps.

"At some point you just have nothing left to cut," Gorrell said, adding that districts then have to discuss "dissolving or merging" small schools. "New Century is no different in that respect."

That's right, they are short on money. This comes from the state legislation reducing funding year after year. I hope it doesn't hamper New Century's ability to provide a good education.

PS. If you wanted to do something about Wisconsin's public schools being under funded, you could check out the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent School's A Penny for Kids campaign: http://www.apennyforkids.org/

Neumann vs Walker

So the Wisconsin State Journal is wondering: Is Wisconsin's race for governor already down to two main candidates?

Even with the entry of Tim John on the Democratic side, I think that Tom Barrett might have that one wrapped up. But I would argue that the GOP-side might turn into a race. Might being the key word. Bear with me for a moment, it's not looking good for Mark Neumann and there are already some calls for Mark Neumann to drop out of the Republican primary for governor:

Neumann's campaign has struggled. He's on his second campaign manager since July. And he suffered a setback when Jim Klauser, an adviser and Republican power broker, recently left the Neumann camp to back Walker.

Klauser, secretary of the Department of Administration under former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, declined to comment on his departure. But Neumann's inability to get early traction is believed to have been a factor.

All of this has left many wondering where the Neumann campaign is going, and whether he'll stay in through the primary next fall.

So things aren't looking all that good for Mark Neumann. Check out this poll, Mark Neumann is down:

Neumann 14.34%
Walker 38.60%

So Neumann is down by 26% points. Not good. However, it's not as bad as it could be for Neumann. Scott Walker has been essentially running for governor since Mark Green (R) lost to Jim Doyle in 2006 (and Scott Walker was planning to run for governor in 2006, but he didn't hit his fund raising targets so he dropped out and let Mark Green take on Jim Doyle). So even with all the effort that Scott Walker has put into running statewide, the fact that he's not even about 40% in the Republican primary, is not a good sign at all.

Of course, Neumann has to get it together if he's going to go anywhere. And as that quote above shows, he might not have everything together. However, the thing that doesn't always get mentioned in these news articles is that Neumann is independently wealthy and he could probably drop a lot of his own money into advertising if he wanted to. If Scott Walker isn't a strong enough statewide candidate, those advertisements could be very effective. It's just hard to tell this early. After all, Hillary Clinton was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008 for how long? It doesn't mean much this early...