Beer Baron: Wet your whistle with a Shower Bier - Madison.com

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Shower Bier is a new helles lager from Madison’s Young Blood Beer.

CHRIS DROSNER, FOR THE STATE JOURNAL

While I pride myself in having my fingers on the pulse of the beer world, I must admit shower beers — very much in the zeitgeist right now — don’t do much for me.

Most proponents of a cold one during a hot shower point to one of two uses: a pre-outing warmup or a post-workout cooldown.

I guess I don’t get what the rush is for shower beers. I like showers and I like beers. I like to take my time with each of them, most of the time.

And it has been a long time since I felt like I wanted to increase my alcohol intake before a night out — saying nothing of how long it has been since a night out.

While I am not one, there are many devotees of shower beers, and a recent Twitter solicitation for Wisconsin shower beer suggestions revealed a definite “type” for these whistle-wetters. As @m750 noted, “Gotta be in a can, can’t risk glass with a slippery hand. It’s the same level of refreshment you seek post lawn mow on a hot day. Crisp, and gone in the span of a 10 minute hot shower. I lean towards a lighter pale (ale).”

Some of the more popular suggestions: PBR, Third Space Happy Place, Miller High Life, Point Special. New Glarus came up a lot, mostly for Moon Man, but also the 100% apropos Totally Naked. Gotta love the puns.

There are even beers called Shower Beer — nearly a dozen of them, according to Untappd, including one from the excellent Vennture Brew Co. in Milwaukee. (The photos accompanying check-ins to Shower Beers often are wet and wild.)

The latest shower beer, though, is actually a Shower Bier, and it’s perhaps the most important beer yet from Madison’s Young Blood Beer Co.

This nearly year-old brewery has made a name trading in hazy hops, fruity sours and a few really well done farmhouse ales and saisons. Head brewer Kyle Gregorash has made very few of these beers multiple times so far; the variety and constant movement by has been a core tenet of Young Blood’s identity.

Shower Bier, though, was born out of a desire to offer a rock in that fast-moving river — both to retailers and less exploratory drinkers. While this German-style helles lager won’t quite be billed as a year-round beer, it will be brewed about once a month, Young Blood’s Andrew Tader said. That might be enough to keep it on shelves more or less constantly and is a far cry from the one-and-dones that make up the majority of Young Blood’s portfolio.

Tader noted he could see it being a popular option for parents visiting the King Street taproom with their UW-Madison student kids due to its flavor profile — a bit of a departure from most of Young Blood’s beers in that it’s light, easy and drinkable.

You know, a shower beer.

Let’s pull back the curtain, check the temperature and lather up.

Shower Bier

Style: Helles, a lager that is German for “light.”

Brewed by: Young Blood Beer, 112 King St.

What it’s like: The Chicago-brewed Dovetail Helles Lager has become my go-to helles — and one of my go-to beers, period — since its arrival in Wisconsin over the summer. Shower Bier skews a bit more bitter than Dovetail’s portrait of balance.

Where, how much: Young Blood’s cans are found across the Madison area these days, and Shower Bier will occupy a new, lower price tier for the brewery — about $11-$12 per four-pack of 16-ounce cans. (My four-pack was provided as a pre-release sample by Young Blood.) It’s also $6 a pint at the taproom, and quite nice on draft on the streetside patio.

Booze factor: The 5.2% ABV allows for a clear mind even if you shower quickly.

Up close: If you consume Shower Bier outside the shower — and use a glass, as I always recommend — you’ll find it pours the palest of golds with a lovely aroma of orange marmalade on white toast. The bready malt note continues in the flavor, joined by a pleasant but fleeting herbal note from the Mandarina Bavaria hops. That gives way to a finish that some would call crisp and some would call assertively bitter — in a lager context, not an IPA context. It’s a flourish that provides some momentum toward the next sip and reminds you that, hey, this is a brewery that has traded on big flavors its whole young life. Even its nice easy beer has some chutzpah.

Bottom line: 4 stars (out of 5)

This was not the best new beer Madison’s Ale Asylum released this year, but it was unquestionably the most successful, and it’s obvious why without even cracking open the can. This beer’s label perfectly captured the zeitgeist at the time of its release in early April, and it never really stopped resonating. The pilsner was followed by a hazy pale ale version, and both were taken national by the new Wisconsin-based distributor Brew Pipeline. Locally, the brewery has offered the FVCK COVID duo and many of its other beers for $6 a six-pack for most of the year. By the way, my favorite new Ale Asylum beer also had a “ugh, 2020” theme: MRDR HRNT, the first in a new “Apocalypse Bingo” series. It’s a pale ale heavily dosed with Mosaic, Denali and Trident hops that create an intense, nearly hard seltzer-like lemongrass-lime character.

This is not one but 25 beers, a different one from each of the Wisconsin breweries that committed to this worldwide collaboration started by San Antonio’s Weathered Souls Brewing. Most of the beers were imperial stouts, but the Black Is Beautiful black IPA (remember that style?) from community-focused Delta Beer Lab might have been my favorite of those I tried. The other participating Madison-area breweries were Herbiery, Giant Jones, Parched Eagle, Rockhound, Sunshine and Young Blood. Black Is Beautiful was, of course, a response to the other story that defined 2020: our national awakening on racial justice. The 1,192 breweries that took part pledged to donate proceeds to local foundations that support police reform and legal defense for those who have been wronged by police, and also committed “to the long-term work of equality.” I am happy to drink to that.

Yes, there are plenty of beers on this list that are not a statement on times like these. And Untitled Art’s take on the legendary Chocolate Shoppe ice cream flavor was probably my favorite of them. Loaded with lactose for sweetness and creaminess, and cocoa nibs and dark malts for chocolate character, it was not just a beer that tasted like chocolate ice cream but specifically like Zanzibar. It was sweet but not overly so, and the chocolate had dark depths and the fruity complexity of its namesake.

Young Blood Beer Co. picked a heck of a year to debut. The plan was to pack the taproom on King Street and pour glass after glass of head brewer Kyle Gregorash’s IPAs, saisons, lagers and pastry stouts. The opening went ahead in May, with a quick pivot toward canning the bulk of the beer, though the sidewalk patio did brisk business, too. Young Blood’s M.O. is to crank ’em; its Untappd page records 117 different beers already. And while this is really a nod for the entire brewery over a single beer, I don’t think any Young Blood I had this year surpassed the mostly by-the-book but excellent saison Cheryl’s 2004 Cobalt. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the colorful cans in my fridge — and what they come up with next for beer names — in 2021.

The label of color fields and geometric shapes was almost as adorable as this beer’s diminutive pop culture namesake, but the beer inside was the real force. Released for Third Space Brewing’s fourth anniversary in September, this kinda-hazy session IPA packed bright citrus and stonefruit flavors and a satisfying body despite its wee 3.9% ABV. Baby Yo capped a great year of new hoppy beers, with kveik yeast stars Nordic Sunrise and Fjord Explorer strong BOTY contenders as well.

If you’re the most successful craft brewery in Wisconsin and you’re going to release only one new beer in a year, it had better be a banger. And this complex, enigmatic sipper sure was. A blend of three batches of spontaneously fermented ale from New Glarus’ “wild fruit cave,” it incorporated Geisenheim grapes after blending to put an unmistakable spin on brewmaster Dan Carey’s familiar fruit lambics. This sweet creation was aptly named, with a floral, intensely fruity profile of apricot, white grape and honey that really did evoke a butterfly’s sip.

Oktoberfests get all the love every year, but a great Vienna lager can scratch that toasty-malty itch year-round. For that reason, I didn’t love that this beer from Lakefront Brewery’s My Turn series came out in fall when shelves were already loaded with beers with a similar profile. But it was still a standout: bready and flavorful but clean and balanced. Wisconsin brewers, let’s be like Lakefront warehouse employee Johnny Hopgood (his real name, a true aptonym) and make some more Vienna lagers, please!

Yes, the bow on top of my 2020 Beers of the Year is a 117-year-old American light lager that you can find literally everywhere. I wrote a column in May revealing the Champagne of Beers as my “comfort beer,” a rock of palate certainty to balance the uncertainty in the world. But as the year marched on, I realized there was another factor bringing me back to High Life. On Feb. 26, a Molson Coors electrician killed five co-workers and himself at the Miller Valley brewery in Milwaukee. I feel a kinship with this beer for many reasons but the one I thought about often while buying yet another 12-pack this year was a solemn solidarity with the survivors of that day and the loved ones of the fallen: Dale Hudson, Gennady "Gene" Levshetz, Jesus “Jesse” Valle Jr., Dana Walk and Trevor Wetselaar.

Beer Baron’s Beers of the Year 2020: Worst Year Ever Edition

Let’s take inventory of the most unforgettable, symbolic and just downright delicious beers of 2020.

This was not the best new beer Madison’s Ale Asylum released this year, but it was unquestionably the most successful, and it’s obvious why without even cracking open the can. This beer’s label perfectly captured the zeitgeist at the time of its release in early April, and it never really stopped resonating. The pilsner was followed by a hazy pale ale version, and both were taken national by the new Wisconsin-based distributor Brew Pipeline. Locally, the brewery has offered the FVCK COVID duo and many of its other beers for $6 a six-pack for most of the year. By the way, my favorite new Ale Asylum beer also had a “ugh, 2020” theme: MRDR HRNT, the first in a new “Apocalypse Bingo” series. It’s a pale ale heavily dosed with Mosaic, Denali and Trident hops that create an intense, nearly hard seltzer-like lemongrass-lime character.

This is not one but 25 beers, a different one from each of the Wisconsin breweries that committed to this worldwide collaboration started by San Antonio’s Weathered Souls Brewing. Most of the beers were imperial stouts, but the Black Is Beautiful black IPA (remember that style?) from community-focused Delta Beer Lab might have been my favorite of those I tried. The other participating Madison-area breweries were Herbiery, Giant Jones, Parched Eagle, Rockhound, Sunshine and Young Blood. Black Is Beautiful was, of course, a response to the other story that defined 2020: our national awakening on racial justice. The 1,192 breweries that took part pledged to donate proceeds to local foundations that support police reform and legal defense for those who have been wronged by police, and also committed “to the long-term work of equality.” I am happy to drink to that.

Yes, there are plenty of beers on this list that are not a statement on times like these. And Untitled Art’s take on the legendary Chocolate Shoppe ice cream flavor was probably my favorite of them. Loaded with lactose for sweetness and creaminess, and cocoa nibs and dark malts for chocolate character, it was not just a beer that tasted like chocolate ice cream but specifically like Zanzibar. It was sweet but not overly so, and the chocolate had dark depths and the fruity complexity of its namesake.

Young Blood Beer Co. picked a heck of a year to debut. The plan was to pack the taproom on King Street and pour glass after glass of head brewer Kyle Gregorash’s IPAs, saisons, lagers and pastry stouts. The opening went ahead in May, with a quick pivot toward canning the bulk of the beer, though the sidewalk patio did brisk business, too. Young Blood’s M.O. is to crank ’em; its Untappd page records 117 different beers already. And while this is really a nod for the entire brewery over a single beer, I don’t think any Young Blood I had this year surpassed the mostly by-the-book but excellent saison Cheryl’s 2004 Cobalt. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the colorful cans in my fridge — and what they come up with next for beer names — in 2021.

The label of color fields and geometric shapes was almost as adorable as this beer’s diminutive pop culture namesake, but the beer inside was the real force. Released for Third Space Brewing’s fourth anniversary in September, this kinda-hazy session IPA packed bright citrus and stonefruit flavors and a satisfying body despite its wee 3.9% ABV. Baby Yo capped a great year of new hoppy beers, with kveik yeast stars Nordic Sunrise and Fjord Explorer strong BOTY contenders as well.

If you’re the most successful craft brewery in Wisconsin and you’re going to release only one new beer in a year, it had better be a banger. And this complex, enigmatic sipper sure was. A blend of three batches of spontaneously fermented ale from New Glarus’ “wild fruit cave,” it incorporated Geisenheim grapes after blending to put an unmistakable spin on brewmaster Dan Carey’s familiar fruit lambics. This sweet creation was aptly named, with a floral, intensely fruity profile of apricot, white grape and honey that really did evoke a butterfly’s sip.

Oktoberfests get all the love every year, but a great Vienna lager can scratch that toasty-malty itch year-round. For that reason, I didn’t love that this beer from Lakefront Brewery’s My Turn series came out in fall when shelves were already loaded with beers with a similar profile. But it was still a standout: bready and flavorful but clean and balanced. Wisconsin brewers, let’s be like Lakefront warehouse employee Johnny Hopgood (his real name, a true aptonym) and make some more Vienna lagers, please!

Yes, the bow on top of my 2020 Beers of the Year is a 117-year-old American light lager that you can find literally everywhere. I wrote a column in May revealing the Champagne of Beers as my “comfort beer,” a rock of palate certainty to balance the uncertainty in the world. But as the year marched on, I realized there was another factor bringing me back to High Life. On Feb. 26, a Molson Coors electrician killed five co-workers and himself at the Miller Valley brewery in Milwaukee. I feel a kinship with this beer for many reasons but the one I thought about often while buying yet another 12-pack this year was a solemn solidarity with the survivors of that day and the loved ones of the fallen: Dale Hudson, Gennady "Gene" Levshetz, Jesus “Jesse” Valle Jr., Dana Walk and Trevor Wetselaar.

Got a beer you’d like the Beer Baron to pop the cap on? Contact Chris Drosner at chrisdrosner@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @WIbeerbaron.

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March 20, 2021 at 09:00PM
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Beer Baron: Wet your whistle with a Shower Bier - Madison.com

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