Spotted Cow

Sent to me from: Krista Leraas
Date: March 13, 2004
Drank at: Hudson, WI at Dicks

made a special road trip to find Viking beer all day saturday. Krista had told me about this fantastic beer that's made by a guy in wisconsin, and only distributed to a few bars and liquor stores in small towns in the area, so we packed up the car on Saturday afternoon, printed out a list of distributors from the website, and headed out to cheeseland.
Our first stop took us to the wooden nickel in Glenwood City. A small town sports bar in the middle of farm land. They didn't have Viking beer, but they did have deep fried Cheese Curds. No trip to wisconsin is complete without some deep fried cheese, so I had to order a basket.
Our next stop took us to the copper Kettle in Hammond. no viking beer there, and the bartender was a little grouchy. We ditched out of there.
Then down the road to the Hammond House. A much friendlier bar, and they had Viking Beer on the menu. Our hopes were lifted, then smashed again when the bartender (who I swear was a high school kid) told us that they don't carry it anymore.
Then off to Hudson. We stopped at a liquor store on the way that was supposed to carry it, no luck.
Finally, we stopped at a bar in Hudson. They didn't have viking beer either, but they said "If anybody in town has it, Dick would." so we continued down the road to Dicks Bar and Grill, and along the way made all kinds of conumdrums about Dicks.
Still no luck at Dicks, and we were getting tired, so Krista ended up getting me a consolation beer, which was a Spotted Cow ale from New Glarus Brewerey near Madison Wisconsin, which is really a fantastic beer. I grew up near Madison so it's my hometown beer, and I was pretty excited to see that was served all the way out here.
So while our search for Viking beer turned up empty handed, we had a pretty good Wisconsin adventure along the way, and I did get my cheese curds, so I was happy.