Wisconsin Trip Day 2
We woke up friday morning feeling a bit of pain from the night before at The Great Dane. After a few cups of coffee, everything was fine and were off on our way up to Stevens Point, which is about 90 mins north of Madison.
Well, its 90 minutes on a normal day. It was like we had crossed a boundary as soon as we got north of Madison, it started to snow. It was one of those light drifting snows, that made visibility very difficult. We driving a Toyota Prius hybrid, which I now know has ‘reduced friction’ tires to get better gas milage. That does not translate into good handling in snow! Thankfully we had the car loaded down with beer so we got a little extra traction. I wish we could have put the beer right on top of the engine though, because that was where the weight was needed.
After about two hours were finally in Stevens Point. This is the city were I had my first brewing job, at a small pub called Isadore Street Brewing that is now defunct. I can say that it was a great learning experience. It was here were I learned to make good beer, and I had plenty of help from my friends Matt Hall, the QC manager at Stevens Point Brewery, and Paul Graham, a fellow brewer at the little brewery of Central Waters.
Stevens Point is also is in the dead center of the state, and a great place to drink the beers from all over Wisconsin. There are over 60 bars in this little town of 20,000. That includes 8000 college students. Iowa City/Coralville has about 60 bars for its population of 100,000. Yea, things are different up here!
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