{"id":546,"date":"2009-08-30T21:10:36","date_gmt":"2009-08-31T03:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/?p=546"},"modified":"2009-10-06T06:19:17","modified_gmt":"2009-10-06T12:19:17","slug":"potosi-brewing-co-the-national-brewery-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/?p=546","title":{"rendered":"Potosi Brewing Co. & The National Brewery Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>

The Potosi Brewing Company<\/a> was one of the big regional breweries in Wisconsin throughout much of the early 20th century.\u00a0 If you’re old enough to be the kind of person who shops at flea markets, you probably remember Good Ole Potosi or Holiday.\u00a0 I say this with certainty because I have been to two flea markets in the last two days (I’m an old soul) and on both occasions I saw people reminiscing over dusty old bottles of Potosi.\u00a0 A few decades after those glory days Gary David bought and began to restore the dilapidated property.\u00a0 While he was working on the restoration, he was\u00a0 lucky enough to have the American Breweriana Association select it as the site for the National Brewery Museum.\u00a0 Now the site is home to a restored Brewery, the museum, and a restaurant.\u00a0 The museum was neat, and a good way to work up an appetite.<\/p>\n

\"barmaid\"<\/p>\n

I really hate to travel with our digital SLR, it just seems like overkill to whip out a camera with an $800 lens when you are taking a picture of your food in a restaurant.\u00a0 Plus I think it makes us look like health inspectors.\u00a0 So, anyways, we only had our little point and shoot and we didn’t get any good pictures of the food.\u00a0 “You should have let me bring the good camera”, Leslie just chimed in over my shoulder.\u00a0 Having let her (and you) down, I will now attempt to make amends with the following recreation of our meal*:<\/p>\n

\"potosifood\"<\/p>\n

I had a Good Old Potosi burger with garlic mashed potatoes and Leslie had the french dip with sweet potato fries.\u00a0 The burger was fine, just about what you’d expect from a brewpub in Wisconsin.\u00a0 The french dip, however, was in no way average.\u00a0 The meat was as tender as can be.\u00a0 I hate it when your first bite into a french dip brings half the meat out with it, no risk of that here.\u00a0 The roll was well chosen, the right level of sponginess and firmness to absorb au jus but retain its structural integrity.\u00a0 Leslie adored her sweet potato fries, they reminded her of the deep fried and caramelized sweet potatoes sold on a stick\u00a0 in the streets in the Philippines.\u00a0 I’m not certain about this, but I believe they actually had a little bit of cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on them.\u00a0 I only had one.\u00a0 There isn’t anything you could do to a sweet potato fry to make me enjoy it.\u00a0 Ah, I forgot, we started the meal out with a soft pretzel appetizer that came with beer cheese dip. A common food round these parts, but here almost perfectly executed.\u00a0 Thin, crusty outer layer, with a chewy, almost stretchy center (essentially the same as a good bagel). \u00a0 I almost ordered another pretzel for the road.<\/p>\n

\"potosidrinks\"<\/p>\n

Our tickets to the museum came with free drinks from the bar.\u00a0 I had a Cave Ale (on the right), Leslie had a root beet (Princess Potosa Root Beer, I believe, on the left).\u00a0 The cave ale was very good.\u00a0 I’ve said it elsewhere, but I’m not really qualified to review a beer.\u00a0 It was a great match to the meal though.\u00a0 Leslie’s root beet was the real shocker though.\u00a0 I’ve had just about ever root beer under the sun.\u00a0 I’ve even made my own once or twice.\u00a0 This was unlike any of those.\u00a0 It had a strong medicinal flavor– think Bulldog<\/a> times 2, but without the smooth cream texture.\u00a0 And none<\/strong> of the intense sweetness virtually all rich bodied root beers have.\u00a0 The first taste was lightly sweet, but the aftertaste was bitter and nutty.\u00a0 Leslie and I agreed, this was the absolute highlight of the meal and one of the best root beers we’ve ever had.\u00a0 I almost think they should have warned us when we ordered it, the taste was so different from what one expects when they order a root beer I can imagine some people being unhappy.\u00a0 We were anything but unhappy however, and nearly brought home a growler full of the stuff.\u00a0 The only reason we didn’t is because we’re sure we’ll be going back soon.<\/p>\n

* Yes, I just did this to annoy Leslie.\u00a0 And to waste 20 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Potosi Brewing Company was one of the big regional breweries in Wisconsin throughout much of the early 20th century.\u00a0 If you’re old enough to be the kind of person who shops at flea markets, you probably remember Good Ole Potosi or Holiday.\u00a0 I say this with certainty because I have been to two flea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-restaurants","no-featured-image"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions\/564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}