Marquette Mission: Day Two

Our night in Milwaukee was rather pleasant, and we awoke bright and early as some of us commonly do. For me, it was early. I popped into the cafe in the lobby and got my MO – a grande V-Lat. Adrienne popped into the workout room and worked out. We broke out checking our luggage with the front desk and headed to Lakefront Brewery where we had a brewery tour and planned to secure lunch.

The brewery tour was awesome. The tour guide, John or JD (I fantasized his last name was Dorian), told us that the other brewery tours only give you beer at the end, which would have been torment. Here, we each got tokens (rather like a Wooden Nickel) each good for a sample of beer for a tour that started at noon. First, I had a Munich Dunkel (very dark, smooth, no bitterness, very pleasurable). Adrienne had the Riverwest Stein (rich amber, the beer that made Lakefront the third largest craft brewer in the brewing state of Wisconsin). My second was the Lakefront Fuel Cafe, an organic coffee stout. Thick, heavy on the coffee, puts hair on your chest. I didn’t give any to Adrienne for the aforementioned reason. I liked the first one better. Then we started on the tour. Midway through, we got new samples, and I upgraded to the Hop Jockey, which wasn’t as hoppy as you would expect, but it was good. She got the Lakefront White (organic).  We finished the tour and got in line for lunch.

For lunch, we had cheese. Okay, seriously, we had to try cheese curds. And we saw someone chowing down on a traditional pretzel so we got one order of those (two per order, full plate sized). Came with Polish mustard and a cheese thing that I didn’t really know what it was (it was kind of like a cup of the innards of a cheeseball with fruit sauce poured over the top). I got WI Mac and Cheese and Adrienne got a grilled cheese. We turned in two of her tokens for a take home bottle of Maple Root Beer (haven’t tried it yet, I’ll add a review to the post for the day when we do try it). Food was (keeping in mind this is a brewery) nice. The cheese curds were a hit, they were lightly fried and came with a nice creamy dip that the menu calls a “garlic ranch”. I find that surprising because I picked up waaay more Tarragon and faaar less garlic (of note, “waaay” is not registering a misspelled but “faaar” is). The MAC (it’s both an abbreviation AND an acronym!) had a strong bacon flavor to it and consisted of spiral pasta tossed in a thick and creamy cheese sauce topped with a generous portion of toasted and seasoned bread crumbs.

We walked back to the hotel (partly because there weren’t any cabs available and partly because we ate so much). Almost two miles later, nearing dehydration due to the unseasonably warm temperature, we made it back to the hotel where we eventually collected our belongings, and late in the afternoon we continued our venture to the great white north (Marquette, MI, for those of you not paying attention).