Beer of the Weekend #253: Two Women

I have decided to get serious with my New Glarus haul and finish it over the next week or so. The beer inside those bottles is not getting any younger. Some of it was, I am sure, already a season old when I bought it.

The beer tonight is Two Women, brewed by the incomparable New Glarus Brewing Company of New Glarus, Wisconsin.


Serving type: One 12-ounce bottle. Cryptic batch codes galore, but no freshness date.

Appearance: Straight pour into a pilsner glass. The color is a deep gold that has caramel tones to make it lean toward bronze. Two fingers of what I think was egg-shell colored head developed. I’m not so sure, though, because it dissipated immediately to leave a ring around the edge and a nebula-shaped lacing.

Smell: Part helles, part pilsner, and part (very small part) brown ale. Aromatic grassy hops give it that barnyard hay smell, and there is also a little spice to offer a nice snap. Toasted malt and caramel round out the aroma.

Taste: The taste is much more pilsner-like; it offers the crisp bitterness reminiscent of a pilsner. The helles and lager-like characteristics hang out in the background and offer flavors of grassy hops, lightly toasted malts, and a little caramel.

Drinkability: Is it a pilsner? A lager? Neither. It is a tasty hybrid adding to my eagerness to make a return to trip to New Glarus.

Fun facts about Two Women:

-Style: New Glarus calls it “Classic Country Lager,” but BA classifies it as “German Pilsner.” Here is the description:

The Pilsner beer was first brewed in Bohemia, a German-speaking province in the old Austrian Empire. Pilsner is one of the most popular styles of lager beers in Germany, and in many other countries. It’s often spelled as "Pilsener", and often times abbreviated, or spoken in slang, as "Pils."

Classic German Pilsners are very light straw to golden in color. Head should be dense and rich. They are also well-hopped, brewed using Noble hops such has Saaz, Hallertauer, Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, Tettnanger, Styrian Goldings, Spalt, Perle, and Hersbrucker. These varieties exhibit a spicy herbal or floral aroma and flavor, often times a bit coarse on the palate, and distribute a flash of citrus-like zest--hop bitterness can be high.

-Price: Like I said last night, it came in a custom sixer that cost $8. You do the math because I don’t feel like it. (Sadly, I do not think I can do long division any more.)

-Serving temperature: 40-45ºF.

-Alcohol content: 5 percent ABV.

-Food pairings: New Glarus recommends pan fried trout, pork chops, steak, goulash (which I have not had in years because I am to lazy to substitute the meat), and pasta salad. For cheeses, New Glarus recommends Gruyere, Provolone, and Colby. Colby!

-Nerdiness from the beer’s webpage:

Four thousand years before Christ, Sumerian women created the divine drink of beer. Viking women brewed in Norse society. European Ale Wives were so successful as cottage brewers they were taxed. Artisanal women lost their domination of the daily ritual of brewing during the Industrial Revolution. Today’s brewing trade is controlled by men.

The collaboration of two Craft companies both led by women, New Glarus Brewing and Weyermann Malting, is unique. You hold the result “Two Women” a Classic Country Lager brewed with Weyermann’s floor malted Bohemian malt and Hallertau Mittelfrueh hops. A tempting and graceful classic lager found…Only in Wisconsin!

Yeah, yeah, yeah — only in Wisconsin. Stop rubbing it in.


The Quiet Man’s grade: B+.

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