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New Glarus Spotted Cow has won over beer snobs and newbies alike

Here’s a seemingly obvious trivia question to throw out the next time you’re at a bar: What farm animal inspired New Glarus Spotted Cow beer?

The answer is, of course ... sheep.

New Glarus owners Deb and Dan Carey were in England in 1997 to accept an award for one of their other beers. And Deb couldn’t get over how many woolly creatures she saw in the countryside.

“There were sheep everywhere, more sheep than I had ever seen in my life,” Deb Carey said. “I was constantly commenting on this, and then it occurred to me: I bet people come to Wisconsin and think the same thing about the cows. ‘Look at all these cows! What’s up with all the spotted cows?’

“For some reason it just made me laugh. That’s a great beer name.”

Although it took some time to convince her distributors, Carey turned out to be right. New Glarus now brews 45,000 barrels of Spotted Cow annually, almost half of all the beer New Glarus makes. (By comparison, Capital Brewery makes 25,000 barrels of all its beers combined.) That breaks down to 616,500 cases of Spotted Cow every year, or 14,796,000 bottles. No wonder that the welcome sign on Highway 69 as you drive into New Glarus reads “Home of Spotted Cow.”

Which means that many craft beer drinkers have at some point had the experience of walking into an unpromising bar in Wisconsin, looking at the taps and relievedly thinking this phrase: “Whew. At least they have Spotted Cow.”

“It is definitely the best-known beer from Wisconsin without a doubt,” said David Sanborn, beer buyer and manager of Barriques in Fitchburg. “It is everywhere. It’s very difficult to find any establishment serving beer in Wisconsin that doesn’t have it, especially in southern Wisconsin.”

And Spotted Cow has done all that without selling outside the Badger State. Although New Glarus could sell beer outside Wisconsin, so far the Careys have chosen to keep it in-state — which drives fans from out of state absolutely crazy.

But what’s even more impressive about Spotted Cow is that most everybody, from beer snobs to macro beer drinkers taking a walk on the wild side, seems to like it. Are you going to a dinner party where you don’t know the people all that well? Bring a six-pack of Spotted Cow and you know you can’t go wrong.

“It is that gateway beer because it’s easy to drink,” Sanborn said. “But it has enough character that beer geeks like me can still enjoy it. It’s got some depth of flavor and complexity and yet is very approachable, and goes with all kinds of situations and all kinds of food.

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