The Word on the Curd

every deep-fried delicacy at Culver's comes from LaGrander's Hillside Dairy right here in west-central Wisconsin

Wisconsinites love the deep-fried hunks of cheese found at almost every restaurant in our fine Dairy State. One of these, a homegrown franchise that has spread across the Midwest and beyond ...

Bottom's Up!

online critics rave about our local brews

It’s one thing for us to say that we make great beer in the Chippewa Valley. It’s another thing to back up our claim by pointing to judgments by some of the thousands of users at two top beer-rating websites. So we checked out how our brews stacked up on BeerAdvocate.com and RateBeer.com ...

Suds & Slices

fuel your love of our classic consumable with these and other books from The Local Store

Bottoms Up celebrates Wisconsin’s taverns and the breweries that fueled them. Beginning with inns and saloons, the book explores the rise of taverns and breweries, the effects of temperance and Prohibition, and attitudes about gender, ethnicity, and morality. Contemporary photographs of unusual ...

Wisconsin's Top 10 Cheeses

A percentage of the big cheese wheel! Ranking is based on what amount of each cheese is produced in Wisconsin.

Honing Their Craft

UW-Stout hosts conference for Midwest's small brewers

UW-Stout has two great programs in Hotel, Restaurant, Tourism Management and Food Science. This complementary pairing was one of the main reasons that Anna McCabe, who works in of Professional Education Programs and Services at UW-Stout, thought that a craft brewery conference ...

Say Cheese!

a delegation of Wisco cheese producers showed their stuff in China

We already know that Holland’s Family Cheese over in Thorp makes some of the best cheese in the country. Well, the best. Their Marieke Gouda Mature was the Grand Champion in the 2013 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest. And since 2006, the cheesemakers have won more than 80 awards for their amazing cheese ...

A Choice Projekt

the mad science behind the experimental flavors at the Brewing Projekt

Over the past decade, the Chippewa Valley has seen a serious boom in beer business. Between Leinenkugel’s becoming a major player on the national level and smaller craft breweries like Lazy Monk and Lucette finding their footholds in the area, it’s not hard to find a locally brewed beer ...

The Leinie Life

Dick Leinenkugel talks about beer, brotherly advice, and his brewery’s big plans

Dick Leinenkugel may be president of the legendary brewery that bears his great-great-grandfather’s name – a brewery that now sells its products in all 50 states, a brewery that’s part of the second-largest beer maker in the nation, MillerCoors – but he’s not isolated in a corporate office far from Chippewa Falls...

Cheese Stands Alone

tasty statistics: cheese versus beer

Check out some tasty statistics in the battle of cheese versus beer.

Dancing the Can-can

aluminum revolution in craft brewing finds its way to the Valley

There might have been a time when drinking beer out of a can was looked down upon. Cans were for budget beer. Cans gave your beer a tinny flavor. Cans make you go blind. OK, maybe not that last one, but there was definitely a stigma against ...