Supper Club vs. Island Wheat: A battle of Capital Brewery beers

Capital's available in the Twin Cities!

Wisconsin's well-loved Capital Brewery recently increased its distribution to make its beers widely available across most of Minnesota. (Their brews are stocked at places like Big Top Liquors, Haskell's, Surdyk's, Four Firkins, among others in the metro.)

The Hot Dish picked up Capital's Supper Club and Island Wheat at the new Lake Wine & Cheese and put 'em head to head:

Supper Club
Capital's sales are up--in large part due to this spring's introduction of Supper Club, winner of a gold medal at the U.S. Open Beer Championships in the American Premium Lager category. According to Capital, Supper Club sold 40,000 cases in four months!

While the Hot Dish loved the retro label, we found the flavor of the beer a little too nostalgic for our taste, too close to all those rhyming Milwaukee-based beers--Blatz, Schlitz, Pabst--drunk by Dad three decades ago. We were hoping Supper Club would have been an upgrade.

Island Wheat
The wheat used in this beer is grown on Washington Island, a tiny paradise off the tip of Door County that's one of our favorite vacation spots in the upper Midwest. And the flavor--light and refreshing, but full and complex with a slightly sweet, citrus-tinged wheatiness--reminded us of relaxing on the shores of Lake Michigan.

The Winner: Island Wheat
We prefer Capital's locavore approach to its look back to the past.