Editor’s Note: In the course of writing about a newly reissued beer, Louis Livingston-Garcia recounts abuse and trauma from his childhood and a battle with substance abuse. If these themes are disturbing to you, you may wish to skip this story.
While my mom says my father threatened to murder us and bury us in the backyard, I remember him saying “back forty.”
Which is a shame, since Back 40 from New Glarus was the beer to tip me into craft beer completely, and one I was excited to see return to the market after a decade-long absence.
The dichotomy of what “back forty” means to me is staggering. On the one hand, the joy of a bock that drinks like perfection: subtle blueberry, light caramel – memories of younger days and of feeling indomitable.
But also the feeling of fear that pits into my stomach nearly three decades later remembering what Dad said. How I saved my mom the one time he choked her in the bathroom of our trailer, launching my tiny, skin-and-bone body on top of his. I remember the fiery pain that I felt once thrown from him.
Memories of him bouncing my younger brother by shoving a chair down he sat upon, a toddler bouncing off a floor. How he stabbed knives into himself that bent each time as if his body sculpted by the Marine Corps couldn’t be breached. The terror of not knowing if one would slip in.
Twisted fear that made me nauseous, afraid. Highly aware of this world and its shortcomings. Of humanity. A fear I carry to this day like a lead sinker in the center of my stomach weighing me down and poisoning my every action, reaction, and path forward.
And it reminds of how, after beginning drinking alcohol in eighth grade, stopping during most of college and half my twenties, that I am now battling with my consumption. That I am always battling, each week a new theater of depression or solace.
“How much is too much, you know?” Zack Dunbar, now head brewer and co-owner at Lua Brewing in Des Moines once wondered aloud as he poured me a beer at Forager, where he spent time as a brewer.
It was a bit rhetorical, as neither of us wanted to say.
I guess it’s what the doctor says.
From 142 in college, cut, strong, fast, six-pack of abs. Unaware of spending hours playing pick-up football (soccer) as my way out of my head. The only time I have ever felt OK. Then in my late 20s and 30s, soccer fell away, replaced by drinking.
Blackout. Hungover.
“I’m not doing it again.”
Doing it again all over the next night. Again and again and again.
Nearing 200 pounds. Medication for acid reflux. Medication for anxiety. A fatty liver.
On the edge of the cliff. The nadir of my drinking behavior.
A highly functioning alcoholic. Not in the bottom of the barrel, but just afloat at the top, trying not to drown like I nearly did in the ocean in North Carolina, but only knowing how to keep my chin above steady water.
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?”
When you speak of a back forty in Wisconsin, you speak of dreams. Of potential, growth – something more. New Glarus Back 40 is also the beer to get me into craft beer. The beer, after I had already drank too much, snorted too much, and huffed too much as a teenager, to get me into a liquid I had quit consuming because I feared it. Who I was with it.
Just like my father.
A back forty had been something that welcomed us behind our trailer. Our grandparents’ land. Some farmland splayed into some woods.
So much adventure, climbing, learning to hunt with a BB gun. So much soccer, so much wonder and splendor. The tiny, wild strawberries, just enough of them to make us feel like foragers. The backyard was swallowed by the back forty of wonder before it became a possible resting place.
But I want the back forty and Back 40 to be places of only wonder these days.
And after years of medicating anxiety, tempering the drinking, and of rediscovering the small joys and wonders of the world, I think it’s there for me.
I can go weeks without a drink, the liquid never crossing my mind. I still have weekends too wet for my liking, but I’m getting better each month. My body grows stronger, my mind more sound. Rediscovering soccer, Dragon Ball, reading, and tinkering.
And best of all, I was in a new back forty this past weekend. I drank a Back 40. I was happy.
I am no longer that wading person very nearly drowned.
I do not want to die like my father. Varicose veins burst. Blood in mouth. Apparently in a good mood with first responders. Unresponsive at the hospital. Brain gone, body on life support.
Dead just days before the COVID pandemic began, right after my wife and I were living a dream in New Zealand and Oz.
I never got to say goodbye.
I hear my voice: “Dad.” It’s strained, sad, hollow. It’s longing and disappointment that goes nowhere, as it always has.
Being a functional drunk is like being 40 at pickup soccer. You can hide for a lot of it and commit when it counts, doing what you need to do – even exceeding it. Recently, after over a decade, I played futsal again. Only six players on the concrete pitch encircled by steel, every touch counting. Every move is a result of who you are, who you have been, and where you are headed.
There is no hiding. All the pain and regret was there to see. But so too the lasting effects of victories honed by years of training. I could step-over a ball to perfection in my sleep.
I feel as though my drinking has trended away from an anonymous player on a pitch of 11 to more of a falcon-eyed futsal match: I need to be there. For my kids. For my wife. And frankly and foremost, for myself.
I will not die young like my father.
A BACK 40 OF DREAMS
Back 40 bock is perfect. It is that dream of a back forty fully explored yet keeping its secrets evermore. When I set up a call to talk with Dan Carey, co-founder and brewer extraordinaire at New Glarus – I think he is, to me, a wizard of some sort – it’s strictly about the beer. Not my journey of ups and downs. But, his beer has been a part of that journey, so it joins me right here.
Before I loved the hazies and the barrel-aged beers, before I waited overnight in Pulpit Rock lines in the freezing cold with a heater and ice fishing shack, and before I was first in line for a New Glarus release, or doing a “burn-and-turn” from Rochester to Decorah for some Toppling Goliath, or paying nearly $400 for a bottle of beer on secondary, there was Back 40.
And it’s here with me now. Most likely thanks to a dark lager trend in craft beer. People want a darker lager like Back 40. It’s selling, so Carey is brewing it.
When he and wife Deb first dreamed up the beer, they were really enjoying Shiner Bock and looking to make a Wisconsin-style bock, or American-style bock.
They first produced the beer in 2002 as Native Ale. In around 2014, when I began drinking it, it was renamed to Back 40.
“The idea was just there wasn’t really much around anymore,” Carey said. “It used to be every little brewery in Wisconsin made a spring bock beer.”
The beer went on hiatus in 2014 until 2024.
I was elated when it was brought back and bought multiple 12-packs. And I enjoyed them responsibly and happily. The beer made a return this year, and will be sold until about mid-April.
I’ve purchased one pack but am considering much, much more in case sales merit another hiatus.
New Glarus has made about 300 different beer brands, and the beer shelves are getting fuller all of the time. So it’s hard to bring back each beer each year.
Carey said it could be different if they didn’t have a tasting room and more of a proper taproom, but their beer depends on wholesale, and fewer and fewer distributors with more and more brands to sell – with catalogs as large as phone books (remember those?) full of products.
“If you have a new beer and you want the wholesalers to make it a priority, it’s hard to get their attention,” Carey said.
Which is kind of wild for me to hear, because it’s New Glarus. The name commands respect nationally, even though it’s a Wisconsin-only brand. People in the same beer groups where a 12-ounce bottle of rare barrel-aged stout may go for hundreds will also ask for cases of New Glarus shelfies.
Spring time means brand calendar meetings at New Glarus. If Back 40 sold well, it should come back in 2027, but it’s not a sure thing.
For example, some New Glarus beers are budgeted for three months. If a seasonal beer sells out in just over a month, Carey knows the brand hit a chord with people.
“And the reason we brought Back 40 back was because there’s a shift in the craft beer market back to more sessionable beers,” Carey said. “People are looking for beers that they can drink and not just beers that have big impact. They want beers that are enjoyable.”
Dan said Deb came up with Back 40’s label and marketing. Each New Glarus beer has a little story tied to it, written on the can or bottle.
With Dan growing up in San Francisco, I asked if he had heard of a back forty growing up.
He said he hadn’t until he moved to the Midwest into a farming community.
“Anybody who comes from a rural community knows what a back forty is,” he said. “And so it’s just kind of a playful term. We always try to have fun names or names that are kind of positive and pleasant, and have an agriculture base or Wisconsin centric names.”
A BRIGHT FUTURE
I have my moments with over-drinking, over-eating, and hating myself. At least once every week or so I wonder if it would be best if I just self-destructed like Vegeta in Dragon Ball Z, reducing myself to ash. But the better moments happen more often. I think I’m doing better than I have in some time.
And I need to and want to. While boiling maple syrup on the inlaws’ back forty this past weekend, I was one with the wonder of the woods again. I just stared at sap boiling, at sap slowly falling with a “thunk” into a plain white bucket.
I let my shoes sink into the mud, one red, one blue. Both indoor soccer shoes from Puma. The ones I recently used in futsal. I watched the birds. I listened to them sing and chatter.
I pissed outside in the wind without a care.
And now when I hear, “Dad,” it’s not under my breath and from me. It’s brimming with joy, of passion, of need, of happiness. From my eldest, a maniacal bundle of joy.
I never want his Dad to change. To die like mine, defeated, and wanting.
And I know I can enjoy a back forty and a Back 40 in a healthy manner. I don’t simply escape but am born anew, much like on the soccer pitch.
I’ll keep that going for as long as I can muster, which I hope is at least another 30 years.
The positivity and pleasantry of the back forty Carey speaks of is back in my soul.
I tell Carey about the good times exploring the back forty on my grandparents’ former land. Of the hikes, runs, and shenanigans as kids.
“That’s exactly what it’s meant to do,” he said, when I explained how Back 40 makes me think of my childhood. “It’s meant for people that, you know, you go out to your grandparents’ house and you have two or three brothers and sisters. And there’s maybe a rope swing somewhere in the back and you go run around in the woods and play army or go swimming in a creek.”
Carey doesn’t have a back forty per se, but he has land that feels like it, filling him with vigor.
“I love to be out in the woods,” he said. “I’m happiest when I’m in the woods, so the concept of being out in nature, among the trees, when I take the dogs for a walk or go for a run in the woods is what I enjoy most.”
I have rediscovered that same joy and told him about the land my inlaws purchased outside of Baraboo. How my boys explore it. How we bird watch. Of the adventures with the dogs, and picking wild berries, which often don’t make it home as the eldest boy eats as he picks.
Throughout my 38 years, a back forty has meant so many different things.
And now, like the Careys hope to convey with their beer branding, it has become something pleasant again.
And a place where I can, safely and healthily, have one or two cans of Back 40 and be at peace.
“A place to run away, to camp, to climb, to build, to play. Not actually home but not too far away. That’s the Back Forty.
“Every mind requires some acres of possibility, space for dreams, the great escape, everyone needs a Back Forty.”
As the New Glarus beer label says, we’ve, as a family, found that space. I’ve found that space again. And I intend to enjoy what I deem a perfect beer there for many more years to come.