2026 Oktoberfest Pretzels

Pretzel #27: Got 5 On It

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Brewhaus in Nevada City, CA

Before diving into our Pretzel of the Day, I thought I’d share a few items in the mailbag.

First comes a few photos from loyal reader Brian W, who responded to my call for photos of Muffler Men. He’s on a road trip from Denver into Michigan and stopped in Atlanta, IL at a place called the American Giants Museum, which displays a number of authentic Muffler Men. It almost feels like cheating, having so many in one place. But at least they are preserved and visible to the public.

Note his left hand.

Of note is the giant that looks like Alfred E. Neuman (next to the Indian in the middle photo). Compare him to the one I spotted near Philadelphia earlier this summer:

We also heard from loyal reader Peter D., who noted the connection between the “last supper” pretzel in yesterday’s Pretzel Trivia, and the Lenten pretzel in the Pretzel Trivia from my October 12 post. He also shared this article about “Holy Pretzels,” which even includes a Pretzel Prayer.

Holy or not, I’m not sure these would rate well under my scoring rubric.

Finally, loyal reader Jonathan C. reported on several pretzel sightings in southern California. He writes:

“I wanted to be sure you know that Rock n Brews offers a Bavarian pretzel w mustard. But they charge EXTRA FOR BEER CHEESE. Nelson’s, at Terranea, also has what I thought was a pretty good pretzel – hot, buttery and salty, with no extra charge [for beer cheese]. But at their prices it’s likely “baked in” anyway.“

I appreciate not only the “baked in” pun, but also the outrage at being charged extra for beer cheese.

And now, on with the Pretzel:

Today’s pretzel comes from The Brewhaus in Nevada City, which, of course, is a city in California. The Brewhaus is a very comfortable, welcoming space with plenty of outdoor seating. Just watch a few seconds of these photos on their website and you’ll get the vibe.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, so I took a seat outdoors and ordered their Bavarian Pretzel and a mug of their Secret Incantation Porter. (I realize now I should have standardized my beers, to control for that variable in my reviews.)

This was a truly wonderful pretzel. Attractive artisanal shape, good size, firm crust, soft and chewy inside. In fact, the texture may have been the best so far. The salt was agreeably flaky, if a bit unevenly distributed. The taste was malt-forward, with a bit of molasses (?) on the finish.

And then there was the amazing beer cheese–warm, creamy, cheddary, beery. It perfectly complemented the pretzel, adding depth and character without overpowering the pretzel. My only complaint is that I wanted more.

So, this was about as close to a perfect pretzel experiences as I’ve had so far. I have to admit that the attractive outdoor seating area and the perfect weather added to the experience. But, as we discussed yesterday in our review of frozen pretzels, part of what you pay for at a restaurant is the setting and the staff interactions and everything else that I call the Total Pretzel Experience. So I feel its fine if these factors influence my rating.

And so, this is a perfect specimen of the rare Five Star Pretzel. Even without a hook!

PRETZEL TRIVIA

You may have noticed the reference to 1990s hip-hop lyrics in the title of today’s post. This serves two functions:

  1. The “5” in the title is a reference to the fact that one of the pretzels under review finally scored 5 stars.
  2. The hip-hop angle foreshadows our pretzel trivia, which concerns pretzel-related hip-hop lyrics.

You see, Garnet Valley High School near Philadelphia designates every Thursday as “Pretzel Day,” when the school’s Common Grounds Cafe sells soft pretzels for a dollar. In 2019, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, the students created a number of music videos celebrating Pretzel Day. Here’s some sample lyrics:

(Mouth so dry) Hands full of yeast
These pretzels are our feast
Stomach full, salty heaven
Eaten so much but I can’t cease

Please check out Saltboi Carti’s “Pretzels in GV,” below, for the full ode to pretzels. (And if you’re in a hurry, just skip forward to 02:10, which is when the actual song starts.)

My favorite user comment for this video: “Eminem has been very quite since this dropped.”

2026 Oktoberfest Pretzels

Pretzel #26: Holy Pretzels, Batman!

steveboilard1 Comment

Iron Horse Tavern, Folsom, CA

Much of my childhood was spent in front of a television set. As one of the last Baby Boomers, I missed the Golden Age of Television classics like Howdy Doody and Mickey Mouse Club. But I did watch my share of Get Smart!, The Wild Wild West, Batman, and Hogan’s Heroes. When my favorite shows weren’t on, I would channel surf (although that wasn’t yet a term) looking for some distraction. And one such distraction was a Western series called Iron Horse, which had lots of trains and gunfights. What more could a boy like me want?

Iron Horse featured a gambler named Ben Calhoun who won an (incomplete) railroad in a poker game. The plots focused on Calhoun encountering endless obstacles in his effort to complete the railroad.

A lot of the show was way over my head, including (in Wikipedia’s words) “a running subplot [featuring] Calhoun’s frequent and (for TV at that time) flagrant sexual dalliances with his many attractive female guest stars, as well as his steadier on and off arrangement with Julie Parsons, played by Ellen Burstyn. Though he was never shown in bed with any of them, there was little doubt about what was happening between scenes; and marriage was never proposed as a possibility.” I guess that explains all the shots of trains speeding into tunnels…

But this talk of the show Iron Horse leads us, of course, to a place called the Iron Horse Tavern. It was brought to our attention by a person we shall call “Captain Hook” (but he is actually loyal reader Robert I.) I hadn’t realized it, but Captain Hook was pursuing his own interest in Bavarian pretzels, with a special focus on pretzels suspended by a hook. He alerted us to Sacramento’s Iron Horse Tavern as a place with an exceptional, hook-suspended pretzel.

Turns out there are actually two Iron Horse Taverns, with the newer one located in Folsom, CA. This clinched it for me, as it’s only about a 20 minute drive from stately Boilard Manor. So I programmed the coordinates and before two shakes of the pretzel salt I found myself at the Iron Horse Tavern. And the first thing I did was order their Bavarian pretzel.

Captain Hook was right. This is one of the most attractive pretzels you’re ever going to find. It’s beautifully misshapen–cracked and lumpy and carelessly pockmarked with salt crystals. It looks like it was crafted by a blind, hook-handed man. It’s a nice, glossy brown that looks to be imparted by a generous brushing with butter. If I were actually using a proper scoring rubric, with specific, defined categories, this would get full marks for appearance. I mean, just look at that handmade, artisinal baked beauty! And, as Captain Hook promised, it’s hung on a lovely copper hook.

Plus, it’s not just a pretty face; this pretzel really delivered on flavor. Nutty and slightly sweet with a tinge of butter, this pretzel tasted like the pretzels mom used to make. If mom had made pretzels. And if she had been any good at it.

With my first bite I discovered this pretzel had a perfect crust, with a nice, chewy center. However, as I worked my way to the thick top of the pretzel, it began to seem a little bready. Still, this wasn’t a deal-killer. In fact this pretzel was clearly one of the very best I’ve encountered all month.

But then disaster struck. It stuck in the form of the beer cheese, which wasn’t beer cheese at all, but rather Sriracha cream cheese. I mean, who replaces beer cheese with cream cheese?? If I’d wanted a bagel, I would have ordered a bagel. I can’t overstate how disappointing this was. Certainly no one has ever asked for their pretzel to come with Sriracha cream cheese. Surely this was some sort of joke. As a pretzel dipping sauce, Sriracha cream cheese has all the blandness of regular cream cheese, coupled with the entirely unwarranted burn of Sriracha. In the words of George H.W. Bush to Saddam Hussein, This Will Not Stand.

To be fair, I was also supplied with some housemade stoneground honey mustard. Now this is the stuff. It perfectly balances honey sweetness and an acidic mustard kick. And it has an easy consistency that’s a bit thinner than Grey Poupon, and thus it really soaks into the pretzel. I sopped up every last trace of that honey mustard.

My server informs me that the pretzels are made by by the restaurant’s owners (who call themselves MAC Hospitality Group), using their own recipe. MAC owns a total of seven restaurants, including the other Iron Horse Tavern in Sacramento. They make all their sauces made in-house, and they bake their own pretzels off-site.

I really wanted to give this pretzel 5 stars, but that ill-conceived idea of replacing the beer cheese with Sriracha cream cheese lost them a star. My server tells me that they periodically offer beer cheese as a special, seasonal item, and that I just missed the last offering by a week. But what good does that do me?

Four stars.

PRETZEL TRIVIA

My Catholic friends tell me that consecrated pretzels are never administered for Communion. But I have uncovered evidence that Jesus himself (!) may have served pretzels at the Last Supper.

This image is taken from a Gospel Lexionary created by the Abbey of St. Peter in Salzburg in the 11th century. In it we clearly see pretzels on the table (I’ve circled them in red) and it’s almost certain that Jesus is giving half a pretzel to Judas.

MS G.44, fol. 80 Gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection, 1984

According to William M. Voelkle, Curator at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York (which owns this image), “During the middle ages pretzels were eaten during the penitential season of Lent. It is thus appropriate that Judas does his penance before he betrays Christ.”

I’m still looking for evidence that beer cheese was also involved.

2026 Oktoberfest Pretzels

Pretzel #25: They’re Coming For Our Pretzels

steveboilard3 Comments

Superpretzel soft pretzel (Protein style)

Being of a certain age, I figured I should get my flu shot for the season. So I went to my local CVS, as one does. I really like this place; the pharmacist is a hard-working, competent, and friendly woman who manages to keep morale high for all her staff. Even though it’s part of a soulless corporate archipelago that sucks the life from the local business infrastructure, it’s actually a pleasure to go there.

But this time, when I showed up at the pharmacy counter, I was greeted not by a friendly face but rather by a touchscreen. More precisely, I was standing behind an elderly couple that was trying to navigate the screen. “It’s asking for a barcode,” Ma Kettle said to Pa. “Do we have a barcode?” Pa Kettle seemed bored by the whole affair and just shrugged. Ma asked for help, and the twenty-something behind the counter stopped filling pill bottles and said “You should have received a barcode in an email.” Ma Kettle looked confused. The employee said “Just enter your phone number, and I’ll look up your prescription for you.” Ma then spent five minutes entering her phone number with palsied hands and weak vision while the employee patiently waited.

I half expected Rod Serling to step in front of this scene, with his concerned frown and narrow black necktie, and explain that we were witnessing another step in the dehumanization of society. I mean, for the love of God, why does a customer’s attempt to pick up a prescription have to be filtered through a glass screen, especially when the employee is right there, just waiting for this hapless lady to go through the rigamarole that CVS Corporate decided was The Next Great Thing in Automation?

Man in suit holding a large salted pretzel at a festive market

Now, I know that, in theory, a touchscreen costs less in the long run than an employee. But you still need the employee to help people use the machine. Think of the last time you went to the self-checkout at Home Depot or the grocery store; there’s always at least one employee whose sole job is to help customers deal with frozen screens or mis-scanned items or whatever. Not to mention that you still need an employee to watch over the operation in a (halfhearted) attempt to stop people from stealing stuff.

I’m kind of resigned to the self-checkout thing, but I’m dismayed that they’re now taking away the human element at the pharmacy, where potentially dangerous drugs are dispensed and needles are jabbed into my arm. Surely robot police officers are not far behind.

And this inevitably leads us to bake-your-own frozen pretzels. For unlike your standard frozen meals like Stouffers, frozen pretzels do not free you up from cooking a meal. Because no one makes pretzels at home. Bavarian pretzels exist as part of an experience at a pub or an Oktoberfest or whatever, with a tasty draft beer and table service and the company of others. No one wants to just sit in their own kitchen and eat a pretzel all alone like the guy eating peas in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

So frozen pretzels are, like touchscreens at CVS Pharmacy, a dystopian “advance” that no one asked for. But given that yesterday I compared the pretzel at The Station Public House to a microwaved frozen pretzel, I figure I should check out what a home-baked frozen pretzel actually tastes like. So I got a package of “Superpretzels” and got to work.

So now pretzels are a superfood?

According to J&J Snack, these are “hand-twisted, Bavarian-style soft pretzel with 10 grams of plant-based protein per serving while also being vegan and low in fat. Each box contains four 2.5-oz pretzels that are ready to eat after 30 seconds in the microwave or 4 to 6 minutes in the air fryer or oven.” Now, it’s hard to believe the “hand-twisted” part. I would have thought that these are extruded and shaped by a machine, but maybe it’s cost-effective just to hire child labor to twist them.

So, right out of the box one is struck by how small these are, clocking in at less than 4 inches wide.

They come unsalted, but they give you a little package of pretzel salt so you can sprinkle it on yourself. (That is, you, yourself, can sprinkle it on the pretzel.) So that’s what I did.

I chose to heat mine in a conventional oven, because I figured the convenience of a microwave would unfairly degrade the taste for this review.

And guess what? It turned out to be a reasonably palatable pretzel. The flavor was a little like whole-wheat bread, with a hint of “this came from the freezer” funkiness, but the mouthfeel was reasonably chewy. The salt was a little dominant, but that’s on me, the person who added the salt. I then tried it with a little mustard from the fridge. This improved things a bit more, but it was no beer cheese.

So, as far as heat-it-yourself snacks, this was about a B. But as noted earlier, the FPE (Full Pretzel Experience) really requires that the pretzel be brought to your table, piping hot, preferably hanging from a hook, and accompanied by house-made beer cheese. A pretzel out of your freezer just can’t deliver those essential elements. And let’s face it: any bread that’s been frozen can never regain freshness.

One thing I wonder about but for which I’m unwilling to find the answer: Are the pretzels we get at restaurants frozen and then heated?

My score, comparing it against restaurant pretzels: 2 stars

My score, comparing it against frozen snack foods: 3.5 stars

PRETZEL TRIVIA

Surely you’ve been to a county fair or town festival or other semi-creepy event where felonious-looking carnies try to get you to play games with the (non-existent) chance to win a non-licensed Elmo(ish) doll. Sometimes these are “derby” games, which involve shooting a water pistol or tossing a ball, with your and your competitors’ progress marked by wooden horses moving down a “track.”

But did you know there’s also an Oktoberfest version? And rather than horses, it is pretzels that race down the track?

Let’s get a closer look at one of those anthropomorphic pretzels:

Now isn’t that far superior to a boring old horse race? (I am, however, still trying to figure out why these little guys are stabbing themselves in the head with pikes.)

Be that as it may, you can rent this game for your next party, at the low, low price of 945 Euros (about $1,059). Here’s the pitch from Xtreme Events:

Familiar from the fairground, now in a compact event version: at the Oktoberfest Derby it is not horses that race, but pretzels. Every hit sets the pretzel in motion – whoever crosses the finish line first wins the Oktoberfest race. An illuminated signal above the relevant lane shows the winner, even after a nail-biting neck-and-neck finish.

And yet, the pretzels don’t have necks!

2026 Oktoberfest Pretzels

Pretzel #24: Another Public House

steveboilard5 Comments

The Station Public House in Auburn, CA

Yesterday we reviewed Pretzel Bites from the Placerville Public House. Today we’re trying the Bavarian Pretzel at another “Public House”: The Station Public House in Auburn, CA.

(As an aside, I’ve always felt that John Q’s Public House would make a great name for a casual pub. A quick Google search shows it’s still unused.* So if you’re going to open a pub, feel free to use it.)

Anyway, my visit to The Station started out so promising. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and The Station boasts a comfortable outdoor seating area (they call it a “beer garden”) that fronts Auburn’s main street, which is the old Lincoln Highway. (For my earlier explorations of the Lincoln Highway, click here.) Anyway, the weather and the setting were perfect. And on the menu was a “Bavarian Pretzel with amber ale beer cheese.” I paired this with an Anderson Valley Bourbon Barrel Stout. The moon and the stars were aligning.

The pretzel arrived–it was a good size, with a artesinal shape and a decent amount of salt. In the middle was a serving of beer cheese, which was the only sign of potential trouble. It had that tell-tale plastic-y sheen to it.

Still, I am a man of duty, and I proceeded, selflessly, to sample and rate the pretzel before me. This turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. Not because it was hard to describe, but because it was hard to swallow. The pretzel reminded me of the frozen pretzels that you get from the grocery store and then microwave for 45 seconds and serve with yellow mustard. They aren’t that bad when you’re really hungry, in the same way that moldy bread isn’t that bad for starving POWs during WWII. In both cases, your immediate hunger is somewhat mollified.

Soldiers eating pretzels around a table inside a barracks
Insisted upon by the Geneva Convention.

The biggest problem with the frozen pretzels is that they start to get tough and gummy once the microwave-imparted heat wears off. The Station’s Bavarian pretzel seemed to suffer the same fate. It quickly became tough and rubbery. I suspect that it really had been frozen, for this did not taste like a fresh pretzel. Frankly, it seemed a bit stale.

To make matters worse, I would say the amount of salt was about half the optimal level. This, my friends, was the Wonder Bread of pub pretzels.

And then there’s the “beer” “cheese.” I put both words in quotation marks, because I strongly suspect that this yellowish substance contains neither beer nor cheese. It frankly tasted like Velveeta. The texture was like a melted orange crayon. The color was as artificial as William Shatner’s hairline. The taste was as bland as generic mayonnaise. Seriously, this was the worst “beer” “cheese” I’ve ever had. There was no cheddary goodness, and no beery bite. I’ve had better cheese sauce on my nachos from the county fair.

I’m afraid this pretzel gets only 1 star, and that’s for the generous size and its resemblance to Pinto Colvig.

*There used to be a (supposedly) fine dining restaurant called John Q’s at the top of the Holiday Inn in Sacramento. But (1) that Holiday Inn has been gone for years now, and (2) the name didn’t try to play off the “Public House” semi-pun.

PRETZEL TRIVIA

When my son was in middle school, he was in a group of students that designed and built miniature bridges out of balsa wood. They entered competitions to see whose design could withstand the most weight. Turns out this is a thing in the STEM field, though they don’t always use balsa. Sometimes they use toothpicks or popsicle sticks or tongue depressors. And sometimes–you see where this is heading–they use pretzels.

Now, some of these pretzel structures are rather unremarkable. Like this:

Some are a bit more intricate:

But I stumbled upon this animated short that really caught my fancy:

Admittedly, the bridge itself isn’t that amazing. But the whimsy is irresistible. I think this world could use a bit more low-tech whimsy. And pretzels. #PretzelWhimsey

2026 Oktoberfest Pretzels

Pretzel #23: Man Bites Pretzel

steveboilard6 Comments

Placerville Public House, Placerville, CA

Smiling man eating a pretzel while holding a beer at an outdoor festival

In the 1980s, I wrote my Master’s thesis on a Macintosh. (For my younger readers: A “Macintosh” is the name Apple gave to their personal computer. And that explains the origins of the “Macs” that Apple sells today.)

Anyway, I had a Macintosh, which was an expensive machine for the time ($2,500, or about $7,700 in today’s dollars). But it was objectively superior to the crap that rival companies like IBM or Commodore were putting out. The Macintosh used a then-novel “windows” interface that was intuitive and simple, as opposed to the clunky “DOS” operating systems used on other computers. Those of us who owned Macintoshes felt smugly superior and looked down on the dorks who used yesteryear’s DOS machines. This ad, that famously ran during 1984’s Super Bowl, captures the self-importance of us Apple people:

But then something truly revolutionary happened: a little company called Microsoft released a program called Windows that quickly became the standard operating system for virtually all computers. Suddenly, you didn’t need to buy an expensive Macintosh to get the cool interface. Apple’s market share took an enormous hit.

Apple tried suing Microsoft for stealing the “look and feel” of the Macintosh operating system, but the courts largely sided with Microsoft. And this explains why today only a small number of people are willing to pay more for a “Mac” computer. And yet those people are still out there, futilely trying to convince others and themselves that the Mac somehow works better than a $300 Lenovo.

I was reminded of all this today, when I made a visit to the Placerville Public House on Main Street in Placerville, CA. This is frankly one of the most comfortable, welcoming restaurants I’ve ever eaten in. The servers treat you like family and the place radiates warmth and well-worn comfort. It’s in a historic Gold Rush-era building, with a stamped-tin ceiling and original exposed-brick walls and an ancient wooden floor. There’s a pool table and antique light fixtures and heavy wooden tables and comfortable chairs. Interestingly, this building was constructed over the stump of the infamous “Hangman’s Tree” from which the town got its original name (“Hangtown”).

Naturally, I came for a Bavarian pretzel. But my server informed me that they only had something called “Pretzel Bites,” little bite-sized chunks of soft pretzel. I spent a few moments pondering whether I could possibly make the transition from a full, proper Bavarian pretzel to this cutesy “pretzel bites” concept that seems like something a 12-year-old would order. In other words, I felt the way a Mac loyalist might respond to a suggestion to try a Chromebook. But I’m quickly running out of places that serve Bavarian pretzels, and I still have over a week of reviews left to write. So I ordered the Pretzel Bites.

And now, after trying them, I’m wondering if Pretzel Bites are the Windows of the pretzel world. For I found these to be just as delicious as a well-made Bavarian pretzel. In fact, I’m willing to say that the “pretzel bites” concept is in many respects superior. They key, I think, lies in the surface-area-to-volume ratio. These pretzels bites have more surface area, and thus there is more crispy outer skin per cubic centimeter of pretzel. This makes each bite less “bready” than the same size bite off a Bavarian pretzel.

Now is probably a good time to share what I learned from the server: These pretzel bites are run through the Public House’s pizza oven, which, being a pizza oven, bakes quickly at a high temperature. This creates the thin, crispy skin without over-baking the inside of the pretzel. I also learned that, after baking, these pretzel bites are brushed with butter and then salted. This differs from the process used by some of the other restaurants I’ve visited this month, where the pretzels were brushed in butter before baking. By waiting until after baking, the butter isn’t burned off and thus remains to impart a delicious, greasy flavor that coats your mouth similar to the stuff on movie-theater popcorn. Plus, that wonderful surface-area-to-volume ratio is again leveraged to ensure plenty of butter in every bite.

Butter and salt residue on the serving paper.

And as if all this weren’t enough, there’s the beer cheese. Oh wond’rous elixir! Thou creamy nectar!

Since I was in a poetic mood, I asked ChatGPT to write an ode, and this was the result:

Edgar Allan Poe gazing at a pretzel

Upon this board, a rich and amber cream,
Whose sav’ry depth surpasses fancy’s dream;
The brew of hops and dairy’s golden grace
Conjoin to bless this humble dining place.
Oh, nectar smooth! Delicious to the tongue,
A timeless feast by rustic poets sung.

Not bad for a robotic algorithm that’s going to destroy humanity.

Anyway, this beer cheese (which is made in-house, of course) was the best of the month so far. It’s creamy and cheddary, with a pleasant spicy bite and a distinct beer note on the finish. The beer they use is something called Slab Creek Pilsner, made by Jack Russell Farm Brewery in nearby Camino, CA.

So, I’m conflicted. On the one hand, this was the best-tasting pretzel/beer cheese combo I’ve had this month. On the other hand, it’s not a proper Bavarian pretzel. Because of this latter point, I can’t in good conscience award it the full five stars. But then am I being like the Mac devotee who can’t admit the Lenovo is just as good? Let’s compromise and give the pretzel bites 4.75 stars, which is the highest score so far but in theory would permit an equally-good, proper Bavarian pretzel to edge it out if it were to arrive on the scene. Let’s see what happens over the next eight days!

PRETZEL TRIVIA

Do you remember when crop circles were a thing? Out in the middle of Iowa or wherever, a large circle would appear in the middle of a cornfield literally overnight. The circle would be caused by the mysterious flattening of cornstalks in a perfect pattern. Some people insisted these were caused by UFOs that had landed briefly overnight. The circles kept “cropping up” (so to speak) all over the world in the 1970s and 1980s. It should come as no surprise that these supposed alien-formed symbols were eventually revealed to have been made by pranksters pulling a heavy board attached to a rope that was tied to a stake. And yet many so-called experts had been gravely stating that these formations “could not possibly have been created by a human hand.”

Crop circles were broadly debunked by the early 1990s. But in February 2021 a new, intriguing crop circle appeared in a snow-covered field in Shelley, Idaho.

Here’s an aerial view:

Turns out this was a marketing stunt by the pizza chain Little Caesars. They were promoting their “pretzel crust” pizza, which is a periodic, limited-time offering. The perimeter of the crop circle is supposed to be the pretzel crust with big grains of salt. The series of numbers and letters in the center was a code that you could enter on Little Caesar’s website to win supposedly fabulous prizes.

I don’t know about the crop circle, but the idea of pretzel crust pizza sounds pretty good to me. I wonder if I could find 31 of them for next October’s blog…