A weekly look at the draft selection at beer-friendly bars across the country.

The city of Milwaukee has long been known as Beer Town USA. Considered "the beer capital of the world" at the turn of the 20th century, it was home to four of the world's largest breweries (Blatz, Miller, Pabst and Schlitz).

Nowadays less than 1 percent of Milwaukee's workforce is employed by the brewing industry, but as long as Miller stays in business, Old Milwaukee remains on store shelves and the city keeps calling their baseball team the Brewers, it will continue to earn its moniker. Like many cities, the area is seeing a boom in craft-beer culture. Smaller brewers like Lakefront and Sprecher have national followings and the city is home to a number of brewpubs.

One of Milwaukee's most highly regarded watering holes is Romans' Pub, which DRAFT and Imbibe Magazines have called among the best beer bars in the nation. Indeed, 30 selections grace today's tap list. Sounds like Wisconsinites like to stay relatively local when they booze, though: Owner Mike Romans informed us that Goose Island IPA from nearby Chicago is their most popular brew. Locals craving a beer can simply check the list: "As soon as one gets changed out, it goes up on our site."

A sampling of suds on tap is after the jump. Got a favorite microbrew? Let us know in the comments.

Scanned from Be Milwaukee's Guest, Recipes Collected and Tested by the Junior League of Milwaukee - 1959

I could scarcely be crankier at myself for muffing the opportunity to present this comb-bound recipe gem on a particularly Wisconsin-centric holiday, such as the recently passed St. Nick's Day, but hey -- any day is a great day for pork cake!

I'm a big fan of the melding of meat and sweet (mmm...bacon candy...), and surely have been known to savor a sumptuously larded crust, but I can't swear that I've ever seen a baked good quite so aggressively piggy as this. Pinwheel rolls studded with flecks of seasoned ground beef, yes, but those were generally presented as a savory, hand-wielded Wellington sort of course rather than spiced, as this seems to be, in the manner of a dessert or breakfast sweet. I'm pleading woeful ignorance about the pastries of the Badger State here, so might someone be so kind as to enlighten me -- is this a traditional Wisconsin breakfast or dessert treat, or a relic of the cookbook's era? If the former, I'm booking a trip on Midwest Airlines posthaste. If the latter -- who's up for a bake-along this weekend?

Growing up I ate my share of blue gelati, a sugary light-blue flavor of Italian ice. As far I can remember there was nothing great about the taste. The sole reason kids ate it was that it turned their lips, teeth and tongue an appalling blue.

It wasn't until recently that I heard of Blue Moon ice cream, a flavor that originated in Milwaukee, and was enjoyed by kids in the northern Midwest for the same staining ability that drew me and my little friends to blue gelati. But there's more to Blue Moon, which is said to have been invented in the late 1940s or 1950s. The turquoise colored confection is said to have a flavor that's been described as like the milk after a bowl of Froot Loops.

The folks at Chicago's Edgar A. Weber & Co., which now owns the formula, say the beguiling Blue Moon has a "cherry, citrusy, fruity-type flavor." Fans have tried to guess the ingredients and many have posted recipes on the web calling for such things as pineapple and curaçao. Weber & Co. won't reveal the secret ingredient, but says that a colorless version is used in medicines and beverages to mask bitter flavors.

Regardless of what the recipe for Blue Moon is, one thing remains true: it's only available in the northern Midwest. This coupled with childhood nostalgia has made the bizarre flavor a hot item for online ice cream stores, which charge upwards of $10 a pint.

The newest issue of Cooking Light, which is their 20th anniversary issue, has the magazine's choices for the top 20 cities in the US, based on 15 criteria that they feel embody their "Eat Smart, Be Fit, and Live Well" philosophy. They looked at fitness, health and exercise data from the Centers for Disease Control, the number of parks and recreation areas (and how often they're used) from the Trust for Public Land, restaurant ratings from the Zagat Survey and James Beard Foundation, and the USDA's farmers markets listings. Everything was evened out on a per capita basis and the cities with the most of everything made the top cut.

One of the top ten cities will be featured each month in the magazine this year, so readers will have access to information about all the things that got the city their ranking.

1. Seattle, WA
2. Portland, Ore.
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Minneapolis, MN
5. San Francisco, CA
6. Boston, MA
7. Denver, CO
8. Milwaukee, WI
9. Philadelphia, PA
10. Tucson, AZ

Well, it can't come as a surprise, as the city of Milwaukee is known as "The Nation's Watering Hole," and was, at one time, home to four of the world's largest breweries: Schlitz, Pabst, Blatz, and of course, Miller, which is the only one left in the city currently. Still, the drinking habits of Milwaukeeans are what made it #1 on Forbes' list of the "Drunkest Cities in America."

Forbes took the 35 largest metropolitan areas and ranked them in order of "drunkenness," based on five parameters: state laws, number of drinkers, number of heavy drinkers, number of binge drinkers and alcoholism. Rounding out the Top 10:

1. Milwaukee, WI
2. Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
3. Columbus, OH
4. Boston, MA
5. Austin, TX
6. Chicago, IL
7. Cleveland, OH
8. Pittsburgh, PA
9. Philadelphia, PA
10. Provdence, RI

What? I wonder why no city on the west coast made the top 10?

Normally when I write about a gigantic Guinness-worthy food item I have some confirmation. In this case I don't. As a matter of fact, I don't even have a photo of the freakish food in question. So, imagine the sandwich pictured here much, much larger. Good, now picture it even bigger!

I'm pretty confident that the near 300-pound, four-foot-by-five-foot reuben was that was laid out for St. Pat's partiers at a Milwaukee bar last night is one for the books. One hundred pounds of corned beef, 40 pounds of swiss, 80 pounds of sauerkraut and three gallons of thousand island dressing went into the nearly 300-pound creation. What I want to know is what did they cook it on? And just how many pounds Tums were consumed afterwards?