When only the best Wisconsin Brats will do…

Hi, my name is Nick Vorpagel, and I was invited to write a guest blog for West Allis Cheese & Sausage Shoppe. I’m here to tell you about the sausage from Lake Geneva Country Meats that can now be found at both West Allis Cheese & Sausage Shoppe locations.

Now, as you all know, when you only have a short summer, you head outside and enjoy it! Summertime in Southeastern Wisconsin is packed full of outside activities, and whether you’re at a baseball game tailgating, or at a family picnic barbequing, odds are you’re cooking! A Wisconsin tailgate must include the staples of the Wisconsin cuisine: beer, cheese, and, of course, bratwurst! And in Wisconsin, not just any bratwurst will do, only the best may be served. The best brats to be had in Southeastern Wisconsin can be found at Lake Geneva Country Meats (and now West Allis Cheese & Sausage), where for 45 years we’ve been making meat products for our customers.

Owned by the Leahy family, Lake Geneva Country Meats is truly a family owned and operated store. On any given day, you can find three generations of family members working at the store, including this guest blogger! The store has been located at the same place, just three miles east of Lake Geneva on Highway 50, since 1967. At this one location, we custom process meats from local farmers, make our handmade sausage, and have a large “one stop” retail store that features the very best meats you could desire, along with everything else you could want for dinner.

While we’re proud of everything we sell, we’re particularly proud of our sausage line. This is an area we have grown and developed over time into what we feel is the strength of our company. Our head sausage maker has been with us since 1983 and when you combine his expertise with high quality ingredients, great things happen. Don’t just take our word, we win awards in the Wisconsin Cured Meat Championships every year, and the judges are academic experts and quality control experts from competitors! It’s nice when your peers say you’re doing a good job.

When we make our sausage, the entire process is controlled by USDA regulations, and is monitored by USDA personnel. We go to great lengths to ensure that the food we make is safe for you and your family, after all we eat the food ourselves!

To make our sausage, we grind a combination of high quality lean pork and beef, add our spice blend, and then throw in any special ingredients that a particular recipe might need. For the Portabella Mushroom & Swiss Cheese Brat, for instance, we use Portabella Mushrooms that are grown about a mile down the road. We believe in buying local! Once we have all the ingredients put together, we stuff the meat into a natural pork casing for that extra crunch, and push it into our German smokehouses to cook them. Once they’re packaged up they’re all ready for you to eat! All you have to do with our precooked sausages is heat and eat!

We invite you to get adventurous and next time you’re grilling, serve a variety pack of brats! Try some Vidalia Onion, Cheddar & Green Pepper or Portabella Mushroom Swiss Brats along with your Traditional brats, all available at West Allis Cheese & Sausage Shoppe. Your friends and family will love having different varieties to try and will be glad that you’re serving the best brats (in my slightly biased opinion) you can find in Wisconsin! If you have any questions about our brats drop me a line at nick@lakegenevacountrymeats.com!

Cheers!