Some businesses thrive by word of mouth. At Biercamp, the nose is the organ that keeps the cash register singing. As soon as you open the door you step into an olfactory carnival of spices, herbs, and the smoke of fragrant woods (and more recently the bready funk of fermenting barley). A whiff of that makes me want to grab one of everything, fire up my grill, and eat sausage until my body mass consists largely of pork and paprika.
As you can tell, I'm a sausage lover, so there's no way I could live in this town and not end up at Biercamp eventually. And in a few years of shopping there, I've had nothing that would make me question returning. Traditional varieties of sausage like bratwurst, kielbasa, and italian are there, but so are unique offerings like vidalia/cheddar brats, lamb kielbasa, mushroom/gouda brats, and several chorizos representing the styles of different parts of Latin America. One offering new to me was danish sausage, a kielbasa-like sausage with more "sweet" spicing (think pumpkin pie spice).
While the sausages are good, and a few are outstanding (kielbasa, danish, Dirty Swiss Bastard brats, their unique, richly flavored hot dogs come to mind, along with all of their smoked sausages), many aren't wildly better than, or in some cases even as good as, similar ones that other local markets sell for less (Expect to pay at least $10/lb for Biercamp sausage). Biercamp's italian sausage is good, but not much better than what my neighborhood grocery makes in-house for half the price. Their chorizos are a little bland. Their Hillbilly breakfast sausage takes a back seat to some of the stuff you buy in plastic sleeves, not to mention some available from vendors at the Ann Arbor farmers' market (again, for considerably less).
On the other side of the store, in the bacon and jerky coolers, is where Biercamp really shines in my opinion, and where I will surrender my hard-earned cash without hesitation. Their Country bacon has become the standard by which I judge all others, and all others I've had before or since suffer by comparison. It's well smoked, but not so much it covers the rich pork flavor that, once you experience it, you never want to end. Of course, their Berkshire and applewood bacons are great too, as is the pancetta, the duck bacon, the duck pastrami, the regular pastrami...you get the picture. My favorite jerky is the herbs de provence bacon jerky, but picking up a package of that is a tough decision when the others-from a basic beef jerky to sriracha turkey jerky--are also good enough to make me swoon.
And whatever else you buy, pick up a tub of the spicy ale pickles. Put 'em on a burger or brat, assuming you don't eat every one of them straight from the container (guilty as charged).
The ale in those pickles is house made of course. Biercamp has brewed beer for a while now and I haven't tried all their selections, but I do enjoy the rich, malty IPA and their wheat beer.
You may or may not want to make Biercamp your sole source of things smoked and cured, but you could find yourself sorely tempted. read more