Bratwurst “Hot Tub”

The bratwurst came to Wisconsin with German and Austrian immigrants in the late 1800s. It became synonymous with the state’s culture in the 1940s, when an Austrian-born butcher named Ralph Stayer created the Johnsonville bratwurst, named for a village west of Sheboygan. (The village was named after Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth president of the United States.) Stayer’s genius lay as much in branding and marketing his brats, as bratwurst are affectionately known in these parts, as in formu