Visiting The National Mustard Museum, Middleton WI

I’ve had craft beer. I’ve had craft donuts. But craft mustard? I had no idea that was a thing until we visited the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin.

We were staying in Madison for a week while on our 5 year, 50 state road trip when Shae came across the National Mustard Museum in nearby Middleton. With the potential quirky factor, free entry and free tastings, visiting the museum was a no-brainer.

We called ahead of time to see if our dog Truffles would be allowed inside so long as she was in her doggy backpack. The person we spoke to said she could, so off the three of us went.

You enter the National Mustard Museum in the gift shop area. There are hundreds of different types of mustards available for purchase, along with several kinds you can sample.

There are mustards that are fairly mild…

…some that are a little spicier…

…some even spicier than that…

…and even some dessert-style mustards.

After trying all the different samples, we took a look around the gift shop. It’s strangely fascinating checking out all the different flavors mustard-makers have created.

Our black dog called Truffles sniffed out a mustard she thought was dedicated to her.

I have a juvenile sense of humor, so it made me laugh when Shae pointed out some of the Poupon U(niversity) magnets and signs.

By the entrance of the museum, there’s a gumball machine with different color gumballs inside. They cost 25c each and if you get a yellow one, you win a free jar of mustard to take home with you.

There seemed to be a good number of yellow gumballs inside, so we decided to try our luck with $1 in quarters. Our first three gumballs were red and orange, so we checked what that meant for our fortune.

It’s true that I do indeed like ketchup, but I thankfully haven’t had any angry earwigs cross my path since our visit. Maybe that’s because with our fourth and final quarter we got lucky – yellow gumball!

We went over to the checkout area to pick out our free mustard and Amy brought out this basket of mustards we could choose from.

She mentioned that there was another game downstairs in the museum where you can win more mustard and that if we wanted, we could pick a mustard from there. Seeing as Amy said some of the flavors downstairs were different to the ones in the basket, we headed down there to check it out.

At the start of the museum section of the National Mustard Museum, there’s a sign explaining how it came about.

There are several different types of exhibits in the museum. Along one wall was a display containing mustard jars from all 50 states. California was incredibly well represented. Alaska and Utah? Not so much.

There are mustards from around the world…

…historic mustard tins…

…and some cabinets with historic mustard jars.

It was also good to see a Colman’s Mustard display seeing as that’s the traditional mustard from my home country (I’m British).

You can’t have a National Mustard Museum though and not have a good amount of quirkiness. The great thing is that the museum dials the quirky up to 11. You can get up close and personal with French’s mustard…

…some artwork extolling the first 27 virtues of mustard…

…a bust of what I think is meant to be Michaelangelo’s David with a mustard mustache…

…a mustard board game…

…and even some Shakespeare trivia. I thought they were kidding with this part, but it turns out Shakespeare did write about mustard several times!

The National Mustard Museum offers a mustard subscription service which sounded great in theory. With three jars being sent to you per month though, that’s a whole lot of mustard. No matter how good the mustard is, I’m not sure we’d be able to get through one jar every 10 days or so.

The museum even has a movie theater where you can learn even more about mustard…

…as well as the world’s first – and only – mustard vending machine.

Before heading back upstairs, we decided to try our luck and win some more mustard. The museum has Hoops for Koops’ (Koops’ being a mustard-maker). It costs $1 for four rings – you have to try and toss the rings over the mustard jars and if you’re successful, you win a free jar.

It was a worthwhile investment for $1 as I managed to get a hoop over some mustard on our first throw.

That meant we had two free jars of mustard to choose from – one from this game and one from the gumball machine. Shae and I picked one each, so she went for the organic yellow mustard, while I picked the Arizona Heat mustard which has a bit of a kick to it.

That wasn’t the end of the fun though, as we headed back upstairs to The Ultimate Mustard Tasting Bar.

In addition to the samples as you wander round the gift shop, you can pick out any flavor you want and ask for a sample.

We asked to try a few different mustards that sounded interesting – garlic, red jalapeno, lavendar wine and more – while Amy and Britney offered us some additional samples they thought we might like.

They also sell soft hot pretzels and a few other snacks, so you can order those and then pick some mustards to go with them. Shae and I got a pretzel each and picked the mustard we’d most enjoyed tasting – she went for a garlic mustard, while I went for the red jalapeno one.

Final Thoughts

When heading over to the National Mustard Museum, we figured it’d be a fun and quirky thing to do, but it was even better than we imagined.

It was a surprising amount of fun, it was great getting to try so many unique mustard flavors, the museum area was interesting and Amy, Britney and Jeremy who were working there the day we visited were all super-friendly. We also appreciated them saying Truffles could come with us in her backpack seeing as we wanted to go elsewhere afterwards.

If you’re visiting Madison, Middleton or another nearby town or city, we highly recommend checking out the National Mustard Museum.

Cost

The National Mustard Museum is free to visit if you want it to be as there’s no entry fee. Having said that, the museum has a donation box downstairs with a suggested donation of $2. We therefore donated $5 – $2 each for Shae and I and $1 for Truffles seeing as she’s like half a person 🙂

$2 was spent on the gumball lottery and Hoops For Koops’, but in return we got two jars of mustard so that ended up being a great investment. We also bought a bottle of water, a couple of pretzels and some postcards from the tasting bar and gift shop, so in total we spent $13.06 (that includes the donation and the cost of the games).

We had a lot of tasty fun during our hour there, so it was definitely worth spending under $15 for the experience and all the food. A visit to the museum could be completely free though if you needed it to be.

Address

National Mustard Museum, 7477 Hubbard Ave, Middleton, WI 53562