This is my contribution to the 49th gathering of The Session. The theme is “regular beers” and my post is a bit late, but I have a good excuse. Besides, as the host I guess I can do any dang thing I want. Just to make sure all the dispatches from far flung outpost have arrived I will wait until Tuesday to post the roundup.
What kind of beer do you drink after a Mardi Gras parade?
OK, maybe it depends on how much you were drinking while begging for beads, but for the sake of what follows let’s agree it would be a “regular beer.”
Saturday much regular beer was consumed along the Soulard Mardi Gras parade route that stretches from Busch Stadium in St. Louis to the Anheuser-Busch brewery, and plenty more in parties that continued into the night. That’s another story, including how Mardi Gras in St. Louis compares to Mardi Gras in New Orleans (much colder).
This one’s about how beers of the revolution often become regular beers. Because standing in front of the taps at Urban Chestnut Brewing — located pleasantly out of the way of the madding Mardi Gras crowd — it appears that regular beer might reside on either side of the line demarking what UCBC calls beers of revolution and beers of reverence.
Urban Chestnut, which was still waiting for brewing equipment to arrive when I visited St. Louis in November, began serving its beer little over a month ago. Its menu describes the Revolution Series as “Our contribution to the renaissance of craft beer ~ brewing artisanal, modern American beers.” The Reverence Series is “Our celebration of beer’s heritage ~ brewing classically crafted, timeless, European beer styles.”
The seven beers available Saturday are pictured (along with the cheese sampler) above, the Reverence Series on the left, the Revolution Series on the right. They are described in detail at the brewery website, along with plans for other beers.
I was impressed, impressed enough to consider what beer I would bring home in a growler were the keepers of the airways willing to let me do that. Were it to share with friends looking for something different it would have been the Hopfen (a “Bavaria IPA”) or the Zucker Weisse (“essentially a Berliner Weisse,” with more bready/doughy character than I can remember tasting in any commercial version of anything called Berliner Weisse). To drink myself, that would be different. TBD or Wasandis, the unfiltered pils.
But when you call your brewery Urban Chestnut and you make a beer with chestnuts chances are that’s the beer people from out of town will be talking about. Winged Nut is the sort of beer that you wake up one morning and they are pouring on the Today Show.
Saturday we watched a couple — Baby Boomers, if you care about demographics — come in and order without surveying the draft board. Obviously not their first visit. They took their goblets of Winged Nut to a table by the window, hauled out their books and began to read.
Brewing a beer with chestnuts is not totally new. In fact, Italian brewers produce more than 40 different chestnut beers. However, I’m not sure any of them ferment those beers with a yeast most often used in fruit-rich/spicy Bavarian weissbiers. It’s different, it’s good, and at 6.5% alcohol by volume it packs a punch. Saturday it appeared some drinkers have already made it their regular beer.
Great review. Delicious sounding (and looking). Congrats to the reviewer who sipped well into all 7 choices. Hope you enjoyed the rest after the photo
Chestnuts in beer! I had no idea! 5 years ago I was traveling around Italy and drinking a couple different beers that caused me to say (again and again), “What IS that flavor?” And now, I finally know. It was absolutely chestnut. Didn’t occur to me at all at the time. Thanks for helping me solve the mystery!