Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
St. Louis is a good drinking town. Of course it’s home to Budweiser, but there’s so much more about the Gateway to the West than mass-produced beers. There are 86 breweries currently operating in the area, per STLbeer.com, ranging from older independent standbys like Schlafly to newer shops like Wellspent.
I’ve got my favorites among that group. There’s a bunch of stuff from Perennial Artisan Ales I enjoy and just about anything Four Hands makes is wonderful. But given my love of German style beers, my go-to for trips south is Urban Chestnut.
Urban Chestnut isn’t an underdog tale. They’re a well crafted and well funded venture with an older taproom in Mid Town and an impressive, massive base of operations/bierhall/kitchen in the Grove. It’s easy to see why investors would bet on UC; their stuff rules.
Today I’m gonna dig into the last straggler in my fridge after my most recent Missouri trip. Urban Chestnut’s Zwickel is a Bavarian lager and the most likely UC brew to pop up in your local gas stations across the midwest. Let’s talk about how it tastes.
Urban Chestnut Zwickel: B+
This beer pours a golden maize with a nice, light head that fills the top of a half-liter mug with a white, half-inch ring. It smells exactly like what I remember beer smelling like growing up; a malty, half-exotic lager.
God, this first impression is *this is great.* Right up front you get a smooth, crisp lager that forces its way past your tongue. It’s a perfect refresher — all the bubbly madness of a seltzer but with an unmistakable beer-y taste and a boatload of flavor.
Toward the end a little bit of corn taste flows in — not too much, but it’s noticeable. It’s the only thing I don’t like about this beer, and it’s a minor quibble. It’s hazy and creamy and while you can tell the hops are in there it’s not even remotely bitter. There’s a lot of little tastes that pop in for a second and leave, meaning you’re not going to get bored with this. This all combines to make an absurdly drinkable beer — I’d happily put down a two liter boot of this.
I *will* put down a two liter boot of this, dammit. Just gotta get back down to St. Louis first.
