It Takes a Village: DorfBier by Urban Chestnut Brewing

Trips to liquor stores in Chicagoland involve not only investigating what the brewers of that region have been up to, but also some of those from St. Louis, namely Schlafly and Urban Chestnut. I suspect there are other breweries' beers from the Gateway to the West at Binny's but the only other brewery whose brews I'd be interested in (that I know of, anyway) come from Civil Life. Alas, they don't seem to distribute to Downers Grove. My autumnal trek to Binny's this year yielded, amongst others, DorfBier, a Bavarian-style Dunkel, from Urban Chestnut. Another member of the Axis of Darkness!

Their brewmaster, Florian Kuplent, hails from Bavaria and keeps the taps flowing with brews that would be right at home at a biergarten in his Heimat. These are in addition to various IPAs and other non-Bavarian styles that no doubt help keep the lights on.

The label for DorfBier - "village beer" - notes that it is the third entry in the brewery's Reverence series which I presume is reserved for Bavarian-style biers brewed using (more or less) Old World methods. And, to the best of my knowledge, Urban Chestnut does brew using decoction so I don't think it's a stretch to assume that this stuff saw some decoction action.

I visited their Midtown outpost several years back on a trip to St. Louis and sampled their Dunkel. It was tasty. But I don't recall having run into it since then and, as my blog entry covering my visit to the taproom says nothing beyond the Dunkel being good, I figure it's time to revisit this brew - even if I cannot revisit St. Louis.

I got a big, light tan head in my glass that lasted. Beneath it the liquid showed off its light amber hue with crystal clarity revealing a modicum of bubbles inside. A toasty-roasty smell reached my nose first and was followed by some caramel and milk chocolate. These scents were topped off with a hint of grassy hops.

A nice fizziness set the stage for a medium-light bodied beer with a lovely bread flavor along with that toasty-roasty thing, caramel, and milk chocolate. Despite using ingredients found in candy bars here, DorfBier had only a mild sweetness. The fizz wasn't Berliner Weisse strength but enough for a gentle astringency. There was a hint of peppery hops loitering in the background. A little milk chocolate sweetness lingered on the front of my tongue on the finish but was soon swept away by a combination of fizzy acidity and a moderate dose of herbal-peppery hops which took my palate down the middle path of dryness and bitterness.

Considering the brewmaster is from Bavaria and apprenticed there, I'd have been shocked if this bier was anything less than extremely reverent and tasty. And it was. It has a nice bread taste to it - decocted? - along with malty flavors from the Dark Side that I just love. Its lightish body and moderate strength - 4.8% A.B.V. - make it an everyday workhorse of a brew. Whether you're at the biergarten, eating a meal, relaxing after work, or in need of refreshment after laboring out in the back 40, DorfBier has got you covered.

Junk food pairing: DorfBier will pair well with many junk foods but I prefer Mrs. Fisher's Dark Potato Chip. Their extra Maillard reactions will complement the dark malt flavors of your DorfBier perfectly.

Welcome To St. Louis, Son: Noble Lager by Schlafly Beer

A friend of mine who swears that Pappy's Smokehouse in St. Louis has the best ribs and pulled pork in the known universe had been talking about making a trek south to enjoy some of their admittedly very fine ribs and whatever other meat trips his trigger that day. Well, that day happened a few weeks ago.

As I discovered less than a mile from Pappy's lies The Schlafly Tap Room. And it was our first stop after we rolled into town. My experience with the brewery's beer is not extensive which is probably due to a combination of my parochial tastes and the limited selection of their brews I am presented with at the bottle shops I frequent in Chicagoland. Amongst the brews I sampled was their hefeweizen which was excellent. It featured fine phenolic banana with a touch of estery clove – just the way I like it. A light body and a citrusy edge made it perfect for a nice sunny day.

Upon returning home I was reminded that I had started a review of their Noble Lager but had never finished it. And so I thought it was the right time to do so.

Noble Lager is a late summer seasonal and I found some in Chicago last autumn. Schlafly bills it as a "traditional lager" without saying whose traditions in which it was steeped. The ingredients are all European or European varieties but it's not being sold as a Helles. An American lager with European ingredients, perhaps?

The beer was a medium yellow hue and, curiously enough, hazy. Not muddled like the new trend in eyepahs – just a tad cloudy. (May St. Gambrinus save us from totally turbid lagers!) I managed only a small head on my pour which was loose and white and lasted about an average time while inside was a surfeit of bubbles. While clarity would have perhaps made for a prettier beer, it still looked good to me.

My notes indicate that the aroma was "awesome!". This was mainly due to a wonderful bready scent that was accompanied by a tad of malty sweetness. Although moderate, the hops greeted my nose with a fantastic mix of grass and floral scents. I presume the latter came from Lublin hops which are commonly thought to be a Polish variety but in fact are Czech. (They are, however, apparently quite popular in Poland.)

If the label "traditional lager" had me worried that this was going to be what I see called an "American pale lager" – often times a moniker for micros that are macro+ - then my fears were dispelled quickly because Noble Lager tasted like a Zwickel/Kellerbier. The heavenly trifecta of biscuit, bread, and yeast were like manna to my tongue. A bit of honeyed sweetness followed before those Noble hops imparted a nice grassiness. Just enough to add balance along with a firm fizziness.

The finish was a bit surprising. As the malt faded a bold spicy hop taste took over. Think black pepper. This made things fairly dry and bitter and gave a nice crisp snap to the finale. My glass had Schaumhaftvermoegen everywhere and thick webs of it too. It was a beauty, eh.

Whatever a "traditional lager" is, count me in because this is a fantastic beer. It was as if a melanoidin bomb went off in the kettle triggering countless Maillard reactions to give Noble Lager its great toasty-bready aroma and flavor. And the yeast was a bonus. I wish some of that floral scent has been in the taste but that's a minor quibble. The Saaz-like finish was a lovely surprise and added a nice contrast to the clean bready flavor. I'd love a return trip to Schlafly to taste this stuff fresh from the teat.

Junk food pairing: Pair Noble Lager with a heaping plate of potato chips topped with melted Provel.

Lilywhite Lager, She Gonna Lead You Right: White Lager by Schalfly Beer

My first encounter with a Schlafly beer was quite impressive. It was a very tasty Kölsch and gave me my first hint that there's more to St. Louis' beer scene than foreign conglomerates making watery garbage. In addition it demonstrated that Schlafly was adept at brewing Germany styles of bier. This autumn the brewery announced a new winter seasonal - White Lager(PDF) - a zwickelbier. The idea was to offer something lighter than the more typical winter fare of doppelbocks, imperials stouts, and the like.

The German zwickelbier, a.k.a. - kellerbier, is an unfiltered pale lager. I think of it as an unfiltered helles with more hops. "Keller" means cellar while a "zwickel" is a little valve on a fermentation tank used to sample the brew. The idea behind the style is that you are drinking very fresh bier from a fermentation tank still sitting in the cellar. Thusly drinking a zwickelbier from a bottle seems to be a bit contradictory to the premise behind the style. And so the treat here is the yeast that remains in the bier as opposed to the freshness. For the record, my White Lager has a date of 13 October 2015 on it. I purchased the six-pack in late November and had my tasting a couple weeks or so later in mid-December.

White Lager pours a dark yellow color. With the yeast not having been removed, the bier is hazy, though just slightly. My understanding is that while zwickelbiers and kellerbiers are essentially two words for the same bier, the zwickel usually has more carbonation. In this case I got a small white crown in my glass that dissipated quickly. However, inside the bier itself were many a bubble.

The aroma was equally fresh bread and grassy hops. Test batches of the brew contained orange peel but I didn't smell any citrus which leads me to believe that this ingredient was left out of the batch or batches that were bottled. While White Lager doesn't have the most complex aroma you'll ever wrap your nostrils around, the breadiness here was rich and inviting.

As it was in the taste. It had that wonderful melanoidin/Maillard reaction toasty bread goodness in spades as well as some yeasty dough flavor as well. I personally love the helles/zwickelbier/kellerbier because it's those toasted grain tastes that are most prominent. White Lager didn't rock the boat with malt sweetness being minimal. The hops were grassy to the tongue but took on a floral side as well which was quite tasty though there was little bitterness. Carbonation added a little dryness in lieu of bitterness.

As the malt fades on the finish, the hops come to the fore. They lose the floral notes and take on Noble spicy ones along with a liberal dose of bitterness making for a rather dry conclusion.

THIS. This was a very tasty bier. I applaud the paucity of sweetness which allows the clean toasted grain flavor to really shine. And it is these melanoidin/Maillard reaction flavors that I crave in bier. The hops give their all and manage to offer a nice balance. I appreciated how they changed through the tasting process taking on floral and spicy qualities at different stages. White Lager is 5.5% A.B.V. and has a rather light body so it's not going to warm you up this winter. On the other hand, I can certainly imagine it as being a crisp, refreshing drink for quaffing after snow shoveling or other outdoor activities.

Junk food pairing: I like potato chips with my zwickelbier. For a traditional take, try some kind of dill-flavored chips. But don't be fooled. White Lager can handle something a bit spicier such as Jay's Hot Stuff chips too.

Stange, Stange on the Wall, Who's Kölsch is Fairest of Them All?: Schlafly Kölsch (-style)?

Summer has become truly hot here in Madison which means I am quaffing ever lighter brews here in the sun as I await August's welcome corn. On a fairly recently trip to Chicago I purchased some aestival-ready brews from St. Louis. One of them was Schlafly Kölsch-style beer (I don't want the keepers of the Kölsch Convention coming down on me for implying that this brew was made in Köln.)

Ah, the Kölsch. The style does a delicate balancing act with the trio of grain, fruitiness, and hops. No mere golden ale, this beer must be lagered!

My Schlafly Kölsch poured a deep straw color and was slightly hazy. I presume the haze came from the wheat. My understanding is that the style is traditionally all barley so this is a deviation from the norm. My pour produced a fine pillowy white head which stuck around for a while. There was a fair amount of effervescence with bubbles aplenty moving on up.

The aroma was lovely with cracker and that unique Kölsch fruitiness vying for my nose's attention. That fruitiness comes from the yeast and Schlafly brags that theirs comes from the Gaffel Brewery. Being in Köln, Gaffel brews a true Kölsch. After smelling the beer I think that I started drooling in anticipation of what was to come. Disappointed I was not. It was crisp with that cracker aroma translating to the taste. Plus there was that trademark fruitiness which is mellow and berry-like to my tongue. Lagering takes the edge off those esters. That light graininess eventually gives way to a bit of malty sweetness which I tend to think of as tasting a bit like corn, though not creamed corn, mind you.

The brew finishes fairly dry with biscuit flavors fading and giving way to a moderate spiciness courtesy of Perle and Hallertau hops. Most of the Schaumhaftvermoegen slid down the side of the glass but I did have a couple sizeable patches of foam that clung.

I loved this brew. It may be the best take on the Kölsch style this side of Köln, where Reissdorf rules from what I can taste. My tongue was happy to let the grainy flavors battle it out with the fruity ones for supremacy. The light, unassuming cracker flavor is one of the main reasons I drink beer. This is not to damn the fruitiness because it too is great here and in perfect proportion to the malty flavors. Once a stalemate is reached, the hops come in and clean up. This balance of flavors, a light body, and a moderate alcohol content of 4.8% A.B.V. make Schlafly Kölsch a thoroughly satisfying summer brew.

Junk food pairing: I like to pair Kölsch with milder junk foods so enjoy Schlafly with some plain potato chips or regular Cheez Its.