Urban Chestnut Brewing Co. is – in a way – bringing its beers home. The St. Louis beer magnate announced today, Jan. 9, that it has purchased a small brewing facility in the southern German state of Bavaria, with plans to begin brewing and distributing its beers onsite in Europe as early as this year, though the brewery was not able to offer a more specific timeframe.
UCBC co-owners Florian Kuplent and David Wolfe bought the now-closed Buergerbreau Wolnzach brewery in the Bavarian region of Hallertau, the world’s largest producer of hops. Kuplent grew up in the area, around 80 kilometers from Munich, and interned at the nearby Erharting Brewery before relocating to the U.S. Here, he worked for Anheuser-Busch before launching Urban Chestnut with Wolfe in 2011.
“I’ve always dreamed of owning my own brewery in Bavaria,” Kuplent said. “I’m thinking we might be a little crazy opening our third brewery in five years, which is much sooner than we planned, but the Wolnzach opportunity was too good to pass up.”
Though Urban Chestnut has distributed its Zwickel, STLIPA, Winged Nut, Hopfen and other beers overseas since 2013, Wolfe said there was much to be gained by establishing a local toehold in the region that inspired many of the brewery’s beer styles.
“Having a small brewery in Bavaria lessens the costs of distributing our beers not only in Germany … but also to other potential markets in Europe,” he said. “(It) also provides us with easy access to several specialty malts, hops and yeast strains that are currently not available to us here in St. Louis … (as well as) a brewing capability we currently don’t have: an open-air fermentation cellar.”
Plans are underway to brew existing UCBC labels at the new facility, along with original German brews that will be shipped back to the U.S. Wolfe said the new beer roster is still in the planning stages.
This article appears in January 2015.