St. Louis Beer Blog: Celebrating with the Wolpertinger

Celebrating with the Wolpertinger

By Nate Brinson

As the New Year begins, we look forward to celebrating our anniversary. In case you did not know, Urban Chestnut opened on Washington Ave. in Midtown on January 26, 2011*, and we commemorate our opening every year in late January/early February by inviting breweries from all over the St. Louis area and celebrating with our guests in a festival we call Wolpertinger. The event annually features the opportunity to sample nearly 200 beers, including our eponymous Anniversary Beer.**

This brings us to our first question – What is a Wolpertinger? It is a creature that lives in the forests, and hills/mountains of Bavaria that was discovered at some point in the 1800s. Some claim that this Bavarian chimera is “mythical”, but as I’ll explain shortly, we at UCBC can confirm that the Wolpertinger is quite real!

Some “eyewitness” accounts note that the Wolpertinger has the body of a rabbit with deer antlers, wings (some say wings of a bird, others claim from a bat) and webbed feet of a duck. Others say the Wolpertinger is a fox with wings, a squirrel with a bill, or even a boar with fish fins. The one consensus is that while the Wolpertinger might appear to be frightening, this creature is harmless and is quite shy…for 364 days a year. What happens on that other day? Our very own straight-outta-Bavaria Wolpertinger (aka “Wolpi”) visits us every year to celebrate our anniversary, and Wolpi certainly isn’t shy on this day!  

So why is this Bavarian chimera the official mascot of our anniversary festival? This magnificent creature is really a mish-mash of all sorts of forest animals. Likewise, St. Louis is blessed to have many breweries, and all these breweries, each with their own unique identities and philosophies, combine to form the wonderful St. Louis Craft Beer scene. Having all these breweries together at our anniversary festival really does feel like a Wolpertinger!

One can also really see the changes and evolution of St. Louis beer over the last 15 years. The first ever Wolpertinger (February 4, 2012) was held at our Midtown Brewery & Biergarten***. The other breweries were placed in our brewery (there was still plenty of room back then), what we now call our “Barrel Room”, and under a tent covering the parking lot. The festival moved to the construction site of the Grove Brewery & Bierhall (about a month before its opening) in 2014 with all the breweries fitting inside our warehouse. As the number of St. Louis breweries grew, so did the festival area. By the end of the decade, the entire Grove Brewery & Bierhall (from Bierhall entrance to the back of the warehouse) was full of breweries!

The legend continues on February 1, 2026. Come celebrate our 15th anniversary with all of our local brewery friends!

* Can any of you name the five beers we had on tap that day? You can find the answers by highlighting the following text:  Schnickelfritz, Harwood Myth (English Porter), Half Crown (Session IPA), Wasandis (German Pilsner), Zucker Wiesse (our first Berliner Weisse)

** It’s always a barrel-aged beer, but it changes every year, similar to different people’s accounts of the Wolpertinger

*** It wasn’t known as the “Midtown Brewery & Biergarten” at the time because:

A) It was our only location

B) The Biergarten did not exist yet (it opened in June 2012)

Guest Breweries: 2013 - Ommegang, 2015 - Sun King, 2016 - Deschutes, 2018 – La Cumbre 2019 Casey 2020 – Karmeliten 2024 - Urban Chestnut Hallertau, 2025 - 3 Floyds

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