Thought it could be worth writing a small recap of the first ”official” WarPigs event that took place February 12th on the construction site that will eventually be the brewpub.
I am not sure how to pay justice to the Mikkeller / The Floyds endeavor taking place in the Copenhagen Meat Packing District. A bit shocked about the state of the place some three odd months before the hard close at CBC grand opening in May 😉 Then again the passion from the staff leaves no doubt that WarPigs will be something truly spectacular. A select few were given the tour of the site, ranging from the ToBe Café-style Texas BBQ and Beer dining to the Twin Peaksy Private Dining area. The Smoker from J&R seems insane, which cannot be said for the wet dream downstairs BA-facilities where barrels of gold will be resting safely.
To rewind somewhat: We were greeted by Kamilla who is head of Marketing, Events, Customer Relations or something. Her official title was lost in translation. We downed a Mikkeller Peter, Pale and Mary while taking in the chaos that doesn’t look like a brewpub at all. The former butchery turned chocolate factory turned construction site will eventually transform itself into Europe’s most ambitious Brewpub.
The place will be very far from the more Hipster-esque Mikkeller Bars and the focus lies on Great Meat and Great Beer at very reasonable prices in a comforting atmosphere. 22 taps devoted to WarPig standard assortment, specials, collabs and of course with Mikkeller behind all this I am pretty sure we can expect some crazy guest taps along the way as well. The fact that White Labs with their top notch equipment will be sharing the space caters for quality and innovation when it comes to the yeast as well.
Jacob (potentially spelling his name slightly different) took over from Kamilla to really give us an inch-by-inch walkthrough of the premises. The Mueller boxes were literally everywhere, and it required a bit of imagination to picture the brewery in full production. There was full disclosure of all the constructions taking place and being in a listed building there are so many things to take care of. The dining area will be modelled on a Café-style eating establishment where you pick up your tray and the queue up for all the good stuff. A couple of hundred people can be seated if I remember correctly and there will be a patio outside for Al Fresco dining as well.
The tour ended with trying the WarPigs Pale Ale and India Pale Ale, and both were really good! There was an unexpected underlying sweetness to both brews, and I can imagine how well that is going to work with TX-BBQ-flavors. Whether the beers we tried are close to what they will serve when they open up sometime in April remains to be seen.
A quick appearance from the head brewer Kyle and the assistant brewer Lan-Xin just to say hi, and then they were off to try to create their miracles again, and this concluded a very interesting afternoon for me.
I am usually a little hard to convince, but I immediately felt that this could be all that I have hoped for. American style Hoppy Beer tasting the way is is supposed to. BBQ stickeeness, smokeyness and just plain deliciousness. Serving beer from Fermentation Tanks to Serving Tanks and then straight on to the customers paired with an insane 700 odd kilo smoker pushing meat to the extreme, what is there not like about this concept?
There are number of voices that have been raised criticizing the Club Concept, but first movers always attract a certain amount of haters. If what they say is true, then this will not be a member’s only place, but of course you will get a number of upsides by joining the troops. I have absolutely no problem with this, and it is neither uncommon nor unheard of in the beer community. People on this very forum have memberships to get their hands on exclusives from Cigar City Brewing etc and in the US this is nothing spectacular.
Well, let the haters hate, and check it out for yourself! I will follow the progress closely and hopefully no later than CBC get my hands messy down at the BrewPub.
Beer Traveler 