KC Bier Co. introduces German-style brews to Topeka

A popular Kansas City brewery began distributing its authentic German-style beers in Shawnee County last week.

Kansas City Bier Co. held its release party at The Burger Stand at College Hill and began offering five of its best-selling and seasonal beers on tap.

The brewery began producing in 2014 and, after a $1.2 million expansion in 2015, began selling bottled beer in the Kansas City and Lawrence areas.

“We’ve been conservative in our expansion plan because we want to establish ourselves in each new market we go to,” said KC Bier Co. founder Steve Holle. “We’ve been constrained at times by our production capacity, but we had a fairly large expansion last year and we’ve done a good job in our existing markets, and thought this was a good next step in distributing our beer.”

Draft beers available at Burger Stand include KC Bier’s most popular bier, Dunkel, a Munich-style brown lager; Pils, a Pilsner-style golden lager and the brewery’s newest addition to its year-round lineup; Hefeweizen, a Bavarian-style wheat ale; Helles, a Munich-style golden lager; and Der Bauer, a German-style farmhouse ale and the brewery’s first seasonal release.

Holle said the brewery's core brands, the Dunkel, Pils, Hefeweizen and Helles, contain the lowest alcohol content at about 5 percent, but the seasonal ale, Der Bauer, is slightly stronger at 7.2 percent. On its website, KC Bier Co. advertises for its strongest beer yet, the Winterbock, a dark doppelbock lager with 8.2 percent alcohol content.

“I think people like drinking this kind of beer, and it’s not often available,” Holle said. “The stuff that’s imported often times isn’t as fresh as it could be because of the travel time to get here.

"So to get the authentic flavor, we import all of our malt and hops, we follow very traditional brewing methods — myself and our head brewer both studied brewing in Germany — so we’re all about making authentic-tasting German-style beer and serving it at the same freshness you get in Munich.”

The Burger Stand was crowded Wednesday night with KC Bier Co. brews flowing from the taps. General manager Ariel Coffland said customer response to the tap takeover had been enthusiastic, and staff were excited for the company’s expansion to Topeka.

“I love German-style beers, and their Dunkel is to die for,” Coffland said. “So we’ve kind of been begging for them and we’ve mentioned our interest, and our bar manager also takes trips out to KC and eventually Lawrence when they came there, so we’ve been preparing for their eventual move into Topeka.”

Coffland said the beer is currently available only on tap and is one of more than 25 draft beers the restaurant offers.

Six-pack bottles of Dunkel, Hefeweizen and Helles will be distributed in the Topeka area in early 2018, followed by six-pack bottles of Pils in early March and Der Bauer in June, in addition to other draft-only specialty releases.

For more information on KC Bier Co. beers and their availability, visit kcbier.com.