Happy 4th of July! Here at the Beeronaut HQ, we are between the local parade in the afternoon and going out for the evening’s fireworks display. Seems like a good time to crack a local beer to review and to practice my “candid” product photography.
South Side Pride is from the revived Baderbräu Brewing Co. It’s one of the line extensions they released in 2016 with the opening of their own brewery on 25th & Wabash. On a historical note, the building was the home of Ziff-Davis publishing, back when it was producing Popular Electronics and Amazing Stories. Anyhoo, South Side Pride is proclaimed to be a Munich Helles, also known as a Dortmunder style beer, which is what most “Special Export” brands are based on. They claim fidelity to the German style of brewing with the slogan “It’s decocted!” on the can.
With the first pour, I can catch a big, malty “beer” smell, the kind you can pick up even in a smoky bowling alley. The color is the pale yellow of your average lager, except this one has visible “floaties,” marking some minimal filtering before canning. That’s a nice, puffy head that dwindles away in about a minute. The taste is, I admit, straight down the profile of a Heinie or even an Old Style, but without extra sweetness; at least initially. What sets a Helles apart from a Pilsener for me is that the profile works with harder water, with a different mineral content that the soft water in Plzen. After a few more sips, this actually falls somewhere between a DAB and a Pilsener Urquell, with a bready malt profile that seems to make the hop choices not matter so much. The finish, I must note, does get toward the sweeter side. I will sometime have to do a side-by-side with Baderbräu’s Chicago Pilsener. Or you can, too. At 4.8% abv, most can have more than one.
Although I’ve written about Baderbräu beers before with beers sent t me by the brewer or distributor, I purchased this one myself to write this review.
