Who REALLY Made The First Pickle Beer?

Urban Artifact Claims It Was Them, But Was It?

Written By: The Gnarly Gnome
Photography By: The Gnarly Gnome

This has been a weird quest, but a quest none-the-less for me for probably the last year or so. That was when I first heard Urban Artifact’s Bret Kollmann Baker call their Pickle Beer “The Original Pickle Beer” – which is a pretty bold claim. I always try to take claims like that very carefully, and while I’ve got pretty good notes about Cincinnati beer (I’m a geek like that) I don’t have much of a reference for pretty much anything that has happened outside of this city.

I dove deep into the proverbial pickle bucket to figure this one out.

Who Cares About The First Pickle Beer?

It’s not just Bret’s big mouth that likes to claim to be the first—there are others. That was really what got me fired up. I first just accepted what Bret was claiming. Why would he make an outlandish claim like that if it wasn’t true? Why then was there this place out in Texas making the claim, too… especially about a beer called PKL FKR?

The reasons are a little complicated. It’s rooted in one simple fact, though… pickle beer is freaking delicious. There’s something extremely crisp and refreshing about the “style” that you just can’t deny. It’s bright, it’s slightly funky, and the salt makes you want to drink more… it’s insane how well it all just kind of works together.

It all started, though, because a brand called Best Maid Pickle Beer popped up in 2019 and started distributing HEAVILY around the country. The brewery that made it was a place in Texas called Martin House… and they liked to push the buttons of New Braunfels Brewing Co, who made that previously mentioned PKL FKR beer.

That’s what got New Braunfels Brewing Co. to make their outlandish claims to pickle beer… and what, in the end, got me on my quest.

So… When Did New Braunfels Make Theirs?

I’m not going to claim that PKL FKR wasn’t early. Really early, actually. From what I can tell, their idea for a pickle beer happened in 2015. The key part to all of this is just that part, the idea. It wouldn’t be until the spring of 2016 that they would make their first attempt at a commercial pickle beer.

It blew up, too. This isn’t to take anything away from the brewery and what they did with that beer… but they certainly weren’t first.

Spangalang Brewery

Quiet through this whole argument in Texas was a little place called Spangalang brewery. They most certainly collaborated with a local pickle company to release a beer in 2015 that was called Birth of Cool – this beer MIGHT be considered the first pickle beer.

But it’s got no dill.

It’s a Cucumber Gose. I’m sure it’s delicious (if you wanna send me some, Spangalang… hit me up) – and I respect that they were really, really close to being the first, but they just weren’t. They made a cucumber gose… which is very slightly different than a pickle beer. Very, very slightly. That leads us to the place that started this whole thing off for me.

What About Urban Artifact?

Not everyone remembers the first time that Urban made that little pickle beer. It’s easy to remember it as ‘Pickle’, the big Izzy’s collaboration year, and all the excitement that came around that… but that’s not when it was born.

Note: If you want to read more about the beer specifically – I do have some notes about it that you might like.

Back in 2015, the brewery did something that they called ‘The 12 Beers of Christmas’ and it was glorious. 12 beers, all strange, all at least slightly themed to the Christmas season. One of those beers was something dubbed “Christmas Pickle” – I don’t know how much of this beer they made, but I know it wasn’t much… I also know it was first.

I fell in love with pickle beer that night that I tried it, and I still love the beer. Urban Artifact’s pickle beer is not just pickle brine dumped into a light lager (not that that’s what everyone is doing) – this beer is almost a deconstructed pickle, reconstructed in your glass. You can pick up the dill, the cucumber, the salt, the vinegar-like tartness… it’s freaking glorious in all its pickled glory.

After All This, Maybe… They Weren’t Really The First

Ok… here’s where the real truth comes in. Urban Artifact didn’t invent pickle beer. Locally, other places have their own. I’ve had a pickle beer from Weidemann, Wandering Monsters’ tasty Pickle Pilsner, and Nine Giant’s ‘Spicy Pickle Very Emergency’—they weren’t first either.

Scour beer aisles around the country, and you’ll see pickle beers from Destihl, Prairie, one called Donna’s Pickle Beer, one called Philly Dilly, Noon Whistle makes one, and Mikerphone makes one. There are a lot of pickle beers now… but they were born from something else.

Go back to the 90s—to South Dakota, from what I can tell—and order a drink at your local Midwestern bar called the South Dakota Martini. You might need to go to a place like Carey’s Bar in Vermillion, SD, but your bartender will put a tall glass of light beer in front of you and plop a big old pickle spear inside of it.

THIS might be the birth of Pickle Beer…