Urban Chestnut is brewing in Bavaria where Bürgerbräu Wolnzach used to be.

The beers I've had from Urban Chestnut have been very good, and I have nothing bad to say about the turnabout, wherein an American craft brewer rescues an otherwise dead European brewery space and starts its own operations on the continent.

At the same time, I can't help feeling a sense of profound sadness at the departure of a Bavarian brewery -- any of them.

Perhaps I'm thinking back to my Franconian treks during a time when so many icons were passing away. It's a sense of melancholy borne of inevitable change, and a measure of my own consciousness at present that I'm seeing the glass half empty.

Give me time. For now: Requiescat in pace, Bürgerbräu Wolnzach.

Urban Chestnut begins brewing in Bavaria, by Ian Froeb (St. Louis Post Dispatch)

Urban Chestnut Brewing Co. has begun brewing beer at the facility in the German state of Bavaria that it acquired in January.

"It's always exciting to get something to the final stage of the process --especially when there's beer at the end," Urban Chestnut co-founder and brewmaster Florian Kuplent, a Bavarian native, said.

Urban Chestnut purchased the Bürgerbräu Wolnzach brewery, which is located in Wolnzach, a town north of Munich, and rechristened it Urban Chestnut Hallertauer Brauerei.