Small Town Brewery

Microbrewery in Wauconda, Illinois, United States 🇺🇸
Owned by Pabst Brewing Company

Established in 2012

Closed in 2018

Contact
1000 N Rand Rd, #204, Wauconda, IL, 60084, United States
Description
Small Town Brewery is dedicated to crafting gruit-inspired beers. Gruit–German for herbs–describes the ancient practice of bittering ales with roots, spices, flowers, and berries. Tim Kovac, founder and brewmaster of Small Town Brewery, uses a proprietary technique to infuse a specialty blend of herbs and spices into his brewing process to create gruit-inspired beers with the unmistakable taste of nostalgia featuring classic American flavors.

Admin Note: Small Town Brewery and Taproom have closed after the sale of the brand in 2018. 2019 relaunched with a new brand under the Pabst umbrella with only 2 products. The original owner of Small Town has opened a up a new brewery in Cary, IL under the name Spirit Water

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7/10 Appearance 8 Aroma 7 Flavor 7 Texture 6 Overall 7
12 ounce bottle into pint glass, bottled on 8/15/2017. Pours hazy pale golden straw color with a small foamy white head that reduces to nothing pretty quickly. No lacing on the glass, with a fair amount of streaming carbonation. Good appearance. Aromas of lemon, lime, grapefruit, tangerine, citrus zest, and white sugar. Nice and pleasant aromas with good balance of citrus fruit and sugary sweetness; with solid strength. Taste of lemon, lime, grapefruit, tangerine, citrus zest, and white sugar. Very mild citrus tartness and citrus peel bitterness on the finish. Lingering notes of lemon, lime, grapefruit, tangerine, citrus zest, and white sugar on the finish for a while. Nice robustness and balance of citrus fruit and sugary sweetness; with minimal cloying flavors after the finish. Slightly increasing dryness from tartness. Medium carbonation and medium-full body; with a very smooth, fairly slick/syrupy, and slightly acidic/sticky mouthfeel that is good. Zero warming alcohol as expected of 5%. Overall this is a solid fruit beer. All around good robustness and balance of citrus fruit and sugary sweetness; very smooth and quite refreshing to drink. Tastes exactly like Mountain Dew, which was what I expected out of it. An enjoyable offering. --- Beer merged from original tick of Small Town Not Your Father's Mountain Ale on 11 Nov 2017 at 18:42 - Score: 6. Original review text: Solid. Lemon/lime/grapefruit/tangerine/citrus zest/white sugar. Slight tart/bitter zest. Slick/syrup feel. Mild acidity/drying. Smooth.
Tried from Bottle on 11 Nov 2017 at 15:55

7/10
Alcoholic Mountain Dew.
Tried from Bottle on 26 Oct 2017 at 23:18

5.1/10 Appearance 6 Aroma 5 Flavor 5 Texture 4 Overall 5.5
Poured like mountain dew. Smelled like mountain dew and orange. Tasted like mountain dew and orange. Long finish. Fizzy body. Meh. Alcopop
Tried on 26 Oct 2017 at 19:28

6.3/10 Appearance 6 Aroma 7 Flavor 7 Texture 4 Overall 6
Bottle shared with my bro-in-law. Pours a cola-like brown with a finger of foam that dissipates quickly. Licorice, nutmeg and ginger nose. Sweet on the palate, slightly cola-like stickiness. Good amount of spice, but quite sweet. Alcohol is noticeable.
Tried from Bottle on 11 Oct 2017 at 16:00

6.8/10 Appearance 4 Aroma 7 Flavor 7 Texture 6 Overall 8
12 oz bottle. Been curious about this for a while, as a root beer lover. Pours dark brown, like cola, with a brownish head that immediately disappears. Aroma's are sweet, vanilla, tooth paste, honey, in other words: root beer. Flavor is heavy sweet with a touch of (nutmeg?) bitterness. Alcohol is definitely noticable, but it still drinks deceptively easy, probably because of the sweetness. Light bodied. Just a hint of herbal bitterness in the finish. A nice novelty, and I like it cause I like root beer, but it doesn't beat Virgil's.
Tried from Bottle on 07 Oct 2017 at 21:13

6.6/10 Appearance 6 Aroma 6 Flavor 7 Texture 6 Overall 7.5
Somebody bought me this green bottle because they knew I rate beer on RB. Sat in the fridge for a while because I was dreading the thought of tasting it. Looks like mountain dew. Smells like mountain dew. Tastes like alky laced mountain dew but you can just barely taste the the alky. Must be mountain dew or some knock off of mountain dew. Would be scary for a kid to get a hold of this. Not bad for a soda pop malt beverage but I'm not sure this can actually be rated as a 'beer', no similarity what so ever to the yellow stuff we call beer on this website, heheh. Since I like mountain dew, this comes across much better than most ciders. Better than expected. Boy, I'm hoping the sugar doesn't burn my stomach on this one. Tons of sugar in here, just like mountain dew but hey, it says nothing about sugar on the ingredients, just 'natural flavors' HAH! Yes, I bet the natural flavors are high fructose corn syrup.
Tried from Bottle on 06 Oct 2017 at 14:50

7.8/10 Appearance 6 Aroma 8 Flavor 8 Texture 8 Overall 8
Sweet alcopop type stuff but pretty damn tasty. +++ Sampled on draft this beer poured a very dark brown color with a small foamy off white head that faded quickly and left no lacing. The aroma was strong cinnamon, brown sugar, molasses and caramel. The flavor was very sweet with cinnamon sugar, maple syrup, caramel, molasses and sugar. Long finish. Full bodied and syrupy. Alcohol well controlled. Yummy.
Tried from Draft on 29 Sep 2017 at 16:32

6.1/10 Appearance 6 Aroma 6 Flavor 4 Texture 8 Overall 7.5
12 oz. bottle. Pours clear, pale, and fizzy, with a pretty big, bubbly, white head that dissipates immediately. The aroma is ginger and cane sugar, with some dust and pine. Sweet and sugary, with no bitter or tart flavors. Light body, syrupy, and sharp. This is amazingly like ginger ale. Tasty and enjoyable.
Tried from Bottle on 18 Sep 2017 at 01:30

6.1/10 Appearance 2 Aroma 6 Flavor 8 Texture 4 Overall 7.5
Cloudy greenish-lemon colored pour with zero head or lacing. Pure sweet Mountain Dew flavor. Drinks like a soda. Alco-pop. Thirst quenching but not beer. Good soda; Bad beer.
Tried on 09 Sep 2017 at 19:34

3.5/10
Tried from Bottle on 02 Sep 2017 at 20:21