Avoid Wilderness Brew on Xindong Lu Like You Would Do a Bear in the Woods

Another week, another brewpub – can you feel my excitement? Bare with me if I sound a little done in but it's places like the newly opened Wilderness Brew, located to the north of Heaven Supermarket on Xindong Lu, next to Jenny Lou's, that make drinking beer a difficult task, which in itself is a terribly difficult task.

The venue is located in the deep recesses of a quiet building via an empty hall, which is to say that things did not look good from the off.

READ: 2016 Year in Review: 20 New Brewpubs and Beer Bars That Graced Beijing in 2016

The pub has a huge space to play around with and have gone for a tacky cabin layout, somewhat reminiscent of something you might see in Twin Peaks. Concrete walls are decorated with deer and ox heads sourced from Taobao (just a guess), heavy wooden tables are plonked next to leather sofas, a lone Oktoberfest flag tries to cover some sad wall space, and fake firewood lines the bar, begging to be used as kindling. Even if you wanted to sit at the bar you couldn't, since it was apparently made for people clocking in at two meters.

Well, enough judging the aesthetic tastes of the owners – these are all aspects that can be fixed with a delicious beer after all. Wilderness has nine beers on tap, five of which are brewed by the owners as well as four guest beers. To best see what they're working with we ordered a flight (RMB 72), including a Solitary Smoke Weissbier (4.6 percent ABV), an easy-drinking German-style wheat beer; Desert Sunset Pilsner (3.9 percent ABV), which wasn’t even as good as Tsingtao; Cowboymania Witbier (5.5 percent ABV), an okay shot at a Belgian wheat beer; and IPA Seven Thugs (6 percent ABV), which was so bad that it wasn't even drinkable.

As for the guest beers, they offer IPA (RMB 65) from Chengdu Harvest; Gose To Hollywood (RMB 65) from ToØl; Heaven & Hell (RMB 70) from De Molen, and Deception (RMB 60) from Black Market. If our tolerance of the truly terrible quality of the homebrew beers was high, they completely dropped the ball when we asked for a sample of Heaven & Hell Imperial Stout from De Molen. What should have been a dark and creamy 11.9 percent stout turned out to be a fizzy golden soda (or piss). “Excuse me, is this the Imperial Stout? Shouldn't it be dark?” Without hesitation, he claimed it was the stout, and it was the right color, that was until another more experienced bartender overheard my incredulity and brought the correct specimen.  

If all of this didn't add up to one of my worst beer experiences in recent memory then the all-techno tracklist certainly drove it home, and even that was before the plates of tomato fried egg came out so that the staff could eat their dinner in the company of the bar's clientele (of which there was none but myself).

Yes, we understand the craft beer is faddish, but please try to relieve your ignorance before wasting everyone's time and energy by opening a bar that'll be closed in two months. As the American environmental essayist Edward Abbey once said, “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.” Wilderness the bar? We'll be severing it from our memory immediately.

Wilderness Brew
Daily 5pm-12.30am. 1/F, Bldg B, Yishengge, 10 Xindong Lu, Chaoyang District (next to Jenny Lou's)
荒野精酿：朝阳区新东路10号逸盛阁B座

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Email: tracywang@thebeijinger.com
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Photos: Tracy Wang