There's a party going on at Third Wheel Brewing (4008 I-70 North Outer Road, St. Peters; thirdwheelbrewing.com), which spans two storefronts of an industrial strip mall along an I-70 service road on the outskirts of St. Peters. Inside the main taproom, patrons swarm the large rectangular bar for food specials and drafts of fresh Curbside Stand, a popular tart lemon-and-blackberry Berliner Weisse seasonal release. Meanwhile, in the adjacent event space, which still smells of sawdust and fresh paint, head brewer Abbey Spencer stands beside Nick Colombo of Switchgrass Spirits as the two lead a tasting of the northside St. Louis distillery's Double Cask Rye, aged in the cooperage used to make Third Wheel's signature barrel-aged imperial stout, Boss. At the front of the room, a table is set up with a press for on-demand T-shirt printing, with a choice of two designs commemorating Third Wheel's sixth anniversary.
The growing number of patrons are gathering for more than just a birthday celebration. This is also a coming out. Mere weeks ago, this upstart St. Charles County brewery released cans and kegs of its core labels across the river in St. Louis city and county. For Spencer, who's been making beer for more than a decade, it's a trip. "I'm from St. Louis; I've lived in Dogtown for 15 years," she says, sipping a pint of Clutch It, her soft and malty Czech Pilsner. "Now I can find my beer in my Schnucks!"
As thrilling as it is for Spencer to spot her creation through the cooler door, she's even more excited about the office doors that Third Wheel's eastward expansion might open. The brewery's distributor, Craft Republic, has already helped facilitate the collaboration between fellow clients Third Wheel and Switchgrass. Spencer is now eyeing possible partnerships with other St. Louis retail accounts, including Schnucks (a previous St. Charles County collaborator), the Wine and Cheese Place and the Hop Shop, as well as other brewers in the city, such as Modern.
Relationships have always been the currency of craft brewing, and Spencer knows that better than most. After all, she first met Third Wheel owners Brad Wheeling, Ron and Valerie Woerndle, and Wade and Erin Alberty through the local homebrewing coterie when she would entertain them at what she now calls her "weird homebrew food-pairing parties." (Alberty would introduce Spencer to co-owners Ron and Val Woerndle.) When COVID-19 hit less than three years into the brewery's existence, she leaned on her connections with the upstart Fillmore Packaging Solutions, which was already letting her beta taste its new canning lines, to salvage Third Wheel beer from the vats and put it in tallboys to help float the business during the shutdown (it was one of the relative few St. Charles County establishments to insist on masking and social distancing). And it was her work building community as cofounder of the OG, a local grassroots effort to get more women into beer, that made her a beacon for female brewers, two of which now work beside her. That's why Spencer can truthfully, if somewhat reluctantly, put "Brewed By Women" on every can of Third Wheel beer she sends into the city. "I don't want to make it about gender," she says. "But the feminine aspect has helped us [stand out] a lot."
That pandemic-induced head-start in canning notwithstanding, the decision to cross the river into Missouri's most competitive beer market was not an easy one for Third Wheel. Growing the annual production rate from 500 barrels to just over a thousand in the span of a year has triggered growing pains for the tiny operation, which has scurried to get all that liquid gold into enough cans and move them to fill orders while ensuring the quality that will leave a positive first impression on urban tipplers. "Draft beer is better for us," Spencer says. "Quality control for us is higher in kegs, which are easier to manage and move with less labor. It takes us the same amount of time to fill a 15-gallon keg as it takes to fill three cases of cans."
But for Spencer and Co., that extra work is already paying off. The city's early response to beers like Sandman, Third Wheel's flagship clean and caramelly red ale; the aforementioned Clutch It; the citrusy Gotta Have It American IPA; and the lemony Australian sparkling ale Glitter And Be Gay, a special-release collaboration with the St. Charles County LBGTQ+ community, has been positive. Perhaps even more importantly, Spencer is getting more attention from her native St. Louis beer community, opening up possibilities.
As for what that future might entail, Spencer isn't sure. First, she wants to take a break, wait and see how the STL expansion plays out, and recalibrate. If all goes according to plan, Third Wheel can then hire a full-time marketing person, another rep to get out and make connections. Then, possibly further expansion to Kansas City, Springfield and the rest of the Show-Me State. "Is that the goal?" says Spencer. "Fuck yeah, it is."
In the meantime, Spencer can walk into her local Schnucks or Trader Joe's, watch for neighbors unwittingly (or wittingly) grabbing a four-pack of Third Wheel beer, and imagine how big the party might get.
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