Weekly pop-up beer garden coming to Columbia's Riverfront Park in May

Starting May 1, Bierkeller Columbia will be partnering with the city of Columbia to host weekly pop-up beer gardens at Riverfront Park on Tuesdays throughout May.

Bierkeller founder Scott Burgess has seen strong support for his pop-up beer gardens that feature German-style beers such as Kölumbianer, a top-fermenting lager in the Kölsch style, and Kellerbier, an unfiltered farmhouse-style lager.

The events at Riverfront will be known as Spider Lily Happy Hours in honor of the rare Rocky Shoals spider lily found in Columbia. The Wurst Wagon food truck will be at the events as well.

"I had long admired and thought Columbia could take a page out of the book of places like Milwaukee and Madison, Wis., and, of course, lots of cities in Bavaria, that set up seasonal beer gardens in public city parks," Burgess told The State. "So about a year ago, I reached out to the city with the idea. Then, about six months ago, the city had a group of representatives visit all the breweries to get ideas on how to encourage beer tourism here. I raised the idea again, and the mayor came up with that piece of city property as an option."

From there, things came together with other groups, and the Riverfront Bierkeller pop-up beer garden idea was born.

Spider Lily Happy Hour will be from 5-9 p.m. each Tuesday in May at Riverfront Park, 312 Laurel St.

This story was originally published April 24, 2018 at 2:04 PM with the headline "Weekly pop-up beer garden coming to Columbia's Riverfront Park in May."