When you get your hands on Piney River’s latest new beer, you will see there’s a question on the side of the can.
What comes first? The chicken? Or the beer?
Just like every Piney River beer, there’s a story behind Bock Bawk. So, when you’re enjoying a Bock Bawk or sharing it with a friend, you can tell, them you know the answer to what came first!
As you probably know, we are a farm brewery in the Ozarks. Our farm is a beef cattle farm, and we have quite the affinity for our cows. We don’t have mules, or donkeys, or goats, or llamas, or rabbits. No pigs or guineas or chickens either. There are lots of big and little farms around us that have all sorts of farm animals in addition to their cows, but our menagerie stops with a dog and cat after the cows, even if our beertenders send us Marketplace ads for free goats and things that could make our farm more of a petting zoo. Nope, you bring other pets. We’ll provide the cows to go with the beers.
Even though we don’t have a bunch of different animals, we love highlighting farm life in the Ozarks with our beers. Our Missouri Mule IPA has a mule on it–Missouri mules being some of the most prized among mule afici0nados. Remember our beer Farm Buzz? It was like a big ole cow nuzzle reaching right out to get you. Oatmeal Stout? A cute donkey with some oat nibbles sticking out of his mouth. Even though the fowl represented on Old Tom Porter and SEMO are wild, there are are farm versions of turkey and ducks, too. It only seemed natural to have a beer with a chicken on it, too.
Last year as Brian and I were trying to determine what beers we would make as part of our 2026 seasonal lineup, I was fairly fixated on finding a way to include a chicken in our farmyard beer line up. It can make a brewery a little weary trying to find beer names and styles and develop recipes that fit certain times of year. And then of course you have to hope that people like the beer, too.
I don’t brew beer or make recipes, but I did want a chicken on a can. So if I put a chicken on a can, what do you call a beer with a chicken on the can?
Bawk! Like the chicken sound!
Bawk bawk!
Bawk is also the same a bock. Bock is a style of German beer. There are all kinds of bock beers. Would the brewer agree to brew a bock and put it in a can with a chicken on the front?
The brewer agreed. Grindstone Design helped us create the label.
So there you have it, folks. The chicken came first. Then the beer.
Bock Bawk is an German-style bock, a lager. Some of the folks that have already sampled this beer recognize it as an “amber bock”. Bock Bawk has a deep golden reddish hue. The beer is malt forward with a toasty aroma and flavor and a slight sweetness. German noble hops are used for very light bittering, and the beer finishes smooth and clean. 6% ABV – 20 IBUs
We can’t wait for you to try Bock Bawk! It is our spring seasonal, and we are sending it out to distribution partners this week. We are also tapping it at the BARn this weekend. Let us know when you get to tell a friend the story behind the beer.
