About a year ago I was messing around with what was then my new camera and I thought about taking a photos of all of the bottle caps I had saved up over an undetermined amount of time.  That photo sort of became the basis for the new header image above.

While I enjoyed the concept of that photo, I was never quite happy with the overall look of the image.  It wasn’t as sharp as I would have liked, I didn’t enjoy the white background, there were too many bottle caps from the same brewery right next to each other, etc., etc.  So, after messing around with some stuff today, I finally got it closer to what I’ve always wanted.

I thought that other people might want to use it as a wallpaper, so I’ve included it here.  Let me know what you think.

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I know it’s taken me a while to get this up, but better late than never, right? Well, the second annual St. Louis Craft Beer Week is behind us and it sounds like we had another great success. Every event I attended had a great turnout and people were generally excited about everything going on.

The folks at the St. Louis Microfest tell me that they also had a huge turnout this year and were able to raise even more money for the Lift for Life Gym, so that’s also some fantastic news.

We will be putting this event on again next year, and again the event will coincide with the 2011 Microfest in Forest Park. So, look out for that. In the meantime here is a collage of photos compiled from the events I attended.

Thanks again to everyone who helped, participated and attended these events.

I don’t want to keep harping on these events as I think you guys may get tired of hearing about them, but I thought you may want to know a few extra details about the St. Louis Craft Beer Week events taking place tonight.

St. Louis Craft Beer Tweetup
Don’t have a Twitter account? No problem. Come on out to have some beers and meet some awesome people who love craft beer as much as you do. I’ve also been told that there will be some free snacks courtesy of Go! Magazine.

If you haven’t been yet, this is a great excuse to visit Bridge. Don’t be shy, just come on out.

IPA Night at The Good Pie
Right now this is the line up of IPAs that will be on draught:

• Bear Republic Racer 5
• New Belgium Ranger IPA
• HeBrew Bittersweet Lennys R.I.P.A
• Founders Centennial IPA
• Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor
• Odell IPA
• Southern Tier Iniquity
• New Holland Mad Hatter
• Schlafly American IPA

It also sounds like one of these beers (not sure which yet) will be run through a Randall of Amarillo and Simcoe hops.  There will be a menu designed around IPAs and a gift certificate provided to the person who brings the biggest IPA.  I don’t know how they’re quantifying “biggest” so your guess is as good as mine.

Grand Teton Beer & Cheese Event
Got a list of beers that will be available from Grand Teton tonight at Wine and Cheese Place. Chuck Nowicki, Sales and Marketing Director of Grand Teton, will be on hand to talk about and taste their reserve series:

• Grand Teton Pursuit of Hoppiness
• Grand Teton Sheepeater Scotch Ale
• Grand Teton Bitch Creek Double ESB
• Grand Teton Howling Wolf Weizenbock
• Grand Teton Lost Continent IPA

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Also, I guess this is mostly for my parents, over the weekend I had a chance to talk about St. Louis Craft Beer Week and STL Hops on KMOX. Actually I had a chance to talk about both, not once, but twice this weekend. You’re welcome to give them a listen. Hope to see everyone tonight.

Ahh, the Schlafly Repeal of Prohibition Festival, how I love you so.

It’s always nice being able to sample a number of beers from breweries that aren’t currently available in St. Louis, it’s especially nice when they’re from a great brewing state like Michigan. All in all, you couldn’t have asked for better weather or a better event. There is a reason this is one of my favorite festivals in St. Louis and I’m already looking forward to next year.

Thanks to everyone at Schlafly for putting on such a great event.  Also, it seemed like the out of state beer lasted almost the entire festival, so good planning on that as well.

Here are some photos for those of you that couldn’t attend.

Over 11000 votes and we now have a winner for the STL Hops St. Louis Beer Challenge. Ladies and gentlemen, this year’s winner is the Schlafly’s Dry-Hopped APA.

It was a hard-fought final match versus the Buffalo Brewing Rye IPA, with a 66.2% to 33.8% final match-up. Earlier in the week, the Rye IPA took a large lead in the poll, but Schlafly fans came around and fought their way back to make this a very impressive win.

I hope everyone had a lot of fun with this and didn’t take it too seriously. Congrats to all of the contestants and thanks again for giving us some great beer in St. Louis.

After looking over the list of what will be available at this year’s Repeal of Prohibition festival, my guess is that it will sell out. So if you’re looking for a chance to pick up some tickets to this wonderful outdoor event well then this may be your best shot.

Thanks to Dan Kopman from Schlafly, I have two tickets to give away for the 2010 Repeal of Prohibition.

We’ll make this an easy contest, just email contest@stlhops.com with Cabin Fever Repeal of Prohibition (as you can see, I originally put Cabin in instead of Repeal, so if you entered at Cabin, you’re still good) as the subject. I’ll pick one winner Thursday, April 8th at 9AM. A couple of quick notes:

• If you’ve won something from STL Hops in the past 6 months, please be cool and let someone else enter.
• You must be 21 or older to enter.
• No multiple entries.

If you don’t win this one, don’t worry I will be holding more contests like this in the future, so you’ll have another chance then. Good luck!

So here we are, we’re at the STL Hops St. Louis Beer Challenge Final Four. We have three favorites versus an underdog that has fought it’s way into the final four. This second to final round features O’Fallon’s 5 Day IPA going up against Buffalo’s Rye IPA. The other final match provides last year’s winner the Schlafly’s Dry Hopped APA against the Schlafly Coffee Stout.

Could we see O’Fallon’s 5 Day IPA take on Schlafly’s APA for a battle of the hops? Perhaps the underdog Buffalo will power through another round and make it’s way into the Championship match up? Well, we’ll find out on Monday who will be one match away from the STL Hops St. Louis Beer Challenge Championship. Get voting!

(If you can’t see the poll below, click on this link to visit the website hosting it.)