If you guys don’t know Andy Snead by now, well then you obviously have never bought beer at the Galleria Whole Foods. Andy is a good dude that is always willing to stand there and talk beer with you for a few minutes. He also is one of the few people selling some aged beer in St. Louis, you just need to nicely ask him what he has in the back!
Well, Andy and the Whole Foods Crew are trying to raise money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society by participating in the Express Scripts Gateway Getaway Ride in Columbia Missouri on September 6th and 7th. This is a great cause and Andy is a great guy, so let’s see if we can get him to his goal of $500! Donations can be made HERE.
This package was originally supposed to arrive on Friday, but unfortunately the FedEx guy showed up before my lunch time and I wasn’t able to be home to accepted the package. So my poor beer had to sit in a hot truck all day on Friday and then in a hot warehouse overnight. Sure one more day of heat probably doesn’t mean much after sitting in a truck coming all the way from California, but it still hurts a bit. As for the beer, we drank the Pliny and the Blind Pig the night they arrived. Both lived up to their reputation and were fantastic beers. What did you enjoy this weekend?
Sorry for the delay on this, you can blame AB and InBev, but I’m happy to announce that the winner of the autographed copy of Charles Bamforth’s Grape vs Grain is Eric Burnley!
Once again, if you didn’t win, don’t be too upset, I’ve got some more awesome stuff to give away in the near future. So keep your eyes open for more prizes.
Charles Bamforth, the chairman of the department of food science and technology at University of California, Davis as well as Anheuser-Busch Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences, recently put out a book called “Grape vs Grain.” The description from the publisher’s website:
Why is wine considered more sophisticated even though the production of beer is much more technologically complex? Why is wine touted for its health benefits when beer has more nutritive value? Why does wine conjure up images of staid dinner parties while beer denotes screaming young partiers? Charles Bamforth explores several paradoxes involving these beverages, paying special attention to the culture surrounding each. He argues that beer can be just as grown-up and worldly as wine and be part of a healthy, mature lifestyle. Both beer and wine have histories spanning thousands of years. This is the first book to compare them from the perspectives of history, technology, nature of the market for each, quality attributes, types and styles, and the effect that they have on human health and nutrition.
If learning more about the battle between wine and beer is up your alley, then send and email with the subject of “Grape vs Grain” to contest@stlhops.com. I’ll choose the random winner from the entries on Monday at 9AM.
I would have liked to get these photos up on Wednesday, but there was no way that was happening after the night we had. I didn’t end up getting home until 11:30PM and 6:00AM was awfully early yesterday morning. But I did remember to pull the photos off the camera this morning and so I thought I’d share them with everyone who couldn’t attend.
First of all, I want to thank Doug and Mike Mattingly for letting us invade their restaurant, they provided a great place for us to hang out, eat some pizza and drink some great beer. If you haven’t been out to Mattingly’s yet, get the Corsica pizza, it’s just awesome. Thanks also to Drew for providing a sampling of some of his awesome homebrew, it just gets us all the more excited when he’s finally able to get brewing some of his own beer.
And finally, thank you to everyone who showed up for this event. We’ll have one of these again soon, promise.
Just a reminder, in case you forgot, the first STL Hops Meet-Up is tonight at Mattingly Brewing Company (3000 S. Jefferson [map it]) at 6:30PM. Here’s the original post about the event:
I plan on buying the pizza, you guys are on the hook for your own beer. After we get done with eating, drinking and talking we’ll probably move upstairs to Mattingly’s private room to do some beer sampling. So this is your chance to bring some homebrew or maybe some beer you’ve been sitting on waiting for a special day, etc. Mattingly’s new head brewer, Drew Huerter, will also be bringing some beer for you to sample so you can see what’s in store for Mattingly.
Mattingly is being extremely generous opening their doors up and even allowing us to bring some of our own beer. So I’m asking for just three things: first, buy a lot of beer on Tuesday night (and please be responsible about it, I’ll have a DD and so should you). Second, if you could drop me an email or even leave a comment for this post if you’re attending to give me a good idea of how many people are planning to attend it helps Mattingly get idea of how much space and help will be needed. Third, don’t make this your only visit to Mattingly. They’re opening their place up for us, we need to show the love back.
I’m pretty excited about tonight’s event, I hope everyone else is too!
This video is kind of old and really has nothing to do with St. Louis (except you can get delicious Allagash products right across the river) but I thought it was pretty cool:
I was wondering if you knew of anybody in the St. Louis area that carried Tennants? Lukas Liquors only has it in 1/2 barrel quantities and I haven’t found anybody else that has it. I figured that you are the man that would know where I can turn. Thanks for any info!
Readers of STL Hops probably have figured out by now that I’m pretty obsessed with Three Floyds Brewing out of Munster, IN. If you’ve ever had some of their beers you’ll quickly realize why my obsession took root. Because of my sickness, I decided to attend Dark Lord Day 2008. If you’re unaware of what Dark Lord Day is, once a year Three Floyds brews a Russian Imperial Stout named Dark Lord and it’s only sold on Dark Lord Day. People (like me) travel from miles around to buy the beer.
But what makes the event so much fun is that it’s a huge gather of beer nerds that get together to not only buy the beer, but bring beer to taste and trade. You can’t swing a dead cat without having someone offer you something from around the country to taste that you’ve never had before.
This is the front of the line, people were mingling, sharing some beer and trying to stay warm. It was about a balmy 45 degrees on Saturday morning.
Are you the procrastinating type? Were you planning on waiting until the last minute to buy your tickets to the St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival? Well today is your lucky day, I’m giving away two passes to the Saturday Afternoon session of the Heritage Festival. This $60 value will allow you to partake in one of the best beer festivals in the area. All you need to do is email contest@stlhops.com with your favorite St. Louis brewery and your favorite beer from said brewery.
I want to thank Dan Kopman from Schlafly Beers and Jay Cunningham from Anheuser-Busch for providing the tickets to this event. This contest will end on May 5th at 9AM CDT when I will pick a winner at random. 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!
If you guys don’t know Andy Snead by now, well then you obviously have never bought beer at the Galleria Whole Foods. Andy is a good dude that is always willing to stand there and talk beer with you for a few minutes. He also is one of the few people selling some aged beer in St. Louis, you just need to nicely ask him what he has in the back!
Are you the procrastinating type? Were you planning on waiting until the last minute to buy your tickets to the 
