Usually when you hear the words “beer” and contest” the rules deal mainly with how much beer a person has to drink. So when Sam brought this contest at Bottom’s Up Brewhouse to my attention I was at first skeptical, but after quickly reading the rules I quickly grew intrigued:

You pay $5 to enter
You get 2 samples for each round
They might be #1 Bud, #2 Miller, (for example) it’s a blind tasting, you will be told what beer is served, but YOU have to pick which is which.
It’s a double elimination tournament
Prizes will be awarded each week

According to Dave Johnson, it turns out that O’Fallon Brewery founder, Tony Caradona, had come up with this idea almost 20 years ago when he owned a bar in Maryville, Illinois. Tony was talking to the owner of Bottom’s Up and he loved the idea. If there is any luck, people will take this as seriously as they did 20 years ago at Tony’s bar. Dave suggested the idea of teams from other bars competing against each other in a league. Which in my opinion is just a brilliant idea. I know I’ll be trying to make my way out to O’Fallon soon to try my hand at tasting beers.

Larry Chase is the Worthouse/Brewery Manager for , a new local Brewpub located in Creve Coeur. Larry was kind enough to answer some of my questions about how they brew their beer, how the ferment it and what some of his favorite styles are. (You can read my initial thoughts of GCFB here.)

STL Hops: How many styles does GC produce in a year?
Larry Chase: GC serves 4 regular house beers: Northern Light Lager (pale lager), Brother Benedict’s Bock (bock), Duke of Wellington IPA (IPA), and Broad Axe Stout (dry Irish stout). We also brew 6 seasonal beers. The current line-up includes Burning Barn Irish Red Ale, Ostara’s Spring Ale, Wag’s Wheat (Hefeweizen), Belgian White Ale, Oktoberfest, and McK’s Scottish Ale. All locations have one 350 gal batch of the seasonal to serve.

STL Hops: How much room for experimentation do the brewers have?
LC: Our head brewers experiment with recipe improvement through process controls and lab testing. Certain seasonal beers are sometimes tweaked on a year to year basis to improve flavor. Experimentation for developing new beers is limited given that the current seasonal rotation is set in place.

STL Hops: Can you quickly explain how the Fermentus Interruptus process works?
LC: Granite City’s business model for beer production is designed for flavor consistency and attractive financial leverage across a multi-unit restaurant concept. We are a restaurant with a microbrewery. A centralized brewery for wort production gives us the opportunity to consistently control the flavor inputs of the brewing cycle. We also remove from the restaurants both the capital cost of brewing equipment and the square footage cost of a manufacturing facility.

We then ship the wort in a customized tank truck to each location. After off-loading into fermenters we pitch yeast and finish the production cycle through fermentation, maturation, and filtering.

Shipping wort instead of finished beer allows us to avoid the complex legal hurdles of shipping alcohol across state lines.

STL Hops: How does the wort arrive at the stores?
LC: The wort is shipped in a straight tanker truck. Our trucks have a series of 4 or 6 individual pods (all insulated) at 400 gal each. This set-up lets us ship multiple styles of beer to multiple locations in one trip. We use hoses and a pump at each restaurant to transfer the beer from the truck into the fermenters.

STL Hops: How do you avoid problems like contamination?
LC: We follow standard cleaning, sanitizing, and testing procedures like all breweries. We simply pay attention to the extra step of wort shipping. The wort is chilled to 40oF and stored in a 37oF cooler prior to shipment. Like all breweries we have the constant challenge of maintaining clean and sanitary conditions.

We have a lab at the central worthouse for on-going sample testing.

Every brewery manager is trained and follows a set of SOP’s for the brewery operations at each restaurant. Our brewery field manager, trained in brewing science, oversees the work of all brewery managers.

STL Hops: How do you deal with things like aging with the limited capacity at each store?
LC: We serve 2 ales and 2 lagers as part of our regular beer line-up. We have enough tank space (5 fermenters, 8 cellar vessels) to ensure our required maturation time for each of the beers. Through our volume and usage reporting system we are able to schedule deliveries to ensure each location has wort on a just-in-time basis.

Running out tends to be only an issue when we experience mechanical failures with equipment at the restaurants. That’s no different from any other brewpub.

We only serve one batch of each seasonal. This increases the demand and the urgency for customers to come try the beer before it is gone.

STL Hops: What’s your favorite style of beer right now?
LC: I lean towards hop flavored and bitter beers. The bigger winter seasonal beers are always fun to drink during this colder time of year.

Thank you again Larry for providing STL Hops readers with a little more information on how your process works.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m a bit too hard on restaurants. Though I’m guilty of it as well, I guess I’m just tired of hearing the “Well, it’s St. Louis” excuse. Maybe it’s because they’re not really in St. Louis is what sets Erato on Main apart. Erato in Edwardsville goes a long way to prove that just because they’re in the St. Louis area doesn’t mean we have to be subjected to the same old beer choices.

My biggest complaint has always been about the level of effort put into the beer selections in a restaurant. Too often it seems like the selections are chosen by the beer reps who don’t have any interest in pairing the beer with the food, but selling the most popular beers.

But this menu is obviously very deliberate and also offers something for everyone. From West Coast IPAs to Belgian sours, there is something that can compliment every dish from Chef Kevin Willmann’s ever changing menu. Chef Willmann said that all the credit goes to his manager, Shawn Schleich, for putting together this selection. Hats off to him, because this is a truly a selection to be proud of.

I can’t urge you enough to take a trip out to Edwardsville, Illinois to visit Erato on Main. I’ve been twice in the past three weeks and I’m sure I’ll be there again soon. I hope to see you there.

“Welcome to GC!” the friendly hostess said as I walked into the Granite City Food and Brewery located on Olive in Creve Coeur. “GC?” I thought to myself. But it soon became clear that this was an attempt to not confuse us locals with the other GC, Granite City, Illinois, which this new GC has nothing to do with.

Created at the end of the microbeer bubble, Granite City Food and Brewery started in St. Cloud, Minnesota and has gradually expanded its presence across the Midwest. The more interesting thing about GC is that they don’t actually do any brewing on-site at the satellite locations, it’s all done at a central brewhouse and then the cooled wort is shipped to each location where it is infused with yeast and fermentation is the allowed to occur. It’s a patented process they call Fermentus Interruptus.

So how’s the beer? Unfortunately I only had the chance to try one, the IPA. When the server came over to ask what I thought about it, I answered, “It’s ok.” My dining companion started sheepishly laughing as this was not the answer the server was looking for. But I was just being honest. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it’s wasn’t great either. It had a nice hop aroma and a subtle bitterness. It’ll be very palatable to those that have never had an IPA before. But for some of us, it may be a bit lacking.

GC locally carries four beers, Pale Lager, Dopplebock, IPA and an Traditional Stout. The offer a five pull sampler which includes the four listed above and a mixture of the dopple and the lager as the fifth sample. I was very impressed with the beer menus as they offer up a great amount of detail about the beer. From the grain bill and hop selections to the OG and ABV range. It provides plenty of information for those who may know nothing about beer to us beer nerds that really enjoy knowing what the OG of a beer is. The only other thing I’d love to see included would be the addition of knowing how many IBUs are in the beer. I think if they explained IBUs to their customers it would help the customers learn what they like and what to avoid.

Overall it was a pleasant experience and I know I’ll be back to try their full sampling. But I’ll be honest when I say I’m a bit concerned about the future of the restaurant. Let’s not kid ourselves, St. Louis is an AB drinking town. While I think that St. Louisans will go to a brewpub on occasion for the novelty factor, I think for the most part they’re not interested in going to a place where they can’t get their Budweiser. Then again, there are plenty of brewpubs in the area that prove me wrong, I hope GC can do the same.

Correction, it was a Bock and not a Dopplebock as I mentioned before. Hazy memory.

The Boathouse in Forest Park is putting on a little Mardi Gras celebration, Schlafly Style. Here’s the info I received:

Granite City Brewery Opens on January 15

Larry Chase, the Brewery manager for Granite City Food and Brewery, informed me that their newest location, which is in Creve Couer, will be opening tomorrow. GCFB has a very unusual method of brewing beer, which Bill Burge touched briefly on a while back. Larry has kindly accepted an offer for a interview in the near future, so if you have anything you’d like me to ask him feel free to leave a comment or post it in the forums.

Scottish Arms Owner Opening New Restaurant

Thanks to Jim for point this one out to me from Sauce’s Scoop. Alistair Nisbet, the owner of the Scottish Arms, will be opening a new restaurant in the Tower Grove area named The Shaved Duck. Besides having what sounds like the most delicious name ever, the Shaved Duck will feature only American craft beers. It will be interesting to see what kind of list they put together, we’ll find out when the restaurant opens in March.

Buffalo Brewing Company Updates

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about the newest brewpub entering the St. Louis area, the Buffalo Brewing Company. Dave from O’Fallon Brewery has informed us that he’ll be brewing part time for the new brewery and that 2-4 beer wills be on tap when the pub opens in a couple of weeks. A total of 6 beers will be on draught when they get fully up and operational, 4 flagships and 2 seasonals. From Dave, “The proposed beers to start are, Am. Brown Ale, Chili beer, Amber Ale, Golden Ale, Rye IPA, and Bavarian Hefeweisen.”

Been a very busy week around here at STL Hops. Plenty of really interesting developments, I’ve got a lot planned for next week as well, so stay tuned. On to the Round-Up:

Stuff from around the web

• Ian alerted all of us to the opening of a second Tin Can Tavern location. If you didn’t see it, here’s my review of the original.
• Anheuser-Busch is shipping more beer to wholesalers.
• Jeannette is ready for Cabin Fever!
• Joe Bonwich visits the Newstead Tower Public House.
• Year of Beer blog also recently had the Smoked Porter from Schlafly.

Beer Releases and News

• Andrew from Bon Vivant Wines informs me to some new beers he has in his stock:
  • Brasserie Dupont - Avec Les Bon Voeux
  • Avery Brewing Company - The Czar
• Paul at The Wine and Cheese Place in Clayton alerts me to some new beers he has in stock:
  • Anheuser Busch - Wild Blue Blueberry Lager
  • Anheuser Busch - Shock Top Belgian White

Here’s a list of upcoming beer events:

• Jan 16 - O’Fallon Beer Dinner at Newstead Tower Pub
• Jan 19 - Cabin Fever: Schlafly Winter Beer Festival
• Jan 19 - Beer Tasting at Rendezvous Cafe & Wine Bar
• Feb 29 - New Belgium Beer Dinner at Whole Foods

As always, if you’re interested in promoting an event or a new beer you’ve seen, feel free to drop me a line at mike@stlhops.com.

On Tuesday I wrote about some of the issues I’ve had with Growlers Pub as of recent but didn’t really offer up any solutions to the problem. Well, I’m not much of a fan of criticism without offering up any kind of ideas or solutions to resolve the issues. So today, I’ll be supplying my thoughts on what could turn Growlers around.

Let’s lay some things on the table first before I start this. Growlers doesn’t really need my help. There is hardly a night I don’t go into the Sunset Hills locations that it isn’t full. They’re making plenty of money and people seem to keep coming back. I’ve even heard rumblings that they’re looking at opening two new locations. So I’m sure everything I’m about to say will fall on deaf ears. But I’m hoping that someone does really care and will take some of my ideas to heart.

Hire someone that would function as a beer sommelier for both of your restaurants. If Growlers is truly committed to beer as they claim to be then they should have someone that oversees their selection. They need to have someone that can educate both the wait staff and the customers on beer styles and food pairings. You need someone that is also watching the quality of the beer served; checking temperatures of the beer served and draught lines for cleanliness (I’ve had a few contaminated draught beers on occasion.)

I could see this person also holding beer classes similar to what Cicero’s does. Educating people about beer and teaching them there is more than just that pale yellow stuff. Putting someone in place that really loves beer, someone that is actually passionate about it, you’ll often find that passion rubs off on people and they’ll start getting excited too. Once you get people excited about drinking beer you’re relying less on selling your Bud and Bud Light and can start selling more expensive craft beer that caries a higher profit margin.

Read the rest…

schlafly.jpg”>Had a chance to try a style from Schlafly I’ve never had from them before last night, the Smoked Porter. I was very impressed with the beer, it has a more subtle smoked flavor than a lot of other smoked beers that I had.

This beer is very well balanced and that leads to it being very drinkable. I think you’ll find that you could drink a few of these without the smoke causing too much palate fatigue. Head on down there and give it a try.

Dave from O’Fallon let’s me know they’re kicking off the re-release of Goat’s Breath with an event that almost sounds like it requires a Toga:

Join us this Thursday, January 10th from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at Rumple’s Pub (221 North Main Street in St. Charles) for the OFFICIAL kick-off of our re-introduction of Goat’s Breath Bock. Enjoy great beer and food, visit with the brewers and meet our mascot, “Cooter,” the goat! (For real!)

If you haven’t tried it, Goat’s Breath Bock is a malty clean beer that you almost wouldn’t expect is an ale. So not only do you get a chance to try it, but you get to hang with Cooter the Goat. Sounds like a hell of a time.