Were you aware that St. Louis Brewery brews over 40 different styles of beer? That’s a hell of a lot of styles, in fact I’d guess that Schlafly is one of the few breweries in the nation that tackles that many different styles in a single year. Why do I bring this up? Well, the 2008 Schlafly Hop in the City is upon us again and with it brings the opportunity to taste every single style of beer Schlafly produces.

This year’s festival not only offers live music and food, but also this year’s special festival beer Kellerbier, and unfiltered, cloudy lager. Here are the details for Hop in the City, direct from Schlafly’s website:

HOP IN THE CITY 2008
Saturday, September 13 - Noon-5:00 p.m.
The Schlafly Tap Room

TICKETS $30 adv/$35 doe/$25 adv for SIP Club Members (see Schlafly Website for Info).
ONLINE ticket sales available HERE until Monday, September 8th.

Well, it’s been a long time since the original post detailing Bear Republic’s arrival to the St. Louis area, but the day has finally arrived. Starting tonight, you should hopefully be able to find Bear Republic in some of your favorite beer stores around the St. Louis area. Bill from Missouri Beverage has confirmed that Bear Republic should be arriving today at 2PM and hopefully be on some of the store shelves later this evening. There is a possibility we don’t start seeing it until Saturday or even not until Monday. But what’s a few more days at this point?

Here’s a list of beers scheduled to arrive today:

• Bear Republic Red Rocket
• Bear Republic Racer 5
• Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
• Bear Republic Pete Brown
• Bear Republic Special XPB
• ear Republic Big Black Bear

If you’re looking at wanting to start judging beers or if you just want to have a greater understanding of the process of making and tasting beer, the Beer Judge Certification Program offers a great amount of information on the art of brewing. The St. Louis Brews homebrewing club will be offering a class to prepare you for the BJCP exam next January. If you have any questions about the classes, please contact Bob Beckmann “bbeckmann@missourienterprise.org” 314-608-7590, or Dan Stauder “president@sltbrews.org” 314-517-1121. Here’s the information about the classes:

BJCP Exam Class - This class is for anyone who is interested in studying and preparing for the BJCP exam. The class is open to anyone of any skill level (member of the Brews or not), as long as you have an interest in beer and would like to take the exam.

The class is taught by the students. As a student, you will be assigned a beer topic or two which you will research and present to the rest of the class. This will be something like “hops” or “mashing” or “recipe development”, etc.

Each student will also be assigned one or two beer styles. Again, the student will need to research that style in depth and present the information to the rest of the class. Included in this presentation will be samples of classic commercial examples which the class will taste and comment on.

More…If you take this class, it is assumed that you will be present to “teach” your topics, and it is assumed that you will take the exam.

Each class meeting will be supervised by someone who is an experienced brewer with substantial knowledge in the areas of discussion and who has already passed the BJCP exam. Read the rest…

Tags: beer, beer styles, bjcp, Homebrewing, judging, tap room

After constantly saying, “I really need to make my way down there.” Irene and I finally had the chance to visit Buffalo Brewing a couple of weeks ago, so I though I’d share some of my thoughts and some photos.

Buffalo Brewing Co.
3100 Olive St. (Map It)
St. Louis, MO 63103
314-534-BEER (534-2337)

Beers:

Obviously Buffalo Brewing’s biggest draw is the fact that they provide hand-crafted fresh micro-brewed beer on premises. Their current line-up is Buffalo Gold (a pale-colored ale), Chili Beer, Buffalo Drool (a brown ale), Buffalo Red, Hefeweizen and a Rye IPA. Since the Gold was currently out, I decided to go with a sampler line-up of the five remaining beers. I’m happy to say that they were all clean-well made beers.

Judging by the menu, the Chili beers looks to be the same base recipe as the Buffalo Gold but with chili added to the beer after primary fermentation. I don’t have much experience with chili beers, but I was pleasantly surprised by the subtle chili flavor. You would just catch a hit of the heat in the back of your tongue, but it was never overpowering. It always left you wanting more.

The Drool and the Red were both solid session beers, perfect for someone who’s looking to either bring someone into the craft beer fold or for the times you want to have 2 or 3 pints without having to worry about getting fall-down drunk. The stand out beer of the evening for me was the Rye IPA. It had a wonderful floral aroma and the hops matched well with the spiciness of the rye malt.

If I had one qualm with the beer it’s with the “hefeweizen.” True hefes feature a spicy clove and banana aroma which this beer had neither of. This is just another American wheat beer. There isn’t anything wrong with it, but it’s not a hefe. (And Buffalo, you’re not the only one guilty of this, you’re just the first for me to nitpick on this detail***.)

Food:

One of the things I couldn’t quite get over when reading through the menu was just how inexpensive things were. Irene and I had two beers, a five beer sampler, an appetizer and also two entrees and I don’t think we dropped more than 35 bucks. That’s a nice little respite over some of the prices we’ve been paying for food and beer recently. While the menu offers a lot of typical bar fare they also offer a lot of buffalo based choices if you’re looking for the taste of beef without all of the fat.

Intangibles:

Buffalo Brewing offers a large dining room with a western motif. One issue we noticed with the indoor dining was that because of the high ceilings it can get a bit noisy at times. Buffalo also offers a nice outdoor covered patio if eating alfresco is your thing. They also have a very large bar if you’re looking to just belly up and have a few beers.

One last quick note, I stopped by Buffalo last Wednesday for a beer and was disappointed to find out that a few beers were out and were temporarily replaced with a few O’Fallon beers. Hopefully the next time I show up I’ll be able to have another pint of that tasty Rye IPA.

*** So according to Dave Johnson, he used a true German hefe yeast, the banana and clove just didn’t come through.  He’s going to try using a different yeast next time.

I was over at the Rock Hill Wine and Cheese Place on Friday and was pleasantly surprised to see a whole new expanded beer selection now available. I emailed Paul to find out the details and he informed me that they added about 150 beers at Rock Hill to bring the total up to around 460. Not too shabby for a friendly neighborhood wine store. (Paul also let me know Clayton W&C is up to 720 beers in stock!)

Andy Snead, the Beer Specialist for the Brentwood Whole Foods, informs me that Anderson Valley Brewing Company is in the process of registering with Missouri Beverage (MOBev) for the state of Missouri.  If everything goes well, we should start seeing Anderson Valley Brewing on the shelves by the end of July.  Word is that we’ll be seeing the ESB, IPA, Pale Ale, Oatmeal Stout, Brother David, along with the Summer seasonal.

Here’s to looking forward to July.

For a long time the St. Louis area has had to endure a world without draught Bell’s beer.  It looks like out metro-wide nightmare is over.  Dave from Beer, Wine and Whiskey is reporting that Bell’s Oberon has been sighted at the Central West End location of Llywellyn’s Pub.  While Oberon may not be my favorite beer in the world, does this mean that beers such as Two Hearted (which may be one of my favorite beers in the world) will be far behind?  Let’s hope not.

You may remember me mentioning The Stable some time ago, well it looks like they’re very close to opening and Kelly Schmickle has a sneak preview of the new restaurant/brewery/distillery up. Looks like they’ll be specializing in pizza and beer (always a great combo.)

Some of the other highlights include that they’ll be serving a Helles-style beer as well as a Marzen to start and will be featuring 16(!) taps of Belgian and “big bad American microbrews.” (Have I ever mentioned that I hate the word “microbrew” or “microbeer”?)  I look forward at what’s to come and we’ll see what these brewers have up their sleeve.

Schlafly brewers get a very special present from Schlafly when they get married, they get to brew a wedding beer.  Brennan Greene celebrated his wedding over the weekend to his lovely fiance Natasha.  In celebration of this even Brennan designed a India Brown Ale.  It was in his hopes that the beer would pair the nuttiness of a brown ale with the floral bitterness of an IPA.  In my opinion, I think he really succeeded.

It’s a 5.5% beer (so a bit low for a true IPA) but the brown ale really works well with the bitterness and makes for a delicious session beer.  I had 5 or 6 glasses of this on Friday night alone.  Stop in at the Schlafly Tap Room and get this beer as soon as you can (I think they even have a few casks of it as well!) because when it’s gone, it’s gone.

As gross as this may sound, I’m literally salivating just hearing about this news.  I don’t know why, but as soon as I start just thinking about sour beers I begin salivating like crazy.  But anyway, one of the best breweries in America with one of the worst names is coming to St. Louis.  Jolly Pumpkin out of Dexter, Michigan is now available at Starr’s Market.

Ben from Starr’s says they’ve received Mam Bier, Calabaza Blanca, ES Bam, La Roja, and Oro de Calabaza.  If you haven’t figured out, I’m so extremely stoked about this.