A few weeks ago, you may remember me mentioning O’Fallon was working on a new seasonal beer, a Cocoa Cream Stout. Well, O’Fallon head brewer Brian Owens reports in the STL Hops forums today that the beer is now available at Cicero’s for tonight’s beer school. Brian describes the beer as such:

This is a chewy milk stout using lactose and malto-dextrin with 50lbs of lowfat cocoa tossed into the kettle of each batch. Coffee and chocolate notes throughout.

With this cold front moving through tonight, it looks like we may finally have some wonderful fall weather that can match up to tonight’s chilly temperatures.

Dave Johnson emailed me late last night to let me in on some very exciting news, the brewers at O’Fallon Brewery have gotten the go ahead to brew a new seasonal beer. Always interested in brewing a stout, they decided that with cool weather quickly approaching they decided to go with a beer that will provide a winter warmer, a Cocoa Cream Stout. The beer will initially be a draught only product, but hopefully if there is enough enthusiasm we’ll see a bottled product in the near future.

Dave and Brian Owens put their heads together a came up with a recipe that contains Carafa and flaked barley and instead of piloting the new beer out on their homebrew system, they’re going whole hog and brewing a batch on Thursday. As Dave told me about not piloting it out, “That’s the same way we did the 5 Day and it came out OK.” Yeah, I’d say 5 Day IPA came out a bit better than “OK” as it’s now O’Fallon’s best selling beer. This sounds like a great winter beer and I can’t wait to try it.

This month’s Sauce Magazine features their annual Wine and Beer Guide, detailing some of what’s going on in the world of beer and wine in St. Louis. While one of my favorite features of the guide is a list of St. Louis area breweries and some of the services they offer, they also feature a dynamite interview with Brian Owens, head brewer at O’Fallon Brewery. Here’s a small excerpt:

Owens, however, relishes every minute of the brewing process, especially savoring the early morning. “The best time in my day in any given week is mashing in the first batch of beer during the day. The beginning of the brew. Nobody’s here usually. It’s 5:30 in the morning. It’s quiet. You’ve got the place to yourself. The smell is absolutely wonderful!”

If you want to read the whole article, you’re going to need to seek out a free Sauce Magazine, as this article is only available where Sauce is distributed now available online! If you don’t know where to find a Sauce, use the handy-dandy Zip Code feature here.