As with a lot of specialty beers brewed at Buffalo Brewing Company Paul Stelmach’s India Brown Ale began its life as a homebrewed beer.  Paul brought a sample of his beer to Buffalo head brewer Dave Johnson who thought the malt profile was perfect, but the hops needed a little tweaking.

So after experimenting a bit, Buffalo now has on an IBA that Paul describes as such:

“This India Brown Ale is a creamy hopped up brown ale with lots of Caramel and Chocolate flavor and is very sessionable. The ABV is 6% with 50 IBUs. It was bittered with CTZ hops but the flavor and aroma came from Cascade and Amarillo and then it was dry hopped with Amarillo and CTZ to balance out the citrus aroma of the Amarillo hops.”

Paul thinks that this beer may go great with a Buffalo burger. Seems like a perfect excuse to visit Buffalo Brewing.

Big props to Beernews.org for pointing this one out.

Bell’s Brewery out of Michigan is set to release a brand new Double IPA called Oracle DIPA.  Now, you may be asking yourself, “Oracle Double Imperial Pale Ale?  That sounds awfully familiar.”  Well, that’s because St. Louis’ own Buffalo Brewing Company came up with a Imperial IPA also named Oracle way back in March of this year.

As Adam from Beernews wonderfully points out, according to The Babble Belt’s Joris Pattyn, Larry Bell seems very quick to protect what he views as the encroachment on his name and his brewery.

So you have to wonder how Larry Bell could miss this glaring mistake?  Surely he wouldn’t want to look hypocritical?

This past January, the Garage Brewers Society held a Chili and Homebrew Competition and Bryan Clauser won Best of Show with his hopped-up American Amber.  As part of the Best of Show win,  Dave Johnson took Bryan’s recipe and scaled it up to brew at  Buffalo Brewing Company.

The beer is now available to enjoy over at BBC and to celebrate the GBS is having a release party at Buffalo Brewing Company tonight, Thursday April 23rd from 7 – 9. Make sure to stop by and congratulate Bryan for his accomplishment.

Back in September I reported that Sam Huff’s award winning Vanilla Brown Ale was being brewed at Buffalo Brewing Company in conjunction with Bottom’s Up Brewhouse’s contest to have a homebrewing beer brewed professionally.  While it’s been available at Buffalo for a few weeks, it looks like it’ll finally be available at Bottom’s Up.

To celebrate the occasion, Bottom’s Up is thorwing a little party on Thursday, December 18th starting at 7PM. Here’s a map to Bottom’s Up.  Make sure to stop by and congratulate Sam for his accomplishment.

If you’re looking to recuperate from stuffing your face on Thanksgiving or from fighting people to try and get that last Dancing Fun-Time Elmo, maybe you deserve a sort of cold one.  On Friday afternoon at Buffalo Brewing Company, head brewer Dave Johnson will be cracking open a delicious cask of Buffalo Rye IPA.

According to Dave, the cask has been “triple hopped” with CTZ, Simcoe, and Cascade.  This is probably one of the best beers being made in St. Louis right now, so this is an excellent opportunity to try it in a very special way.

Dave Johnson emailed me late last week and filled me in on a few new beers we’ll be seeing at Buffalo Brewing Company in the next couple of months. The first new ones we should be seeing are Oktoberfest Lager and a Belgian Pale Ale which Dave describes as “very tasty.”

Also in the mix is a DunkelRye. Dave was planning on brewing a Dunkel and there was a suggestion made of adding some Rye. Dave thought that was an awesome idea and the DunkelRye was born. That was brewed just this past Sunday, so it’ll be a little while until we see it. But that sounds pretty exciting.

If you have any idea for beer styles that you would like to see at Buffalo, feel free to leave them in the comments.  One of the things Dave loves so much about Buffalo is that it affords him the chance to really have fun and brew different things that can break up the monotony of brewing the same thing day in and day out.

Ah yes, the yearly “Best of” list from the Riverfront Times. If you were reading STL hops way back last year, you may remember I had a few gripes with last year’s lists. So how does the RFT do this year? (And yes, I’m choosing to ignore the people’s choice stuff.)

Best Beer Selection in a Restaurant
The Shaved Duck

Where do you find the beer list in most St. Louis restaurants? On the last page of the wine list – if you’re lucky. More often than not, it exists only in your server’s brain. It’s not too tough, after all, to commit to memory a “selection” of Bud, Bud Light and Bud Select. A server might try to memorize the beer list at the Shaved Duck. A photographic memory would help. The new gastropub in Tower Grove East stocks a terrific selection of beers. It’s not the longest in town, but it’s curated with great care. American craft beers are featured, from local folks like Schlafly and O’Fallon to industry “giants” like Bell’s, New Belgium and Anchor Steam to lesser-known but not lesser lights like Charleville and North Coast. There are only four taps, but the restaurant rotates in new brews with some regularity – all the more reason to return again and again.

Be still my heart. This is a category I suggested last year and low and behold and to see it actually in print brings a tear to my eye. As for the selection? Brilliant. I mean, let’s be honest, if we had seen The Stable, Erato on Main, Mangia Italiano or the Rotten Apple as the winner, would we have been any less happy? We’ve become very fortunate in the past year to see so many new restaurants pop up that really put an emphasis on great beer. I’m glad to see the RFT recognize that. continue reading…