You may remember me mentioning talking about La Fleur Misseur a while back, but it looks like the day has finally arrived and La Fleur Misseur is available in St. Louis. This beer is part of New Beligum’s new Lips of Faith series of sour/funky beers. Each couple of months will bring about a new beer for our tasting pleasure. For instance, La Fleur will give way to a Grand Cru by early August.

The catch to these beers is that they’re limited release small batches, which means you’re going to have to seek them out. Luckily for you they’re easy to find at Bailey’s Chocolate Bar and Cicero’s.

(As a completely separate, yet related side note, during my visit to The Flying Saucer in KC this weekend I noticed that La Fleur was available so I immediately ordered up a glass. Imagine my surprise when the beer arrived and after one whiff I knew I had the wrong thing. A manager walked by and noticed a puzzled look on my face and I explained that I didn’t think that they gave me La Fleur because I didn’t smell or taste any Brett. He told me that it wasn’t a sour ale and that it was made with Wormwood. I didn’t feel like fighting it so I just drank what I was given.

This same manager told me that Schlafly had a sour ale.)

I heard about this a few weeks ago and it looks like it’s finally coming to fruition. New Belgium Brewery is going to be doing a new sour beer program where select restaurants will be receiving a few kegs of each beer as it’s seasonally released.  The first of these beers is New Belgium’s La Fleur Misseur.  I’ll let New Belgium Beer Ranger Ryan Beech describe it:

La Fleur was originally concocted for New Belgium’s 15th Birthday Party. But lucky all of us there was such a buzz about the beer by people that drank it at the brewery, we were forced to make more.

La Fleur is an ale with a deep hazy gold color. It opens with flavors of pineapple, clove and honey. Dry-Hopping gives it a nice flower-leaf aroma supported by tones of fresh bread and honey.

Because these are very special beers it means that they’re very limited in their release.  Bailey’s Chocolate Bar and Cicero’s are going to be the nly two locations in St. Louis will be receiving kegs of this beer (and it will be draught beer only).  I’ll make sure to let everyone know when this beer is available in a few weeks.

Sorry for the late notice on this one, but if you don’t have plans this Sunday (April 20th), maybe you’re interested in joining Cicero’s in visiting Charleville Brewery in St. Genevieve, MO. The bus will be leaving from Cicero’s at 10AM on Sunday morning. The cost of this event will be $20 per person and you can make reservations by calling Karen McVicker at 314-862-0009 or by emailing her at kmcvic@yahoo.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…