While I do think that an October or November opening is rather ambitious, if there is anyone I think can pull off the opening of a new brewery in two or three months time, it’s Forian Kuplent and David Wolfe.  In case you can’t wait until November to see the inside of Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, here is something to tide you over.

We’re getting closer. If everything goes to plan, (oh City of St. Louis, why must you make everything so difficult?) we should see the opening of the newest location of the International Tap House opening up in Soulard next Thursday, June 17th.

They’ll be opening up at 9AM to celebrate and to let people watch some of the World Cup matches happening that morning. With any luck, that’ll be your first chance to sit at the new 40 foot bar and drinking from one of the 44 different taps or 500 different bottles.

Soccer or not, I know I’ll be ready to check it out.

I know it’s taken me a while to get this up, but better late than never, right? Well, the second annual St. Louis Craft Beer Week is behind us and it sounds like we had another great success. Every event I attended had a great turnout and people were generally excited about everything going on.

The folks at the St. Louis Microfest tell me that they also had a huge turnout this year and were able to raise even more money for the Lift for Life Gym, so that’s also some fantastic news.

We will be putting this event on again next year, and again the event will coincide with the 2011 Microfest in Forest Park. So, look out for that. In the meantime here is a collage of photos compiled from the events I attended.

Thanks again to everyone who helped, participated and attended these events.

If you weren’t aware, Brad Lobdell and Sean Conroy of the International Tap House are going to be adding a new location in Soulard. If everything goes to plan, and construction can always throw a kink into the works, they should be opening up this spot mid-June.

This new spot is bigger than the original location, plus will feature a larger patio to boot. I don’t think the photos do justice to just how much bigger this new location is. Also, everyone who complained that the Chesterfield location was too far out, well, you have no longer will have any excuses not to visit.

Let me begin this post by telling you a little story that I’ve told a couple of times in private, but I think it’s good enoughof a story to put for for public consumption. Last February, I noticed that the 2010 Craft Beer Conference was taking place in Chicago. On a complete lark, I decided to attempt to get a media credential. Our story picks up from there.

Allow me to set the scene. I’m sitting at my computer and my lovely long-time companion Irene is doing some school work in the other room. Email from the Brewers Association arrives…

Me: How about that. You’ll never believe this, but they’re giving me a media pass for the Craft Brewers Conference in Chicago!

Short Pause.

Irene: I guess they’ll give just about any jackass that applies a pass.

End scene.

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In a nutshell, the Craft Brewers Conference is a meeting of Craft Brewers, Brewery Representatives, Sales People, Distributors and Brewery Suppliers. This time allows them to learn, meet each other, see new products, and maybe most importantly, to drink some beer.

Not only is their an expo hall showing off a number of new products and ingredients available in the brewing industry, but there is a number of seminars and discussions as well. As this is an industry only event, I wanted to give you some of the sights and a few thoughts on everything I took part in.

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Thursday:

I rolled into town about 1:30PM; by the time I checked in, got over to the conference, and got my bearings it was time for the Social Marketing: Creating Community in Real Time discussion. As I’ve done my fair share of social media, this was a perfect way to start off my time here at the conference.

It was certainly an fascinating discussion and looking back, it’s now interesting to see how some local brewers have leveraged social media to help their business and how some other haven’t quite seen the light.

After that discussion I met up with Schlafly brewer and Mattingly Brewing head brewer Drew Huerter. He gave me the scoop about the upcoming discussion by Dr. Michael Lewis of UC Davis about Drinkability. I can probably say this about the discussion without having much of an argument from anyone in attendance, it was certainly the most spirited if not the most contentious discussion at the Conference.

Dr. Lewis talked about the industry as a whole needing to cut back on the amount of “big” beers being made and get back to brewing more sessionable beers. He posed questions like, “Are we beginning to run out of ‘hop heads’?” and “Are we just brewing beers for the people in this room?”

Some of the things he posed I agreed with and some of the things I didn’t. Which, in my mind, is what makes for a great discussion.

That evening I was lucky enough to be invited to the New Belgium “Brews and Pig” party at Lush. Here’s a list of everything I had to sample that evening. And for the record, I did get very drunk, that’s not me bragging, it’s just a fact:

• Allagash – Avance
• Bell’s – Quinannan Falls
• Bell’s – Wild One (bottle)
• Brooklyn Brewery – Dark Matter
• Brooklyn Brewery – Black OPS (b)
• Dieu du Ciel – Isseki Nicho
• Elysian Brewery – Perfesser
• Firestone Walker – Union Jack
• Half Acre – Daisy Cutter
• New Belgium – LOVE
• New Belgum – Eric’s Ale (b)
• Odell – IPA (b)
• Piece Brewery – Swinging Single
• Real Ale – Devil’s Backbone (b)
• Russian River – Pliny the Elder (b)
• Russian River – Consercration (b)
• Russian River – Supplication (b)
• The Bruery – Oede Tart

Friday:

As you can imagine, after Thursday night’s amount of fun, I didn’t get a chance to attend any of the morning sessions, but I did get a chance to visit the BrewExpo America floor and see some of the wares that different companies had to offer. Let me see first off that the thing that the BrewExpo does right is that there is a beer sampling station around every corner. Because of this other expo floor will ever live up to this one.

Basically, if you’ve been to any kind of expo, you know the drill: pretty girls, sales people and a lot of free swag. That being said, this isn’t an expo for the average beer nerd. It’s mostly brewing equipment, packaging, cleaning, and some ingredients. Here’s a couple of photos that’ll give you the general idea:

The next discussion Drew and I attended was probably one of the most popular discussions attended: Toothpicks, Garlic and Chalk: Three Key Ingredients to Any Brewery’s Barrel-Aged Sour Beer Program by Russian River Owner/Brewer Vinnie Cilurzo. If the title of the discussion is throwing you, basically the biggest concern to aging in wooden casks is leakage. This is a problem that can be fixed by using a toothpick to plug the leak, and then using chalk and garlic to create paste to seal the toothpick.

Oh, and we all got a taste of Temptation.

The final discussion of the day for me was listed in the brochure as “Craft Beer and Food” but in reality was something closer to my heart: Craft Beer & the Artisanal & Natural Food Movement. This panel, which was moderated and hosted by Stone Brewing’s Greg Koch and included Slow Food Regional Governor Joel Smith, Culture Magazine’s Stephanie Skinner, Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver.

They talked about the importance of using local and sustainable food and pairing it with beer that is artisanal.  I think the quote that summed up the entire discussion for me came from something that Slow Food Founder Carlo Petrini told Garrett Oliver, he said, “The American Craft Brewing phenomenon is the purest form of the Slow Food movement.”

It’s people bringing back and saving a traditional form of food that could have been lost to corporate giants.  As brewers and beer lovers, it’s our job to help other producers of food do the same thing.

While there was still plenty of drinking and fun over the rest of the weekend, my favorite and what I would count as final event of the CBC was the New Belgium and New Holland beer dinner at The Publican. I’m not about to go over every pairing with every dish, but I’m not kidding when I say that this was by far the best beer dinner I’ve ever attended.

The pairings for this meal were absolutely divine. Even to the point they took a beer I didn’t particularly enjoy and the meal made the beer better. If that isn’t the sign of a great pairing, I don’t know what is. I’ve included the menu for you to look over:

I hope I’ve given you a small taste of what it’s like to attend this event. With any luck, maybe we can have a CBC here in St. Louis in the next few years. I think it would be impressive for many brewers to come into St. Louis and see what we have to offer even in the shadow of a giant. At minimum, while you may not be able to attend the conference, the parties that are going on all week long would completely make up for not being to attend.

Here’s to hoping I can attend next year.

Finally had a chance to stop by the newest brewery in St. Louis, Six Row Brewing Company, so I thought that I’d share some of my thoughts and also some photos.  First, I really liked the feel of the place.  It’s very warm and very inviting.  It seems like agreat place to stop in a grab a pint or two before heading home or heading to an event downtown.

For only being open for two months, I thought the beers were very solid.  I enjoyed the Extra Pale Ale quite a bit, the Honey Weizen has some great banana notes,  and I thought that Porter was very good.  I’m happy to see a local St. Louis brewery offering up a porter.   Wasn’t a big fan of the Whale, but that could just be my own palate.

It also looks like these guys may be looking into doing a little bit of distribution in the future, so it will be nice to see some of their beers available around town.  This is a brewery first and foremost.  Look at the menu below and you’ll see there isn’t much in the way of food.  But I think this gives them the opportunity to concentrate solely on making beer.

I’m curious to see where these guys go and I’m looking forward to the future.

This was our last full day in Denver, so we headed to Fort Collins, CO to check out New Belgium Brewing.  I was lucky and was able to visit New Belgium last year during GABF.   While my tour last year was a lot of fun, this year we got a tour from New Belgium’s Sensory Specialist, Lauren Salazar.

Notes from Day 3, New Belgium Brewing:

• It shouldn’t surprise you that this place is huge.  Just enormous.
• Which is why they’re on schedule to do 500,000bbls this year.
• This first photo below is the original brewing system that New Belgium started with.
• Check out Sponge Bob eating a pizza!
• Yes, this is the second day in a row I got to visit the top of a brewery’s fermentation tanks.
• As you may know, this company is very green.  You can see the new solar panels they’re installing.
• Drinking beer right off of the large wooden barrels is really cool.
• I asked Lauren about the change in La Folie, she told me that she realized that she was making the beer more for her palette and not for the consumers.  Which is why the sourness has been scaled back a bit to make for a more balanced beer.
• While we saw the bottling line, we didn’t actually get to see it in action.
• But I did get to see it last year and I’ve included a video below.
• Yes, that really is a slide and yes you really can slide down it.