Tomorrow is the first Friday of the month, so that must mean it’s time for another fantastic pairing of best place to get Neapolitan Pizza in the St. Louis area, The Good Pie, and a chance to enjoy some delicious cask beer from Schlafly.

This Friday, September 3rd, starting a 5PM, a representative from the St. Louis Brewery will be tapping a cask of the Schlafly Dry-Hopped APA (this version has been dry-hopped with Cascade and Simcoe). They’ll be serving it until the cask runs out or The Good Pie closes.

Sure, you can get cask beer at the Tap Room, but you can’t get Neapolitan Pizza to go along with it! Head on out there for some great pizza and beer.

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 2010 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, brewed for the first time ever at Schlafly, an Oud Bruin. Here are the details for Hop in the City, direct from Schlafly’s website:

HOP IN THE CITY 2010
Saturday, September 18 – Noon-5:00 p.m.
The Schlafly Tap Room

TICKETS are $25 in August, $30 in September and $35 day of the event (see Schlafly Website for Info).
ONLINE ticket sales available HERE.

When the Schlafly Tap Room began the Schlafly Reserve Series back in 2006, they bought a few bourbon barrels to age the Schlafly Reserve Imperial Stout in.  As the beers grew in popularity, so did the number of barrels needing to be purchased.

The problem with using barrels to age beer in is that it’s a one time deal.  When the barrels arrive from the distillery the woods has been exposed to the high-alcohol bourbon so any microorganism, such as wild yeast or bacteria, has pretty much been killed off, leaving the barrel clean and ready to be used.

But once you’ve used the barrel for aging beer, it’s a different story.  The alcohol in the beer isn’t high enough to kill off these micro-pests so they’re forced to buy new barrels.

As you can imagine, being able to use these barrels only a single time is not only wasteful, but expensive.  But what if you could use the wild yeast to your benefit?  I’m proud to announce the debut of the first step in the Schlafly Sour Beer Program.

As part of a half-million dollar upgrade to the Schlafly Tap Room, the very rarely seen boiler room, which is located under the beer garden, will be cleaned up and will be the home of this exciting new program.  New equipment will be purchased, new racks for barrels will be installed, and new draught lines will be put in to accommodate these new beers.

The first step of this new program began back on 03/31/2010 when a special blend of Belgian Single (which had already been fermented out) was added to four different bourbon barrels that underwent a cleaning and a conditioning.  It was at that point that three different strains of Brettanomyces were each added to separate barrels, with one barrel being left alone as a control.

The three different strains of Brett that were added were: Claussenii, Lambicus, and Bruxellensis. It’s important to note that Brettanomyces doesn’t necessarily add sourness to a beer, it usually adds a layer of funk. But, that doesn’t mean that certain lactic acid producing bacteria such as Lactobacillus and Pediococcus couldn’t possibly show up as the beer sits.

As for the release of these beers, that’s going to take some time. “From a brewing standpoint, I really want to give our folks some time to do it right. I want to make sure our guys have the tools to do this the right way,” says Schlafly Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Dan Kopman.

For more information about sour beers in St. Louis, be certain to check out the September issue of Feast Magazine. Feast will be offering up a look at this very interesting beer style along with additional information about Schlafly’s Hop in the City festival beer, the Oud Bruin.

About a month ago I mentioned that Schlafly Brewery was looking at doing another collaboration with Schnucks Culinaria to produce another special 750ml beer.

UPDATE: Two additional pieces of information.  One, if you were paying close enough attention, this beer is 7% ABV, which is a touch higher than the typical 5.7% that the normal Oatmeal Stout.  I’m told that this is just a “boosted” version of the original recipe.

It’s also worth noting that the coffee blend on this beer is different than the roast they receive from Kaldi’s that they use for the seasonal Coffee Stout.  This beer is being blended with Colombia Monserrate which is also from Kaldi’s.

Looks like the label art was approved today and here’s what it looks like:

If you’ve never had some of Schlafly’s Belgian offerings, this weekend’s Belgian Beer and Mussel Mania Schlafly Tap Room gives you the perfect opportunity to try them. Stephen Hale sent me over a list of some of the treats Schlafly has in store for this weekend:

• Singel
• Belgian Spiced Ale
• Tripel
• Quadrupel
• Grand Cru (including two casks!)
• Bière de Garde
• Witbier (brewed with local Alhambra, Illinois unmalted wheat)

Oh, I hear there will be some mussels too. This “festival” runs on Friday, July 23rd from 5:00 p.m.-Midnight and from 11AM-Midnight on Saturday, July 24th. There is no cost for the event, just show up and buy some mussels and beer!

First it there was the C1, a Oak Aged Dry Hopped Smoked Rye Pale Ale. Then, there was the yet to be released C2, a Smoked Belgian Dark Strong Ale. It looks like the final collaborative beer between Schlafly, O’Fallon Brewery, and New Albanian Brewing Company has been brewed.

For those of you looking for that “great session beers with [a] unique twist”, I’m happy to announce that the C3 collaboration is a 4% Dry-Hopped American Mild. New Albanian brewer Jared Williamson posted some information about the beer on the New Albanian blog:

C3 continues the extreme and interesting themes that have been and are being explored with the C-series. C3 is extreme in its restraint, in our collective ability to resist the abundant urges to add more and explore more ideas in a single beer. By dialing in our collective vision, we have struck out in a new direction with C3.

Based on the classic English Mild, C3 features Marris Otter, Munich, Brown and Carafa malts.

After much debate the collective again went with the theme of restraint, and a single hop was the choice: Citra. Never used before by New Albanian, Schlafly or O’Fallon, Citra on early inspection reminds this brewer of the spice and pine of Chinook with the musty citrus of Columbus.

One of the most unique parts about this beer is that while it features Citra as a mash, whirlpool, and dry hop, there were no bittering additions used. As noted by The Potable Curmudgeon, what will probably be your first opportunity to try both the C2 and C3 will be at the Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison, WI.

For those of you who can’t make it out to Great Taste, I should hopefully find out when this beer should be available in the St. Louis area.

I briefly mentioned this beer a couple of weeks ago when I brought news of a few new beers coming from Schlafly, but it’s official:  Drew Huerter’s Burn Ward Wheat will be released tomorrow, July 2nd at the Schlafly Bottleworks.

The quick story behind the name is that Drew burned himself while brewing a couple of weeks ago.  Nothing serious, but enough for a good yarn and a great name.

Here’s the details about the beer:

14.9 Plato OG
2.2 Plato FG
6.87% ABV
50 IBUs

Mostly 2 row Pale Barley malt, 37.5% Wheat malt, a little Munich and CaraVienne. Bittered with Columbus. Simcoe, Palisade and German Tettenang were used for flavor, aroma and in the dry hop. The hopping rate is about 2lbs per barrel. Fermented on our Kolsch and English Ale yeasts at an elevated temperature.

An American Wheat brewed to the specifications of an American IPA. This is a summertime wheat beer for hopheads, and hoppy beer for those who don’t have a taste for bitter beers. With a generous dose of wheat malt, a small bittering addition (this ale gets most of its IBUs from later, more flavorful hop additions) and a dry finish, this is a strong ale for the summer.

I had a chance to sample a small amount of this yesterday, and I think everyone will be very happy. This 13 barrel batch is hoppy without being too bitter and very refreshing.