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.

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!

Got a chance to sit in on a Schlafly Town Hall meeting on Monday and came away with some nifty information about some new beers that will be coming down the pipe.

Burn Ward Wheat

This will be the next addition to the Brewers’ Choice series being put out by the Bottleworks.  As this beer is being by by Drew Huerter, I’m sure you can already imagine what this will be like.  Luckily, Drew gave me a run down of the beer:

50 IBUs
~35% Wheat Malt
5% Munich
5.5% CaraVienne
Columbus (Bittering)
Simcoe (Whirlpool/Dry Hop)
Palisade (Whirlpool/Dry Hop)
German Tettenang (Whirlpool/Dry Hop)
6.87% ABV

So, for all of you looking for that hoppy wheat beer, Drew is helping out. This should be available later this month.

Augie’s Wedding Cream Ale

When brewers at Schlafly get married, they get a chance to brew a beer. Augie got married, and he chose an American Cream Ale as his beer of choice. Rather than me try and describe the beer, I’ll leave it to Augie:

It was brewed with 17% Illinois grown corn, “Alhambra Corn”, using a traditional cereal mash. The rest of the grain bill was made up of 2-row brewers malt. OG was 12.9P and the finished beer ended up coming in at 5.5%abv. Hopped with Hallertau Mittelfruh to 20IBU. Fermented on the cooler side, 62F, with Taproom American Ale yeast (WLP051) to give a nice, clean fermentation character. Lagered for three weeks to really smooth out the beer.

In general, I think using some local ingredients really adds to the “craft” of “craft beer”. That was really one of the big drivers behind this beer. Overall the style is fairly straightforward, but the use of local corn gives an interesting twist.

We went to some extremes just to be able to use the corn. We actually performed the cereal mash at The Stable and then loaded the corn mash (about 80 gallons worth) into coolers to transport to The Taproom. The coolers were then dumped into the mash tun as the rest of the grain was being mashed in.

Despite the complicated nature of all this, the whole operation went fairly smoothly (minus one cooler). Needless to say, this beer will never be made this way again. It is truly a “one-off”.

This will be on draught starting tomorrow at the Tap Room. As only 15bbls were brewed, this is sure to go fast.

Blueberry Cider

There has been a strong response to all of the ciders that Schlafly creates, and I’m sure this one will be no exception. This went on draught yesterday at the Schlafly Bottleworks. It’s a very nice blend of blueberries with apple cider. Expect more ciders at the Tap Room and Bottleworks in months to come.

Schnucks Culinaria Ale (No official name yet)

Schnucks really loved the response to the previous Culinaria beer and they’re looking to do another.  This beer is still in the planning stages, so they’re still working out all of the details, but at the moment it’s looking like a Raspberry Oatmeal Stout that will be blended with a different Kaldi’s Coffee roast than the one that’s being used for the Coffee Stout.

As things are still up in the air on this beer, you can possibly expect some changes.

Schlafly American IPA

You’ve spoken and Schlafly has listened, this comes from James Ottolini (but please call him Otto) Head of Brewing at the Schlafly Bottleworks:

For what it is worth, we did not plan for their to be such a response to the AIPA. We have made another smaller batch at Bottleworks and tweaked a few things. It was dry hopped this week and if all goes well with our production schedule this beer will be packaged and sent to distributors the week before fourth of July weekend. This will be the last AIPA for the Special Release series for the summer. This batch will have more hop aroma and bitterness.

Always good to see when companies listen to their customers and help create a better product.

I’m pleased to announce that the winners of the VIP Tour the Schlafly Tap Room is Clarissa Gaff, John Schmitt, Timmy R, Rusty Groth, Paul Buske, and Jaron Rose!

Congrats to everyone and thanks everyone for entering. If you didn’t win, don’t be too upset, once again I have some cool stuff to give away soon.

What’s that?  You’ve been to the Schlafly Tap Room a number of times, but you’ve never taken a tour?  Well, to be fair, they don’t actually offer public tours of the Tap Room.  But, I’m now going to be offering you a chance on May 8th at 5PM to attend a special VIP tour of this historic building, with me as your tour guide.

What does this VIP tour entail?  First, you’ll get to listen to me talk for about 20 minutes about the history of Schlafly, the history of the building, and then we talk a bit about the brewing process.  I promise, it’s about to get better.  Then we’ll have a chance to taste some unfinished beer directly off one of the fermentation tanks.  I’ll show you around the cellar, and then you’ll enjoy a final tasting of a number of different Schlafly beers along with a complimentary meat and cheese platter.

So, how do you get invited to enjoy this special tour? Well, we’ll make this a contest. You’ll need to email contest@stlhops.com with Schlafly VIP Tour as the subject. I’ll pick six winners (which will include a pass for the winner, plus a guest) on Monday, April 19th at 9AM. A couple of quick notes:

• If you’ve won something from STL Hops in the past 6 months, please be cool and let someone else enter.
• If you won passes for the Wine and Cheese Place Beerfest, you can still enter, that doesn’t count.
• You must be 21 or older to enter.
• No multiple entries.

If you don’t win this one, don’t worry I will be holding more contests like this in the future, so you’ll have another chance then.  Good luck!

First the good news, Greg Koch of the Stone Brewing Company out of San Diego, California will be visiting St. Louis this Thursday, April 15th.  Now, the bad news, he’s not here to announce Stone’s arrival in St. Louis.

Greg will be in town for the local Master Brewers Association meeting (which is not open for the public).  Because he’ll be in town, he’ll be swinging by the Schlafly Tap Room around 10PM, after the meeting lets out.

Now, I know that’s kind of late and it’s a school night, but it would be awesome if a ton of us were to show up to show him just how passionate the St. Louis beer scene is.  I don’t know if it will get it here any faster, but if you’re interested in bringing Stone to St. Louis, I think showing him that we’re a group of diehard beer lovers is only going to help.

At minimum, you may get a Gregface picture taken with him.

I’ve been told by a number of people that Burns Night at the Schlafly Tap Room is one of their favorite beer events in St. Louis.  I can now proudly count myself as one of those people as well.

If you’ve never attended, you must try and do it at least one.  The pageantry, the revelry, the poetry, the delicacies and of course the beer.  It makes for one hell of an evening.  If you weren’t able to attend, here’s some photos from the evening.

[View with PicLens]

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