How does this differ from the Friday Round-Up?  I guess it doesn’t really, but all of this news seems rather important, so I thought I’d give it to you now. Here’s just a few stories that you may be interested in:

• Schlafly will be putting Summer Lager into cans, it’ll be brewed at Stevens Point in Wisconsin.  This is a perfect addition for the upcoming summer.

• For those of you looking to enjoy Boulevard’s Tank 7 at home, it is now available in bottles in the St. Louis area.

• Schlafly is doing another collaboration, this time with Stuttgart, Germany’s smallest brewery.  The beer will be a dry-hopped Märzen.

• Bottles of O’Fallon’s Hemp Hop Rye will be available this spring.

• Cathedral Square beers are now available in bottles.  In related news, I just realized I accidentally left Cathedral Square off of the STL Hops St. Louis Beer Challenge.

• Want the fame and glory of naming a beer without the hassle of actually having to brew and distribute it?  Well, the Wine and Cheese Place and O’Fallon Brewery have a contest for you.

Your news has now been shotgunned, I’d say you’re about four beers deep at this point.

Today, from 4PM to 6:30PM the Wine and Cheese Place in Clayton will be hosting a tasting featuring these beers: Goose Island Demolition, Jurand Extra, Jurand Premium, Grieskirchner Weisse Pint, Laughing Dog CSB, and Laughing Dog DogZilla.  Additional information can be found at their blog.

Cory from deVine Wines and Spirts, located at 2961 Dougherty Ferry Rd, holds a beer tasting every Wednesday evening from from 5PM to 8PM. Each Wednesday will offer up a few new beers for you to taste. Swing on by and check it out.

City Gourmet will be holding a New Belgium tasting this Saturday, March 13th from 1-3pm. Available to taste will be the Explorer Series and some of the Lips of Faith line. As an added bonus, you’ll also get a chance to enjoy snacks from Billy Goat Chips.

Once again, if you’re a retail shop, bar, restaurant, brewery or distributor and want me to list your tasting, make sure to email me at mike@stlhops.com.

I’ve made a change in how the beer tastings will be listed in the Friday Round-Up, it’s going to be a week’s worth of tastings starting with the Friday that the list is posted. So if you’re a retail shop, bar, restaurant, brewery or distributor and want me to list your tasting, make sure to email me at mike@stlhops.com.

Today, from 4PM to 6:30PM the Wine and Cheese Place in Clayton will be hosting a tasting featuring Boulevard Smokestack Dark Truth, Boulevard Smokestack Rye on Rye, Corsendonk Brown, Corsendonk Pale, and Bridgeport Hop Czar. Additional information can be found at their blog.

Cory from deVine Wines and Spirts, located at 2961 Dougherty Ferry Rd, holds a beer tasting every Wednesday evening from from 5PM to 8PM. Each Wednesday will offer up a few new beers for you to taste. Swing on by and check it out.

Schlafly will be holding a tasting at Gustine Market, this upcoming Tuesday, March 9th from 5PM-8PM.  They’ll be offering up Pale Ale, Hefeweizen, Coffee Stout, Dry-Hopped APA, and Irish Extra Stout.

Jon Pace from Paradise Wines in Fenton has let me know that they’ll be doing a beer tasting tonight from 6PM-8:30PM.  They’ll be tasting a  small sample of their 1000+ beers in stock by trying variety of Irish beers.

Once again, if you’re a retail shop, bar, restaurant, brewery or distributor and want me to list your tasting, make sure to email me at mike@stlhops.com.

The Wine and Cheese Place in Clayton will be holding their Fourth Annual Beerfest on April 10th. Past festivals have featured over 100 beers to taste, so I’m sure this year’s festival will not disappoint.  This year’s festival will be held a little differently.  There is now a nominal $5 fee for attending the 2PM-4PM session.

There is also a Premium Session that will take place between 1PM and 2PM.  There will only be allowed a limited number of tickets for the Premium Session to allow for a better chance to try beer. Tickets for this session will be $10.

Here’s a preliminary list of beers that have been confirmed for the festival:

Corsendonk Abbey Brown
Corsendonk Abbey Tripel

Schlafly trial batch of American IPA (7% ABV)
Schlafly Dry Hopped APA
Schlafly Special Release Export IPA
Schlafly Quadruple
Schlafly Kolsch

Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS)
Founders Reds Rye
Founders Centennial IPA

Bells Beers — they promise to bring something special again

O’Fallon Hemp Rod Rye
O’Fallon Wee Heavey
O’Fallon Gold
O’Fallon Wheach
O’Fallon 5 Day IPA
O’Fallon Bourbon Barrel Smoked Porter

Avery – beers TBA

Great Divide – beers TBA

Charleville Half Wit Wheat
Charleville Tornado Amber
Charleville Hoptimistic IPA
Charleville APA

Magic Hat #9
Magic Hat Lucky Cat
Magic Hat Vinyl
Magic Hat Odd Notion (American Wheat Pale Ale)

Pyramid Haywire
Pyramid Audacious
Pyramid Fling

Caldera IPA
Caldera Pale Ale
Caldera Amber Ale

RJ Rockers Son of a Peach
RJ Rockers Bell Ringer
RJ Rockers Black Perle

Laughing Dog IPA
Laughing Dog CSB
Laughing Dog Alpha Dog
Laughing Dog Dogfather

Lagunitas Maximus
Lagunitas Hop Stoopid
plus more Lagunitas TBA

A while back I coined the term, “bad idea beer.”  It’s that one beer you have near the end of the night that always seems to be a bad idea.  I can think back to a trip to Champaign, Illinois last July where I stopped in at The Blind Pig. (Quick side note, if you’ve never been to the Blind Pig, you need to go.  It’s awesome.)

After having one or two or three amazing beers on cask, my co-worker and I were about to head back to the hotel.  I somehow sweet-talked the bartender into letting me take an unopened Hoppin’ Frog B.O.R.I.S. the Crusher back with me.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve had this beer plenty of times before, but it was a bad idea beer.

So, what does this rambling tale of idiocy have to do with Hoppin’ Frog Brewery out of Akron, Ohio?  Not much other than it looks like we’ll be seeing them in the near future:

“Missouri is on our list of new states. We must move at a pace that we can supply our distributors – so the exact date we can take on a new state is still being decided.”
– Fred Karm Sr., Owner of Hoppin’ Frog Brewery

What Fred is saying is that it may take a little while, but they’ll be in Missouri relatively soon. When? Well, I don’t think anyone knows. There are a lot of steps in the process they’ll need to go through before we’ll start seeing them on the shelves.

A big thanks to Paul Hayden from the Wine and Cheese Place who contact Hoppin’ Frog and laid out a great case on why they should be in St. Louis.

Paul Hayden from the Wine and Cheese Place dropped me a very brief email letting me know that Bell’s Brewery’s Batch 9000has just hit the St. Louis area.  Each 1000 batches, Bell’s puts out a very special commemorative beer to celebrate.

The back story on this beer is that Batch 7000 was an Imperial Stout and a beer that many people thought was the best beer Bell’s ever made.  Batch 9000 is a DOUBLE version of Batch 7000.  So, it’s big.

And because it’s big, it’s very limited and very much in demand.  Don’t wait around, this beer isn’t going to last long. For more information about this beer, check out this story from BeerNews.org.

I’ve made a change in how the beer tastings will be listed in the Friday Round-Up, it’s going to be a week’s worth of tastings starting with the Friday that the list is posted. So if you’re a retail shop, bar, restaurant, brewery or distributor and want me to list your tasting, make sure to email me at mike@stlhops.com.

Today, from 4PM to 6:30PM the Wine and Cheese Place in Clayton will be hosting Ron Lindenbusch and Karen Hamilton from Lagunitas where they will be offering up tastings featuring Lagunitas Maximus, Lagunitas IPA, Lagunitas Pale Ale, Lagunitas Hop Stoopid, Lagunitas Hairy Eyeball, Lagunitas GnarlyWine, and Lagunitas Cappucino. As an added bonus, they’re also going to do a vertical of Brown Shugga vintages! They’ll be tasting 2006-2009 bottles of Brown Sugga. Additional information can be found at their blog.

Cory from deVine Wines and Spirts, located at 2961 Dougherty Ferry Rd, holds a beer tasting every Wednesday evening from from 5PM to 8PM. Each Wednesday will offer up a few new beers for you to taste. Swing on by and check it out.

Once again, if you’re a retail shop, bar, restaurant, brewery or distributor and want me to list your tasting, make sure to email me at mike@stlhops.com.