The Fortune Teller Bar

For those of you who may not know, I am opening my own beer bar this year. I have chosen a location (Cherokee Street) and I'm going through the all the lovely processes one must endure to open a fine drinking establishment. This is what I've been doing as of late instead of blogging about The Great Saint Louis Beer Renaissance. Well, this and raising the coolest kid on the planet.

Can we talk about him for just a second? Don't worry, it's beer-related. So the other day I decided to take some time off of beer. Just a short vacation for my liver, really; I'm not a superhuman twenty-something anymore. I was mentioning this time off to my son and, wow, was he was excited. Because one of the few things this extremely observant 4-year-old knows about beer is that, when Daddy drinks beer, he usually leaves the house to do it, and usually doesn't bring Little Man along with. Therefore, beer = lame. So I was enjoying a big celebratory hug when my son pulls back and says this: "You know Dad, if you change your mind, you could still just drink some wine." So thoughtful!

So that's the update. Keep an ear out for The Fortune Teller Bar, and, quite possibly, someday, more from this blog.

See you down on Cherokee.

Mikkeller Single Hop series is back.

Soooo preeeetty.

My latest discovery.

STL Taverns, in which some saucy local drinkers endeavor to document the area's more traditional corner bars. You can contribute, review and browse dives, sports bars, lounges, and of course taverns of note from the Innerbelt to the East Side. The simple prose of the guide serves the subject matter well, and reveals that the writers to be no mere slummers.

These are proper old-school bars. Chances are you won't find much craft beer in these establishments, but you will find lots of character and a link to a timeless part of St. Louis that's easy to forget about. After all, these businesses don't always have websites and Twitter feeds.

I like the simplicity of this website's maps. Instead of listing every neighborhood and municipality, the authors (thus far--it's a work in progress) have used colloquialisms to designate areas. For example, everything south-central from 44 down to Bevo is just "Tower Grove," and "State Streets" is, well, where you'd expect it to be. "North City" could use a few more divisions, though, setting apart the North of Downtown area and The Ville/MLK at least. And maybe S. Broadway should be its own category. (Ok, so I'm a map freak.)

Anyhoo, great site. This weekend, try to work a corner bar into your plans. They're inexpensive, and they're the lifeblood of Old Saint Louis. Be friendly and keep it simple. I recommend the Busch cans.

I can make stuff.

I just made pumpkin muffins.

I mean, I got a pumpkin, cleaned it out, cut it up, baked it, pureed it, mixed it with pumpkin ale and a bunch of other stuff, poured the mix into a muffin pan and stuck it in the oven until it became muffins.

And they were delicious.

If you knew what a terrible cook I was, you'd understand: this is significant. Maybe I'm not a cook, but a baker. That must be it. I am a baker. I bake. Feel the power.

(Credit is of course due to seven cookbooks, the internet, my wife who was in the next room, and to whomever at Schlafly posted Andy White's Pumpkin Ale Bread recipe on Twitpic. Thank you, thank you all.)

Coffee Stout tapped today at the Tap Room!

Coffee Stout tapped today at the Tap Room!
Coffee Stout tapped today at the Tap Room!
Coffee Stout tapped today at the Tap Room!
Coffee Stout tapped today at the Tap Room!
Coffee Stout tapped today at the Tap Room!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Pete Brown nails it. Again.

My favorite English beer writer wrote a post recently about the World Cup idiocy involving ABInBev and the Dutch brewer Bavaria. It's a rant to be sure, but it's not some casual AB bash. It's a story that is truly, as he says, scary.

I am so proud.

Check out this great story (and an even better video segment) produced by the BBC about local brewers reclaiming our city's beer heritage. The BBC!!

Somewhat less amazing, but nonetheless cool, is me in the Sunday New York Times. The Royale was listed as one of two bars to hit if you have only 36 hours in Saint Louis (the other being Fred's Six Feet Under), and there's a picture of me pouring beer for a few of my favorite people.

The Schlafly "Sale"

Everybody take a deep breath. The Saint Louis Brewery, makers of Schlafly Beer, is not, repeat, not for sale. For some reason, the owners thought it would be a good idea to let the world in on their inner workings a bit, and the story got all crazified. The owners are planning ahead--years ahead--for their retirement, and to ensure that the brewery doesn't end up in the wrong hands, the very long process of eventually selling the biz to senior management has begun. That is it. I'm not buying it, ABInBev's not buying it, some faceless investment bogeyman isn't buying it--the biz is staying in the family. Period. Now go have a beer.

iTap Soulard

Hooray for the International Tap House guys! For bringing good beer to the Chesterfield Valley, for being successful enough to open a second location, and for having the wisdom to open that second location in the City near my house. Methinks I will be catching quite a few World Cup games there this month.

Opens Thursday June 17th.

Almost forgot

There's a new Dave Bailey joint opening up downtown, next door to Left Bank Books and down the street from Bailey's excellent spot Rooster. The Bridge will be opening sometime this month. The Post has this blurb about it (http://tinyurl.com/y9g8u7v) and that's all I know. Dave knows his beer, so this "tap house and wine bar" should have an excellent selection.

January

Hello again. The holidays are finally over--well, The Holidays are over. Personal celebrations continue unabated, filling up my schedule like a dance card.

Like Burns Night at the Tap Room on Jan. 25th. Scotch ale, Scotch whisky, scotch eggs, bagpipes and haggis. And my mother-in-law drumming in the pipe band! Best way to start the new year.

Then there's my buddy Joey Finn's 30th birthday at some dive bar on the Southside. Joe isn't really my buddy, though--he's family. He's the seventh Thenhaus. He's the only non-blood relative who can walk into my parents house, grab a sandwich and a beer, park it at the kitchen table and watch the game and no one bats an eye. Happy birthday, brother.

Two more occasions at the Tap Room follow. The Royale is having their "Xmas party" there next week, and then Schlafly holds their annual Employee Reunion party the week after. Good thing it's one of my favorite places.

This month of fun winds up with my old man's retirement party. Thirty-four years and two months of working for the Veteran's Administration and now he gets to put his feet up. Which of course he won't do. He'll still be running around his back yard chasing my two-year-old, helping me put my house back together, and climbing onto his roof every Christmas to put the damn huge star up. Saturday the 30th, we'll try to get to sit down and enjoy himself in his own home, surrounded by all of us ne'er-do-wells, raising a glass in his honor. Congratulations, Dad. You made it.

This past week and a half...

...has been sooooo great! I declared the beginning of The 12 Days of Halloween back on Oct 23rd and turns out I wasn't kidding. Two bonfires, two costumes, one street festival, one punk rock flea market, two pork bellies, two private tastings, one beer dinner, and one awesome little kid in a monkey costume saying "Me need more candy, Dada. Me got bellyache. More candy make me feel better." Halloween fucking rules.

A big glass of witch's brew raised to the following quality establishments.
The Amsterdam Tavern
The Schlafly Tap Room
Sandrina's
Binge & Purge
Duff's Restaurant
The Royale Food & Spirits
Foam
Buck's house
Whitey's house
Dylan's house
The Fortune Teller Bar ;)

Happy Halloween!

This month, I would just like to point out that this Saturday is the greatest of all holidays, Halloween. Grab some pumpkin ale or some mulled wine or some smoky whisk(e)y and Come As You Aren't!

Also, the day after All Hallow's Eve is pretty cool too. On Cherokee Street, there will be a Day of the Dead celebration all up and down the strip. This is a great opportunity to check out the amazing variety of shops and joints that are thriving on Cherokee now. I love watching this neighborhood come back to life. I'll be hitting the punk rock flea market at Binge & Purge, Sam Coffey's open house, La Vallesana for some lengua and Jarritos, and best of all, the long-awaited Foam at the corner of Jefferson. Foam is slated to open this Friday after teasing us for months (Foam's facebook page boasts "Opening since 2008!") and I'm super excited. Coffeehouse-slash-alehouse, this will be the first place on the strip to serve craft beer. Reason enough to come out and celebrate.

http://cherokeestreetnews.org/
http://www.myspace.com/foamstl

The holidays are here.

That's right. The only two holidays that really matter are upon us. Halloween is next month, and tomorrow, for one day only, the Saint Louis Brewery, brewers of Schlafly Beer, will crack open a keg of every single one of their 40+ styles of beer and let us all drink deep. Thirty bucks, all you can drink--the greatest display of brewing prowess this town has ever known.

I'll be the one with the big dumb grin. See you there.

HOP in the City
Schlafly Tap Room
2100 Locust St. Downtown STL
September 19, noon-5
314-241-BEER

Another round

Just so all three of you know, I'll be writing about beer in a new online venue very soon. I'm sure I'll still have the occasional STL-bar-centric post for Sacred Beer, but the more reliable, slightly more professional stuff will be available elsewhere.

Stay tuned.
But first, go to The Royale and Blueberry Hill soon (a rare personal plug--sorry, it's all about the beer) to experience O'Fallon Chocolate By The Barrel Cream Stout. I was told that only the big O'Fallon accounts get this beer. Go. (Check stlhops: Beer Lists for availablility.)

Back to school

So, for the first time in eight years, I'm enrolled at an institution of higher learning. I figure that, if I want to open a bar, I should probably have some learnin' under my belt regarding that business stuff. A little law class couldn't hurt either. I just I wish I'd known that online classes are in fact more time consuming than real life ones. Silly me, thinking I was being smart avoiding the drive.

Writing--well, doing anything, really--with a toddler in the house requires ninja skill and speed. Working on assignments requires lots of time sitting quietly, a state of being anathema to your average 2 yr old. Even now as I write this, the J-Bear is looping his arms around my right arm, chanting Come outside wif me. Come outside wif me.

Ok the laptop just caught a soccer ball. Gotta go.
Oh, uh, Founders Breakfast Stout on tap at Stable and 33. Go.

Yet another story about buying down

Great news for beer...

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE57G2VL20090817

...even though the increase in popularity proves that craft beer is hardly boutique. Appreciated by a specialized and sophisticated market, yes, but ultimately populist in nature.

Oh right, I have a blog.

Whoooooooshit that was a long break. OK, back to keeping my thoughts on the local drinking scene in an orderly black-on-white manner as opposed to clogging up my head or littering my house in scrap paper form.

For today's note, I'd like to mourn the passing of Wm. Shakespeare's Gastropub in Midtown. I'd only visited once, and I was wary when I saw the totally dead term 'gastropub' in the very title, and the beer selection left something to be desired for a place claiming to be a pub, a pub being more than just dark wood and Guinness on tap, but still, sucks to see another potentially beercentric place go down. Especially at that location--how great would it have been to have a thriving beer destination next to the Fox Theater? Ah well, back to the brewpubs.

Saint Louis Craft Beer Week

Yes! It is happening. For too long I've stared longingly at stories about beer weeks in San Fran and Philly and, geez, every week in Portland, and now, thanks to beer god Mike Sweeney Saint Louis has embarked on its first Beer Week as well. Philly's big enough--and been doing this long enough--that they've racked up an astonishing seven hundred events over a ten day period. Ours will be decidedly low-key by comparison, but hey, why am I comparing?

The festivities culminate at the Brewers Heritage Festival, Friday & Saturday June 5 & 6. The previous Saturday, May 30, I will be in in the Windy City celebrating Chicago Maifest--that city's got enough German joints to make it a kickass celebration. In between, we'll be rocking this town's beer past and beer future within an inch of its life. My birthday's on June 2, so you see...well, I've already told my wife I might be a little, um, absent that week. If you know me, you should try to find me. I'll be the one with the big smile.

Keep up with everything at http://www.stlbeerweek.com.

Date Night

My lovely wife and I celebrated our 6th anniversary on Sunday. Hard to find a place open on Sundays, but we were determined. We decided to satisfy our curiosity about Herbie's Vintage 72. Good call, that was. A proper White Tablecloth joint, the food and wine and service were fantastic, but the nicest surprise: a solid beer list. A bottle of sparkling with dessert, of course, but with dinner, delicious draught beer. Switching back and forth between Schlafly APA and Bear Republic Racer 5 while supping on perfectly medium rare filet, tender rabbit and sashimi grade tuna was just goddamn sublime. "Let's do this once a month." "Deal."