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.