St. Louis, Mo. Beer on Monday

Sally and I are in St. Louis, Mo. this week on our vacation and visited the Budweiser Brewery today. I felt this was a necessary stop on a tour of brewing shrines. Honestly, the A - B plant is nearly a  necessary stop on any tour of the American Corporate landscape, I swear, they invented the corporate logo and modern product placement advertising. (Remember Spuds McKinsey and the "Bud-Weis-er" frogs?)

All snide remarks and corporate analysis aside, St. Louis is still a Mecca of beer brewing tradition. We tried to visit the Morgan Street Brewery today but, it was lunch time, and they open late on Mondays. Yesterday we found the International Tap House in the Soulard neighborhood, also where the Bud Brewery is, so we went back today.

We asked the barkeep at the Tap House where to find a store with a big selection of beer and he directed us to Randal's which turned out to be a liquor store/ warehouse. Sally and I ignored the liquor section and went straight for the beer shelves and found plenty of labels which are unavailable at home. The best finds were; Summit Summer Ale from Minneapolis, Black Butte Porter from Deschutes Brewery, Bend Oregon, Lucky 13 Anniversary Release from Lagunitas, Petaluma, Ca, 1715 Classic Lager, Lvivska Brewery, Ukraine ($1.99.) I also got two cans of Milwaukee's Best Ice for 59 cents each, you all know how I have to revisit my roots and I did manage to avoid buying a beer named Blue Diamond Lager which was $2.99 a six pack. On  the other hand, I did find a local brew at the grocery store, Stag, in a 24 oz. can for $1.49.

We will be in St. Louis for the next two days and still have the Schlflay taproom to visit. In fact, I had the Schlafly sampler at lunch today and we tried a few at the Tap House too. The Schlafly Pale Ale is great, the summer lager is good but the Saison and Hefeweizen just didn't have enough body for me.

So far, St. Louis gets a 4 out of 5 pints as a good vacation spot and we haven't even made it out to the suburbs yet.