My friend and I recently began a new annual tradition tentatively titled "Beer Trip: A Trip for Beer." As you might guess, this gives a name to the practice of going to a place and drinking beer. For our first installment, we ventured over to St. Louis. While not typically known as a craft beer city, the Gateway City does boast a burgeoning scene (and is pretty close to both of us). What follows are my thoughts* on the places we visited.
*You will notice star ratings next to each brewery. I introduced these back in my Portland post, but I forgive you if you forgot. To summarize:
1 Star - Skippable
2 Star - Cromulent
3 Star - Highly Recommended
4 Star - A Must
1.5 and 2.5 ratings are allowed because I say so. On with the list.
6. Earthbound Beer (link) - 1 Star
Earthbound is not unlike Scratch Brewing in Southern Illinois. Both breweries use uncommon ingredients to create wholly unique beers. That said, Scratch is far more successful in my eyes, largely because they do a better job incorporating these items into styles of beer that make sense. When we visited, Earthbound had a lot of IPAs on tap. Normally, I am a fan of such a lineup, but an IPA that focuses more on the thing that hops taste like (cedar, in the beer I had) than the hops itself is only ever going to be a pale imitation. Also, the X-treme IPA (made with Mountain Dew) failed to live up to its name. I liked the vibe and the wide range of pours available (everything, regardless of ABV, cost the same), but the beer didn't do enough for me to want to go back.
5. Heavy Riff Brewing Company (link) - 1.5 Stars
Heavy Riff earns points simply for smelling like a barbecue restaurant. As for the beer, it was decidedly a mixed bag. Their high-ABV brown ale (Vanilla Coffee Underbrown) was quite nice, and their French ale was a solid take on an under-used style. However, the non-unique brews were much less successful. Their west-coast IPA (Left Coast IPA) was muddled as all get out and ended up tasting like ranch. In short, there's nothing at Heavy Riff I would drink all day, but there's still some deliciousness to be had.
4. 2nd Shift Brewing (link) - 2 Stars
I was really excited for 2nd Shift (mainly because of their website), but that excitement level didn't end up matching the beer. The brewery itself is only a production facility, so we headed downtown in the evening and visited a couple of bars (Bridge Tap House and Bailey's Range) that had 2nd Shift on tap. I had a couple of their sours (Katy and Green Bird Gose) that both had nice tastes, but were a little thin. Additionally, the gose didn't have the salty bite I expect, which would have been fine if it was a better beer. Their pale ale (Brewligans) was fine but a little basic. The highlight was one of their DIPAs (Brew Cocky), made with Falconers' Flight. Nothing in this beer broke the mold, but it was a fine presentation of the hop with just enough balance to make a complete beer. I didn't get to have everything (most notably Art of Neurosis, their main IPA), but the large sampling I had was mediocre at best.
3. Perennial Artisan Ales (link) - 2.5 Stars
Perennial is probably the most famous St. Louis brewery among the hipster set, largely because of its extensive barrel program. And the barrel room (which we saw on a tour) is one of the best things I have smelled in a while. The beers themselves were....fine. Both of their Belgian IPAs were solid if not spectacular, focusing a little more on the funk than the hops (as one might argue they should). The one barrel-aged offering they did have (17) was an interesting blend of mint, chocolate, and alcohol. All of those flavors were there and well-done, but I don't think they did anything together to make it a whole, interesting beer. I will say Perennial did not have their most famous offering (Abraxas) on tap, so once again this feels like an incomplete grade. But nothing quite blew me away enough to convince me my middling review is wrong, either.
2. Alpha Brewing Company (link) - 2.5 Stars
We hit up Alpha the first night, as it was maybe six blocks from our hotel. This turned out to be a good decision, because it would have been impossible to sample everything I wanted the next day (when we went to all of the other places). There was no one great beer at Alpha, but they more than made up for that with a whole bunch of very good beers. Their sours (the beta program...get it?) were clever and didn't lack for pucker. The Rouge Biere reminded me a great deal of Almanac's old sours...super sour but lacking everything else just a bit. The Delphian essentially tasted just like a medium-sweet white wine. The others I sampled were roughly similar, executing their gameplan fairly well, while never quite reaching transcendence. The non-sour side of things was good as well, with a solid Citra pale (Atheist Ale) and a nice NEIPA-tasting beer without the cloudiness (Sagwa). Alpha had easily the best depth of any place we visited, which suggests that it's a great place to visit again and again.
1. Schlafly (The St. Louis Brewery) (link) - 3 Stars
We didn't visit Schlafly on this trip, as we had both been before and wanted to try new things. And while Schlafly rarely makes the most clever or boundary-pushing beers, they just might be better than everything else we had that weekend. Offerings like the Dry-hopped APA, Coffee Stout, and English IPA rarely come up in beer geek circles, but all of those and more are super-well executed beers that are among the best examples of their kind. There's a lot to be said for newer breweries that expand the frontiers of the industry, but there's still plenty of room for an old standard that keeps doing what it does well.
