Commencement Celebrations!

 I would like to start this post by first congratulating my beautiful wife for successfully defending her thesis and obtaining her PhD! I would also like to thank the electrical line workers who promptly returned power to my house after last weeks storms so that I can write this here post, but more on that later. I would also like to apologize to my loyal followers for my lack of posts in the past week. My schedule has been preoccupied with post commencement celebrations, shuttling parents from engagement to engagement and keeping busy with my work which includes speaking at a regional conference over the memorial day weekend. Since I was so busy, my beer drinking was sort of limited in both scope and breadth, so I figured lumping all the beers I drank together into one big post would be an easy way to share with you, my experiences over the past week.

First off, early in the week I picked up a 6 pack of Left Hand Brewery's Milk Stout. I have previously had some of Left Hand's other beers; none of which I have ever blogged about, but suffice it to say that given my previous experience with Left Hand, that I had very high hopes for their Milk Stout being a winner! Indeed, my hopes were not dashed! This is a really wonderful beer! The beer pours with a rich head and dark body that lets little to no light through. It finishes with a sweet and caramel finish that you sometimes don't get from other stouts. I believe that LH's website summarizes the experience of drinking this beer really well when it says "Milk sugar in your stout is like cream in your coffee". If you like a dark beer with a sweet finish and great mouth feel, pick up a six pack of this stellar brew!

Tank 7 by lamplight

For all those readers not from the Saint Louis area, last week we experienced some pretty horrible springtime weather. We had pounding rain, tornado sightings, extremely large hail and wind gusts that blew down trees. As a result, my house was without power for 24 hours. In my neighborhood there were 6 trees that knocked down major power lines and caused a lot of damage. Fortunately, my house is still standing and the only inconvenience to me, was a little leaf and branch clean up, and of course the fact that my power was out for 24 hours! I didn't want to open the refrigerator for fear that the food in there would spoil, so Abby and I decided to go out to dinner. After a couple of Stone Levitations at Barristers Pub in Clayton, I still wanted another beer, so we stopped off and grabbed a bottle of Boulevard Tank 7 and hoped that the power would have returned so I could enjoy this beer. Tank 7 is classified as a "Saison" style beer, however, with strong fruity notes, this beer is just barely reminiscent of a Belgain style ale. The hops in the beer are present but not over whelming and the light color in this beer make it extremely drinkable for an 8%ABV beer. I really like Boulevard beers and this one is so unique and flavorful that it has lost its "special occasion only" status and has been promoted to a "daily drinker"! Unfortunately, when we returned home to drink this beer, our power had not yet returned. Abby and I turned this negative into a positive however. I grabbed my iPod and put some music on, turned on my camping lantern and we played cards and drank beer by lamp light all night. It was like we were camping in our living room! It was a truly wonderful night at home with the wife!

The power returned the next day and life returned to normal, and as is customary on Thursday nights, we went to HandleBar for trivia night. I was informed by friend of the blog, Paul McGrew, that 2nd Shift Brewery's hop filled Art of Neurosis was flowing on tap and as a self proclaimed "hop-head", boy was I excited for this beer. This is a 7.1% ABV "hop sandwich" featuring Simcoe and Columbus hops. It pours from the keg with a golden light color that is clear and emits an odor of almost pure hop tea. It finishes very clean with the crispness you would expect from a beer destined to be in the hands and mouths of hop heads everywhere. I am currently unaware if this beer is being bottled and sold anywhere in Saint Louis, I believe this beer is a limited engagement as the 2nd Shift website claims that they "should be making this one again soon". I really hope its sooner than later because I NEED to get this beer again!

Our trivia team this week did pretty bad, and by "pretty bad" I mean we tied for last place! This did not concern me in the least however. Maybe this weeks topics were just not in our wheelhouse. I am confident we will be able to redeem ourselves next week... at least I hope so! I also hope the AON will still be on tap next week!

As always, if you would like to follow me on this Drinking Adventure just click on the link on the right where you can subscribe to my feeds. you can also follow me on twitter at @williepawn or friend me on Facebook. You can also email me here. I am also keeping a compiled list of beers tasted HERE that you can look at.   

Headin' to the HandleBar

This blog post also got lost in the shuffle... it may be a little outdated, but there is still some good stuff in there.

Tonight was a busy night. It started off with a Pubcrawl meeting where we purchased all of our costumes for the upcoming Quinceanera Crawl. It is going to be a blast and I hope to see all of my readers there as we celebrate the 15th year of Pubcrawls through the Central West End. You can respond your attendance on the Facebook group page found HERE or you can just join us at the following bars (you may have to decipher our "spanglish" interpretation of some of these bars):

6:00 Tortillaria
6:40 Zona de Loading
7:20 Flora Loco
8:00 Rosa’s
8:40 34 Casa
9:20 Cantina Louie
10:00 El Duff’s
10:40 El Dressel’s
11:20 !Viva!

Titan IPA

After we gathered our costumes together (we look great by the way), we capped the meeting at Wildflower for a quick beer or two. My first beer there was Grand Rapids Michigan's Founders "Dirty Bastard". Dirty Bastard is a very malty Scotch Ale that was, for the lack of a better word, good. there was nothing Earth shattering about this beer. It's a pretty standard Scotch ale. It may be a little maltier than most, but I am so much more a hops guy than a malt guy, so maybe this beer was just not for me!

Second and Third beers were both the "Titan IPA" made by Great Divide Brewery which I have blogged about in a previous post. This is one of my favorite beers of the moment and I will have to suggest that everyone try it!

Cheers! PCC!

After 3 beers, it was time to play some softball! We have been bombarded with rain in Saint Louis this year, essentially ruining any hopes for a normal softball season. The weather tonight, however, was spectacular and we were able to get our game in without incident! After our hard fought victory, we were looking for a place to grab a cold beer. The HandleBar on Manchester Ave was where we ended up. Not only do they have an exceptionally great selection of beers, but they also have wonderful food and a very unique bicycle theme throughout the entire bar. A unique feature of this place is the selection of local beers they have on tap. This is not the place to go if you are looking for some of that "fizzy yellow stuff".

Mena hiding!

Tonight I started off with 2nd Shift's Colaboration ale This beer was a little light for my tastes, so I decided to jump back to an old favorite for my following 2 beers; O'Fallon Brewery's "5 Day IPA". For all intents and purposes, this is my "go-to" beer when I am looking for a delicious craft beer. It has a rich dark color and the hops are present and almost sweet to the tounge, making it a very easy to drink IPA. O'Fallon does not distribute much outside of the Midwest, making this a beer that will be missed when I move away from here.

The HandleBar, proved to be a very welcoming place with everything I look for in a good bar; great local tap beer, awesome selection of food, knowledgeable and interesting bartenders and of course, my favorite, trivia nights! I really enjoyed myself tonight and hope to sample more of the delicious beers they have on tap. If you would like more info on the HandleBar, follow the link to their website HERE... or follow them on Twitter like I am... they are @HandleBarSTL.

In my continuing "Adventure", I like to become inspired by the people who serve me beer! With this in mind, this is the part of my post, where I ask my bartender the following question: If you had committed some heinous crime and were to be sentenced to death... What would your last beer be before you were put to death?"

It is an admittedly morbid thought, but I think it not only yields insight into the personality of my bar keep, but also exposes me to potentially interesting beers!

Tonight my bartender was a perky and very knowledgeable young woman by the name of Keelee (I hope I spelled it right). Keelee stated that she would want her last beer to be Northern Indiana's own 3 Floyd's "Robert the Bruce". I did not drink this beer tonight, but found out later that this beer is a malty "Scotch Ale" named after the great Scottish King and Warrior. Being completely uninterested in history, I had never heard of "Robert the Bruce" (The beer or the man) before this evening, and found it interesting, that one of the patrons of the bar who had over heard my conversation with Keeley knew a whole lot about the man (not so much about the beer). I didn't get this fine young man's name, so I will refer to him as "Historian", because he really did know a lot about history. Historian went on and on about all the reasons that Robert the Bruce was such a great king and that he fought vast armies to keep the Scottish safe... most of which I sort of tuned out because I wanted to drink my beer! However, I did take away the fact that Robert the Bruce, was sort of like the character of King Leonidis' in the movie "300" where he slaughtered massive amounts of enemies in order to preserve his land. I intend to find out more about "Robert the Bruce" (the beer) in coming weeks as I add it to my list of beers to seek out. If any of my readers spot this beer around Saint Louis, please post in the comments below where you have spotted this beer!

That is all for today, if you would like to follow me on this Drinking Adventure, please click on the link on the right where you can subscribe to my feeds. you can also follow me on twitter at @williepawn or friend me on Facebook. You can also email me here. I am also keeping a compiled list of beers tasted HERE that you can look at.   

Start of Craft Beer Week

Today is the start of American Craft Beer Week. Do your duty and follow the links to find out more about American Homebrewers Association founder and all around beer guy, Charlie Papazian and the festivities contained in American Craft Beer Week. I would also like to give a big STL shout out to fellow beer blogger Mike from STLHops.com for keeping me in the loop about all sorts of great beer events going on all around the Saint Louis area!

To celebrate the start of Craft Beer Week, I decided to highlight 3 of my favorite breweries in this post! First up, Saint Louis's own Schlafly Brewery. Schlafly has been a staple of the Saint Louis's beer scene for 20 years now and they have recently grown in popularity due to the fact that 1) they make awesome beer and 2) people want to support the local economy and not give their money to (evil) AB/InBev! Schlafly has been a favorite of mine since I first moved to Saint Louis 6 years ago and even in that short time, they have changed and evolved making better and better beers to keep up with up and coming beer trends. For a long time, their Dry Hopped APA was my "go to" beer! Tonight I started Craft Beer Week with their "special release" Export IPA, a British Style IPA with fruity/yeasty notes and a lemony citrus bite from the British style hops used in this 7.2% ABV beauty. I typically love west coast style IPA's, and this is NOT one of those, but I still loved it! This is bitter and fruity and has a really strong caramel malt backbone to stand up to those big flavors. I drank three of these things; one right after the other because they were so delicious and also because at the time I was unaware that they were so high in alcohol!

Next up, Great Lakes Brewing Company's Burning River. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to visit the Great Lakes Brewery while on a trip thru Cleveland last fall and I was not only shocked at how good the beers were, but about how awesome the company itself is. GLBC prides itself on what it calls the "Triple Bottom Line" - to engage in economic, social and environmental practices that achieve a sustainable, yet profitable, business. I could go into detail about how much I liked that they use their low fills of Ela Fitsgerald in their ice cream sundae's to avoid waste, or how they grow their own crops for the food they serve in the brewpub, or how they feed their spent grains to the cattle that eventually make their way to the tables at the brewpub to highlight exactly how they run such an a virtuous business, but that would be distracting from the fact they make kick ass beers!

The Burning River is an IPA with very crisp clean flavor. It is a super drinkable IPA bursting with Cascade Hop citrus notes that I absolutely love and which makes this beer one of my favorites! I am not the only one who who thinks this is a great beer, in fact they have won multiple awards for this beer and believe me, they deserve it! This is a great beer!

For my last beer of the night, I went with a proverbial favorite of mine Ale Asylum's Hopalicious. This is a treat that I can only get in Madison, Wisconsin, and therefore I only break it out on special occasions or to share with other like minded beer nerds! 11 separate Cascade Hop additions make this IPA a floral bombing of your mouth! The citrus and pine notes dominate over a crisp clean pale ale body that doesn't interfere with the enjoyment of my favorite hop flavor! Truly a treat and one that I wish all my readers could experience! This is the beer I think of when I think of home!

Please follow me on this Drinking Adventure! Click on the link on the right where you can subscribe to my feeds. you can also follow me on twitter at @williepawn or friend me on Facebook. You can also email me here. I am also keeping a compiled list of beers tasted HERE that you can look at.   

Homebrew Update!!

transfer into the secondary with excess hops

The Indian Brown Ale that I started last week has been transferred from the primary fermentation vessel to the secondary fermentation vessel. In this process, I have also added 1oz of whole leaf cascade hops to the mix. This process is called "dry hopping" and will add a lot of aroma and hop flavor to this malty ale.

cat not required to make good beer

My next step is to bottle this beer. Bottling can be a tedious task. The hops need to be filtered out and priming sugar needs to be added to the beer. Priming sugar is needed to carbonate the beer. The dormant yeast in the beer, will experience a boost of sugar and wake up! They will consume the bottling sugar creating CO2 gas that pressurizes the bottle and carbonates the beer. It really is a magical thing!

dead yeasties

Hoppy Dead Guy

 I find it nearly impossible to not drink while I play with my beer. Today I chose one of my previous homebrews. This was supposed to be a clone of Rogue's Dead Guy Ale that I dry hopped. It turned out more malty than a normal Dead Guy; however, I am very pleased with how this beer tastes. It has great color and pours with a thick head of foam that clings to the glass beautifully.

If you would like more info on the progress of This batch of homebrew, or on anything beer related, please follow me on this Drinking Adventure! Click on the link on the right where you can subscribe to my feeds. you can also follow me on twitter at @williepawn or friend me on Facebook. You can also email me here. I am also keeping a compiled list of beers tasted HERE that you can look at.   

Trivia Night at The HandleBar

Trivia night at The HandleBar is a good time. In fact, its better than a good time, its a great time! Especailly if you like trivia and you have some good friends to play with! The trivia consists of 5 rounds. Each round has 5 different questions and you place a "bet" on how many points you want to risk based on how confident you are are in your answer. The point values go up as you progress through the night and the questions also get progressively more difficult. The two guys who run the triva actually have personality and pick topical trivia that is fun to answer. All of this, and there is great beer to drink!

For all your beer needs, I would recommend talking to Keeley at the bar. She is easily identified as a knowledgeable beer person by her grain and hops tattoos on her forearms. The HandleBar also has some good drink specials, like their version of a beer grab bag where you may get lucky by getting a good beer, or you may end up with a Stag, either way, its cheap and will get ya drunk!

Tonight I started off with a Ferguson IPA. They actually put their own home grown hops into their beer, and its that type of attention to detail that I can really appreciate! This is a very clean IPA that does not over power on the hops or the malt making it very approachable to people who may not be comfortable drinking craft beers.

After 2 of those, my homie, Mena, hooked me up with a Moose Drool in a can. This is a great dark beer from Big Sky Brewing. They say that this is a "brown ale" but it is my contention that it is too dark for a brown ale and is bordering on a porter. Regardless of nomenclature, this is a great beer for those who like malty beers. There is virtually no hop bitterness and it is a dark sweet mixture that goes down smooth and is surprisingly pleasant to drink out of a can!

I guzzled down 1 more Moose Drool in a can and Abby and Mena took down some Keystone and Stag respectively as we rolled to the final round of trivia. Going into the final round, we were in 5th place and felt like we were pretty much out of the running for the money (they give away prizes for winning trivia too if I didn't mention that earlier). The goal of this last round was to match the actor/actress to the 3 movies they list. Unfortunately I don't remember the names of the movies, but it is  insignificant as none of us had even heard of any of these movies. Using our powers of scientific reasoning, however, by matching the ages of the people listed to the years of the movies release, we deduced all the correct answers and leapfrogged 3 teams to take 2nd place and win 10$ that we will likely spend next Thursday at trivia night again!!!

I can't wait for trivia night next week!

As always, if you would like to follow me on this Drinking Adventure, please click on the link on the right where you can subscribe to my feeds. you can also follow me on twitter at @williepawn or friend me on Facebook. You can also email me here. I am also keeping a compiled list of beers tasted HERE that you can look at.   

Pubcrawl and its Aftermath

Ole! PCC

The 15th Bi-Annual Central West End Pubcrawl was held this past weekend. To celebrate this "Quinceanera" of sorts, we dressed up in our finest Mariachi outfits and Pubcrawled through The Central West End of Saint Louis! This is one of those times where my blog will fall into disarray. Because everything gets a little fuzzy after 5 beers and a couple shots of tequila. I will do my best to remember what beers I drank, however, my phone died and I have no recollection of EXACTLY how much I drank.  This is probably a good thing since the point of this blog is not to experience excess, but to enjoy all different types and styles of beer. Anyway...

We started the day with a shot of tequila at home. Since this is a beer blog, I did not chronicle the tequila, but suffice it to say that it was DEEEEELICIOUS! (1800 Reposado)

We always start our crawl at Mi Ranchito; a Mexican Restaurant in University City. The 4 of us split 2 pitchers of Dos Equis Lager while we filled our bellies with delicious Mexican food. I had the Burrito California with chicken and ate nearly the whole thing, which is quite the accomplishment considering the size of this burrito!

After we stuffed ourselves silly, it was time to start the crawl. We began this crawl at Tortillaria at 5pm. I ordered a Corona and began trying to recruit friends that were leaving work to come on the crawl with us. People were looking at us like we were crazy people... like they had never seen grown ass adults dressed in Mariachi outfits and crazy dresses while blowing on Kazoos and shaking moraccas while drinking beer on a Friday night. I mean, c'mon!

We stuck around Tortillaria till about 6:30. By this time I had consumed one more Corona and another XX. So I was feeling pretty good and decided to "take a bar off". The next bar I drank at was Wildflower. I have been a big fan of the Great Divide IPA They have on tap there, so I bought one for myself, one for my wife, and one for my best friend AB who came all the way from Madison Wisconsin to crawl on this last Pubcrawl with me.

AB and The Wife enjoy some Great Divide

After Wildflower we hit the dive bar scene. "Rosie's" and "34 Club" are two of my favorite bars in Saint Louis. Dark and smoky but they know how to make a drink. The beer selection there was not too good and I was forced to drink cheap beer at both places; Bud Light and PBR respectively. Don't get me wrong, I love good beer, but to drink craft beers all night can sometimes be burdensome, and sometimes that fizzy yellow stuff is okay in a situation like a Pubcrawl!

Our next bar was "Bar Louie" one of my least favorite bars in Saint Louis. Typically filled with douchey 20 somethings wearing too much cologne and hair gel with their "Abercrombie and Fitch" visor and popped collared shirts. However, on Pubcrawl nights its great! The bar is filled with all my friends and this is about the time of the night when people start getting sloppy! People start making out with new acquaintances, romantic interests are started or maybe they make new friends with people just sitting at the bar (I won't name names... you all know who you are).

Next bar was Duff's. I personally always love Duffs. I love it for many reasons. The biggest of which, is that you can always hear the conversation you are having, it is not too loud. I also have always had a great time in that bar; on the Hip Hop themed "You Can't Touch This Crawl" we did hip hop dances outside, I rode my tiny bicycle around the tables outside on the "Mario Kart Krawl", I have seen a girl puke on the floor in this bar. All in all, Duff's rules!

We called it a night shortly thereafter and headed home... the following morning, The Drinking Adventure continued!

Waking up after a Pubcrawl; stomach cramping because of all the beer and the bad decision to hit the "Jack in the Box" drive thru at midnight. The only thing that can help is always more beer... and greasy food.

Modus and a Slinger!

To remedy my situation, we rallied some troops to brunch at Local Harvest. A restaurant specializing in serving up locally raised and grown food to the people of Saint Louis. I was looking forward to a Bloody Mary for breakfast, but they had no liquor and instead got Ska Brewing Company's Modus Hoporandi my current front runner for favorite beer in Saint Louis. The combination of the chili in the slinger, the hot sauce the beer and the beautiful hot sun made my hangover disappear in a flash! I felt so good, infact that I promply replied to my friend Trenton's request to play Kickball with him with an enthusiastic yes! We played 2 games of kickball during which time I consumed 3 of Trenton's Budweisers. I must say, having not played Kickball since 6th grade, nothing goes quite as good with Kickball as cheap beer!

I had not had a chance yet to chill with AB one on one since he arrived last night, so I figured I would take this time to catch up with him a little bit before we head home to have dinner. We stopped by The HandleBar for a couple of choice brews. I also had an alterior motive, Keeley was saving me a "Robert the Bruce" that I will dedicate a blog post to soon.

Since I had Ska Beer this morning, I figured it would be appropriate to have it again this afternoon! This time I chose the Buster Nut Brown Ale. A brown ale with crisp hop accents. I really liked this beer. I was anticipating it tasting similar to Ale Asylum's Madtown Nut-brown and I think it fell just short of those expectations.

For dinner, we went to my favorite restaurant in Saint Louis, a tiny Jamaican place called "Da Palm Tree". I had the Chicken Curry and 3 Red Stripes. As Ice Cube would say "It was a good day".

It was great seeing AB and catching up on old times and I always have a good time on Pubcrawls and will miss everyone that I have been on the Pubcrawl Committee with over the past years. Its weekends like this one that make me happy to be alive! especially after how much I drank! I'm lucky to not be hospitalized with alcohol poisoning!!

As always, if you would like to follow me on this Drinking Adventure, please click on the link on the right where you can subscribe to my feeds. you can also follow me on twitter at @williepawn or friend me on Facebook. You can also email me here. I am also keeping a compiled list of beers tasted HERE that you can look at.   

Bridge Night (Abby Turns in Her Thesis)

Old Rasputin

I drink a lot with my wife. In fact, she often encourages me to drink. However, it is a rare occasion where our schedules are both open to go out drinking together where we can drink unabated. I play softball 3 days a week and she is perpetually training for marathons. Therefore, tonight was very special for both of us! We were also out to celebrate the culmination of her thesis work and the printing out of her final document making the night all that more memorable. We decided to indulge in some tasty brews from Bridge Bar in downtown Saint Louis. Bridge carries a dizzying array of craft beers both local and imported. This was a rare opportunity for me to try some beers that I have never had before.

Pranqster

First up, North Coast Brewing Company's Old Rasputin. This is a very dark Russian Imperial Stout with a strong coffee overtone. The bubbles left a distinct line between the black beer and the frothy white delicious head on this beer. The Old Rasputin clocks in at a stagger inducing 10% ABV and it hides it well making this beer very drinkable and enjoyable without tasting too alcoholic.

I decided to keep with the North Coast beers for my second beer of the night; I decided on the Pranqster. This is a deceptively flavorful beer that was described as a Belgian golden. This beer had the golden color you would expect from a Budweiser or similar golden colored beer. However, this brew packed the punch you would expect in a Belgian style wheat beer, coming in at 7.6% ABV. It had a sharp, fruity and yeasty taste over a drinkable body. All in all, not a bad beer. My only real critique of this beer would be that it was too bubbly for my tastes.

Pursuit of Hoppiness

My next beer, I decided on Grand Teton Brewing Company's Pursuit of Hoppiness imperial red ale. I was intrigued by this beer's 100IBU's using all American style hops and I had very high hopes that I would like this. Unfortunately, this beer felt very unbalanced to me. I liked the color and the aroma was sublime, however, the bitterness of the hops dominated the sweetness of the grain too much. I will admit, I was already feeling pretty "saucy" from the previous two beers, so perhaps my palate was not in such great shape! I may have to revisit this beer somewhere down the line when my judgment is a little clearer!

Bridge is an exceptional place to get good beer. They have an amazing selection of tap and bottled beer and the atmosphere is perfect for sipping on some hard to find brews. This is one of those places you want to go to when you want to showcase that you can find good beer in Saint Louis! Incidenatally, they also have a very nice food menu filled with food that pairs nicely with the beers they have on hand. The bartenders are all very knowledgeable and can easily suggest a food pairing with the beer style you enjoy. I would highly recommend anyone who loves beer to visit Bridge at your next opportunity! You can follow them on Twitter HERE, like I am!

After three relatively strong beers, I felt like I needed something substantial in my stomach, so we headed over to the Bleeding Deacon for some delicious pub food. I had the Fish and Chips which were served with deep fried capers which gave a shockingly nice touch to the fried fish and fries. Abby had the Veggie Philly and said it was also very good. I have yet to be disappointed by the food or the beers at the Bleeding Deacon. Speaking of beers, while I noshed my fish I guzzled a Founder's Red Rye PA which was not as good as their IPA but was still enjoyable.

As always, if you would like to follow me on this Drinking Adventure, please click on the link on the right where you can subscribe to my feeds. you can also follow me on twitter at @williepawn or friend me on Facebook. You can also email me here. I am also keeping a compiled list of beers tasted HERE that you can look at.