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.