• Tues. 5-14, 5-7pm - Beer & Cheese (& Meat & Chocolate) Tasting at Liquor Barn Hamburg in Lexington, KY.
• Tues. 5-14, 5-7pm - Tasting Schlafly seasonals and new Can Sessions at ABC Liquor in Wichita, Kansas.
• Tues. 5-14 - Bottleworks Cask Night. Tapping at 6:30pm. AIPA dry-hopped with with Amarillo, Centennial, and Simcoe hops.
• Tues. 5-14, 7pm - NYC Schlafly Beer Launch at The Pony Bar
• Wed. 5-15, 5-8pm - Schlafly Tap Takeover at 12 South Taproom & Grill in Nashville, TN. Kolsch, Raspberry Hefeweizen, Dry Hopped APA, American IPA, Summer Lager and Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Stout on tap. 
• Wed. 5-15, 5-7pm - Tasting Schlafly seasonals and new Can Sessions at Goebel Liquors in Wichita, Kansas.
• Wed. 5-15 Pint Night at Tilted Kilt, St. Louis, MO.
• Thurs. 5-16, 4-6pm - Schlafly Tasting at Wagner Wine & Spirits in Paducah, KY. Tasting Belgian Golden Ale, Summer Lager and both Can Session beers.
• Thurs. 5-16 - ACBW Toast at ITAP Soulard.
• Thurs. 5-16 - Cugino’s in Florissant, MO.  Schlafly specials and ACBW toast at 7pm.
• Thurs. 5-16, 3-7pm - Tasting at SAMs Club Columbia, MO.
• Thurs. 5-16 Schlafly can special at Uprise Bakery with a keep the glass special. Columbia, MO.
• Thurs. 5-16, 6-9pm - Schlafly Tap Takeover at Flamingo Row in Paducah, KY. Pale Ale, Slurpin’ Bird Ale (American Brown Ale), Belgian Golden Ale, American IPA and Black IPA on tap.
• Thurs. 5-16 - Schlafly specials at bring your own mug night at Hammerstones, STL.
• Thurs. 5-16, 4-7pm - Sampling at John’s Grocery in Iowa City.  Pale Ale, Raspberry Hefeweizen, Belgian Golden Ale, American IPA
• Wed. & Thurs 5-15, 5-16 - Tap invasion at The Mill Iowa City, all week. Live Music. 10-12 Schlafly taps.
• Fri. 5-17 - Evening tasting at Hilton Airport. St. Louis, MO.
• Fri. 5-17  - The Waiting Room (STL) celebrates ACBW with a Schlafly Pint Night
• Fri. 5-17 - St. Peter & Pauls BBQ and Beer Tasting.
• Fri. 5-17 - SAMs Club tasting Springfield, MO.
  
• Fri. 5-17 Keep the snifter night at Barleys Brewhaus in Overland Park. Buy a pint of Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Stout and keep the snifter. Sampling new Can Sessions and Belgian Golden Ale, as well as tapping the last keg of Black IPA in KS.  
• 5-17, 5-18, 5-19 Lower Town Arts & Music Festival, Paducah Kentucky.
• Sat. 5- 18, 1-5pm - JK O’Donnels “Beoir Go Leoir” Beer Festival in Ft. Wayne, IN. Beers: Dry Hopped APA, Raspberry Hefeweizen, Kolsch, and American IPA
• Sat. 5-18, Noon-5pm - Tasting at Dierbergs Des Peres, MO.
• Sat. 5-18, 2-6pm - Hopfest in KC 2-6pm VIP at 1pm. Beers to be announced. At least 6 styles.
• Sat. 5-18 - Taste of Maplewood, St.Louis, MO
• Sat. 5-18  - Soulard Maifest
• Sun. 5-19 - Scottish Arms – Schlafly specials – English Premiere League Soccer ticket raffle.

All of our beers have a set of specifications, abv, IBUs, color, clarity etc.  On occasion a batch falls out of spec for a variety of reasons mostly steming from the fact that we are using a living organism (yeast) to ferment an agricultural product (barley) which makes each batch a little different.  When a beer doesn’t meet our strict standards, we won’t sell it.  When we found out that a batch of our famous Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout was slightly out of spec, we, as a brewing team, were crushed.  We spend more time, effort, money and love on Imperial Stout than any other beer. 

Beer is not just a set of numbers, however,  it’s really all about taste, and this batch of Imperial Stout tasted great.  The last thing we wanted to do was dump 60bbls of great tasting beer, but we knew we couldn’t bottle it and sell it as our normal Imperial Stout.  So we decided on a third option, modify the beer and sell it on draft as a new beer. 

All sorts of ideas were thrown around, so many infact we decided to split the batch into four 15bbl batches and treat each one differently.  The first 15-bbls we decided to add raspberry purée to the bourbon barrels.  The second set of 15bbls we added vanilla beans, the third we added cocoa nibs, and the last 15bbls we will add coffee. 

The first batch, Raspberry Imperial Stout, goes on tap at the Tap Room on May 10th, and if I do say so myself tastes amazing.  Think chocolate covered raspberries. I’m equally excited about the other three as I know they will be an interesting twist on a great beer.  Come on down to the Tap Room and give one of them a try, each batch will go on after the previous one runs out, and should run through the whole summer.  Enjoy.

Downton Abbey – Pale Ale
This classic English session ale is simple, elegant, and balanced. Fit for a lord or a footman, Schlafly Pale Ale is both sweet and bitter at the same time, much like the show’s polite yet scathing British dialogue.
Serve: British tulip pint glass (upstairs) or pewter stein (downstairs)

Mad Men – Single Malt Scottish Ale
The beer for this show needs to be stiff.  But it also needs to be smooth, pensive, and pair well with Lucky Strike cigarettes. Imagine swirling a glass of this beer, aged in Scotch Whisky barrels, while staring out the window of your Madison Avenue high rise corner office.
Serve: Lowball scotch glass. No ice.
 
Breaking Bad – Summer Lager
This show takes place in New Mexico, and every shot of the oppressive sun-bleached desert makes me crave a cold glass of Summer Lager like a Crankster Gangster needs his go-go rocks. Pairs well with chicken from El Pollo Loco.
Serve: Griffin beaker - 500mL
 
Battlestar Galactica – Session IPA
Have you seen the new can design? This beer is from the future! It helps that this beer is a session beer, so you can put down one after the other during marathon viewings. I recommend grabbing two of the 6-pack can boxes, so you can pour one out for each of the lost Twelve Colonies.
Serve: Cylon Service

The Wire – Porter
I think of our porter as under appreciated and misunderstood, kind of like the city where The Wire takes place, Baltimore. Craft beer newbies see a porter and think, “oh I don’t like dark beer. It’s so heavy.” But do they realize that a good porter is sweet, mild, and medium-bodied? People hear Baltimore and think, “oh, I don’t like homicide or crack.” Do they realize there is more to Baltimore than crime and crab cakes? Sad that it gets a bad rap from people who have never been there (kind of like St. Louis?).  Indeed.
Serve: Brown Bottle. Paper Bag.
 
Game of Thrones – Belgian Golden Ale
This show needs a strong ale fit for service at a King’s Landing feast paired with roasted squab with leeks or lamprey pie. At 8% ABV with sweet and spicy flavors, Belgian Golden Ale passes the test, and as a bonus, bottle’s label is adorned with what looks like the Lion of Lannister. Drink up. A Lannister always finishes his beer.
Serve: Horn Goblet
 
The Walking Dead – Pumpkin Ale
I picked pumpkin ale for two reasons: 1) new seasons of the show always debut around Halloween, when this special release seasonal is on the shelves, and 2) watching crazed fanatics of this beer stockpile cases of it makes me wonder if they are preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
Serve: Camelback. So it’s ready to go when they come for you.

Crowd before Pumpkin Ale release party at Bottleworks

The Monthly Editorial Blog By Schlafly Beer Co-Founder Tom Schlafly

Turmoil in the banking industry isn’t the only crisis to hit Cyprus in the past few years. There was also a major flap involving the KEO Brewery, whose largest shareholder is the Orthodox Church of Cyprus. According to Agence France Presse, a bottle of KEO beer was prominently featured in a movie that included scenes shot in a Greek tavern in New York. While most businesses would appreciate product placement of this sort, the Cypriot Orthodox clergy were not amused by the highly pornographic nature of the movie in question. Anticipating the inevitable questions from alert readers (ARs) whose inquiring minds want to know, I do not know the name of the movie or the Greek tavern where these scenes were filmed.

As far as I know, there has never been a product placement of Schlafly Beer in a movie with any rating, from G to NC-17 to XXX. Our brewery did, however, have a cameo role in the 1981 science fiction action film Escape from New York. Strictly speaking, the brewery itself didn’t appear in the movie, but rather the building that later became The Schlafly Tap Room. ARs will recall that the plot involves an apocalyptic future when Manhattan Island has been converted into a maximum security prison. For reasons I never quite understood, John Carpenter, who co-wrote and directed the movie, decided to shoot most of it in St. Louis. Perhaps the neighborhood around 21st and Locust Streets was more desolate than anything he could find in New York City at the time.

Over the years St. Louis has done a lot more for New York than merely serving as a cinematic stand-in. Back in the 19th century St. Louis provided some of the expertise needed to construct the Brooklyn Bridge. I am not making this up. When James Eads was building his eponymously named bridge across the Mississippi he developed caissons to protect the workers under water. While giving a tour of the project to Washington Roebling, the engineer who later built the Brooklyn Bridge, Eads proudly showed him the caissons he had designed. Roebling proceeded to copy this design for caissons used in constructing the Brooklyn Bridge, at least according to a lawsuit that Eads filed against him.

Throughout much of the 20th century millions of New Yorkers depended on St. Louis to go to and from their jobs, homes, schools, shopping etc. How so? Many of the cars used by the New York Subway System were manufactured by the St. Louis Car Company at 3023 North Broadway. The same company also made passenger capsules to transport visitors to the top of the Gateway Arch.

Several St. Louisans have also made significant contributions to the sports scene in New York, no one perhaps more than Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra, who played for and later managed the New York Yankees, one of the most storied franchises in all of sports. He appeared in fourteen World Series and won ten championships, both of which are records. To put these numbers in perspective, Yogi personally has won more World Series than all but two major league teams have in their entire histories (the two teams being the Yankees and the Cardinals).

Speaking of Cardinals, the most prominent religious leader in New York is from St. Louis. I’m referring to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the St. Louis native who is currently the Archbishop of New York and was considered by some commentators to be a serious contender in the most recent papal election.

Cardinal Dolan, who is almost as quotable as Yogi, once said that since coming to New York he had learned it was best to drink with the Irish and eat with the Italians. Without disputing his Eminence’s culinary expertise, I would respectfully suggest that any short list of the best places to eat in New York would most certainly include restaurants run by another St. Louis native, Danny Meyer.

Danny arrived on the New York restaurant scene in 1985, when he opened Union Square Café. Since that time he has become perhaps the most critically acclaimed restaurateur in the City, accumulating multiple awards far too numerous to list in this space. He’s also an alumnus of Camp Nebagamon in northern Wisconsin, the alma mater of Dan Kopman, the co-founder of the brewery.

ARs will recall my references to Nebagamon in this space three years ago. I continue to marvel at the accomplishments of its alumni and their esprit de corps. I still recall a question posed by one alumnus one night over a beer at The Tap Room: “Do you think native Americans used to send their sons to summer camps with Jewish names?”

Whatever the answer, the Nebagamon connection between Danny Meyer and Dan Kopman is largely responsible for the upcoming launch of Schlafly Beer in New York City in the week of May 13-17. Yogi Berra, whose 88th birthday is on May 12th, will be able to celebrate his special day with a beer from his home town. Cardinal Dolan, who has told me that he likes Schlafly, can also enjoy a home town beer without getting on a plane to St. Louis.

Among Danny’s many restaurants in New York are Shake Shack and Blue Smoke, both of which have operations at Citi Field, which reminds me of some sports trivia that even most New Yorkers might not know.

NYC Hearts Schlafly

Who won the first game played at Citi Field and the first game played at Madison Square Garden? The answer: Georgetown University, whose baseball team beat St. John’s before the start of the Mets season in 2009 and whose basketball team beat Manhattan in 1968, during my sophomore year in college.

I mention this because it would be wonderful to have Schlafly Beer available both at Citi Field (when the Cardinals play the Mets) and at Madison Square Garden (when the Blues play the Rangers). It would even be good to find Schlafly Beer in the Greek tavern that made KEO infamous, though I’d hate to see good beer wasted on kinky activities characteristic of pornographic movies.

The Monthly Editorial Blog By Schlafly Beer Co-Founder Tom Schlafly

Back in 1970, when I was in army basic training at Fort Jackson, SC, the men in my unit spent a lot of time complaining about officers and making fun of them. We ridiculed everyone in our chain of command from President Richard Nixon down to our company commander. In spite of our grumbling, our commander in chief was re-elected in 1972 in one of the largest landslides in American history. Less than two years later he resigned in disgrace, the first U.S. president ever to do so.

Much of our complaining took place over cans of 3.2% beer, the only offering at the PX. I’m pleased to report that much better beer is now available to some of our men and women in the armed services thanks to a visionary air force colonel who forced me to reconsider the nasty things I had said about officers 43 years ago. As has previously been reported in this space, Colonel Al Hunt demonstrated extraordinary leadership back in 2006 when he ordered that Schlafly Beer be served at Scott Air Force Base in the officers’ club, in the enlisted club and at the golf course.

This decision by Colonel Hunt opened many doors for me. I was able to rub shoulders with generals and admirals at the Scott Club, a place that would have been strictly off-limits when I was a lowly private. Schlafly Bottleworks was chosen as the venue to host the Adjutants General Association of the United States, meaning we probably had more stars in one room than any place outside the Pentagon. A few years later I was invited to give the keynote address to the National Security Forum at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base. No longer was I merely expressing my opinion about high ranking officers. I was actually expressing my opinion to an auditorium full of officers from all over the world, including a lot of generals and admirals.

I was reminded of the famous quotation by John Adams:

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

There was an irony that someone like me, who had studied poetry (English literature) in college, was giving a talk at an institution devoted to studying politics and war (national security issues).

Fair and balanced?

Considering that I majored in English, it’s not surprising that my view of history was shaped by literature. Like lots of other people, I learned about King Richard III by reading William Shakespeare’s play depicting him as an amoral monster. Shakespeare in turn is said to have relied on Sir Thomas More’s unfinished history of Richard’s purported intrigue, deceit and murder, an account now dismissed by some as nothing more than Tudor propaganda.

Richard, the last king of the House of York, was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, making him the last English monarch to die in battle. After his death his body was put on a horse and taken to nearby Leicester, where it was put on display for several days. Henry VII, who had become king by virtue of his victory over Richard and was the first of the Tudor monarchs, had the body buried in the Greyfriars Church. Fifty-one years later, in 1536, King Henry VIII demolished the church, one year after he had ordered the beheading of his propagandist Thomas More.

Nearly five centuries later, the University of Leicester, the Leicester City Council and the Richard III Society, which was founded in 1924, found the remnants of the Greyfriars Church underneath a parking lot. After some digging the archeological team found a skeleton that was soon conclusively identified as that of Richard III. The publicity surrounding this discovery has led to renewed discussion about whether Richard really was such a bad guy after all. During his reign he had his defenders, including the historian John Rous, who praised him as a “good lord,” who had “a great heart.” Three centuries later, in 1768, Horace Walpole came to his defense in Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third, arguing that Richard may not have been guilty of all the alleged murders. Today The Richard III Society is working energetically to provide “a more balanced assessment of the king” and to give his remains a proper burial consistent with his royal status.

The lesson from all this is that public opinion changes over time. Some reputable historians are now even offering more favorable assessments of another infamous Richard, the former president sometimes known as Tricky Dick. As far as I know, however, no one has anything nice to say about 3.2% beer, like that served in army PX’s in 1970.

Check our our new Macro-Division at www.21standlocust.com
#letsdothisthing

As our beer grows in popularity, so too grow our brewery tours. More popularity means more people, but the downside includes longer waits, and sellouts. That means I often have to change the way we run our show. Typically I add more hours, tour guides, or tickets. But now we are doing something all together different: no tours.

Wh-Wh-What??

Just tastings.

I’m listening…

When I started as a tour guide in 2008, things at Schlafly were a lot different than they are now. For starters, we were not making as much beer. In the past few years, brewery floor space that once provided an accessible path for large tour groups has been filled with equipment to make more beer. Understandable. After all, we are a brewery that gives tours. Not a tour company that brews beer. Now the limited access we have barely shows you more than you can see from the windows that separate the restaurant from the brewery.

In the early days of Bottleworks, we had no cause for concern for the safety of our customers during tours. Before entering the brewery, tour guides simply cautioned tourists to remember lessons learned from the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Don’t touch anything. Watch your step. Don’t sneak off and drink the fizzy lifting drink. Now, OSHA and the entire craft brewing industry are seriously enforcing stricter safety standards for employees and guests alike. Tourists are now required to wear closed-toe shoes and safety glasses and are confined to an area of the brewery marked by yellow paint.

This summer, the challenge for tours is to perform to a growing number of tourists within a smaller area of the brewery while following new safety protocol. So how do you do more with less?

The solution may be to replace the current format (a 30 minute tour followed by a 30 minute tasting) with a new format (a 45 minute guided tasting followed by an optional exit by way of the brewery). In other words you come in, you sample beers, you walk through the brewery on your way out.

Want to see how this works? Come over for a brewery tour. Tours are free. So I promise, if you don’t like it, you can have your money back.

Oh yeah, and please. Tell me what you think. E-mail stewart@schlafly.com

Cheers.



The Monthly Editorial Blog By Schlafly Beer Co-Founder Tom Schlafly

Harvard University and I have something in common: a birthday. I was born on October 28, 1948 at the old St. John’s Hospital in the Central West End. More than three centuries earlier, on October 28, 1636, the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had passed a legislative act to establish Harvard College, though it’s only fair to point out that the act was actually passed on November 7, 1636 according to the calendar that was in effect in much of the world at the time.

Alert readers (AR) will recall that Massachusetts still followed Julian calendar in the 17th century. This was the calendar that had been established by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. After a while people began to realize that it was woefully inaccurate. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII established the far more accurate Gregorian calendar, which was soon adopted in the Catholic countries of Europe and is currently followed in most of the world. Protestant countries, however, had a problem with following a papal calendar. They preferred following an inaccurate calendar established by a Roman emperor to submitting to the authority of a Roman pope by following his superior calendar. It wasn’t until 1752 that Britain and its colonies finally accepted the papal calendar. In Massachusetts and elsewhere in the British world the day after September 2, 1752 was September 14. Eleven days disappeared with the stroke of a pen and Britain’s calendar was back in synch with the earth’s orbit around the sun.

In other words, the claim that Harvard and I share a birthday warrants a footnote. The dates are the same, but they were determined according to different calendars. Whether we share a birthday or not, this astrological bond wasn’t enough for Harvard Law School to accept me when I applied for admission in 1974. Granted, I didn’t make a big deal about my birthday in the essay I submitted with my application. Perhaps I should have. Apparently the director of admissions put more weight on such factors as LSAT scores and undergraduate grades. Whatever the reason, I ended up at Georgetown Law School, not at Harvard.

In cerevisia veritas?

Harvard Law School, which was founded in 1817, proudly and rightfully claims to be the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Without wishing to diminish the significance of this claim, I would simply note that Harvard had a brewery long before it had a law school. In the universe of American law schools Harvard’s definitely has seniority. On the Harvard campus, however, the law school is something of a newcomer, at least in comparison with beer.

According to the historian Gregg Smith, the author of Beer in America, The Early Years—1587-1840, John Harvard reputedly learned the art of brewing from William Shakespeare and developed plans to construct a brew house on campus. The college rules of 1667 included detailed instructions on operating the brewery. By 1686 Increase Mather, the father of Cotton Mather, a student at Harvard at the time, had become the rector of the college and drafted a Code of College Laws that addressed the beer supply among other important issues. Sadly, by the end of the 18th century, before Harvard Law School had been founded, the last of the college breweries had been shuttered.

Increase and Cotton Mather, like almost all the presidents of Harvard in the early days, were Puritan ministers who were undoubtedly highly resistant to following a calendar promulgated by a pope. It was under the leadership of these Puritan clergymen that Harvard adopted the motto, Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae. (Truth for Christ and his Church.) This motto was later shortened to the motto that adorns the university’s seal today, Veritas.

The pursuit of truth in various ways has been a human passion since long before the founding of Harvard. Back in the days when the Julian calendar was still accurate, the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder wrote, “In vino veritas.” (In wine there is truth.) Not to be outdone by oenophiles, anonymous beer lovers coined the phrase, “In cerevisia veritas.” (In beer there is truth.) In this same spirit, a group of beer lovers at Harvard Law School recently founded an organization called Beeritas, dedicated to seeking veritatem in cerevisia. (For the benefit of ARs who have forgotten their high school Latin, veritatem is the accusative case of veritas, and is appropriate for the direct object of a verb.)

All of this is pertinent because I have been invited by Beeritas to give a talk about Schlafly Beer on April 2nd, five days before the 80th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition with respect to beer. Even though the event is the day after April Fools’ Day, I am not making this up. This is the actual veritas. I really am speaking at Harvard Law School. What I wasn’t able to accomplish with my LSAT score and undergraduate grades back in 1974 was finally made possible thanks to beer.

To get smoke flavor and aroma into a beer, brewers will use a percentage (sometimes up to 100%) of smoked malt in their grain recipe. This smoke character from the malt will then carry through into the finished beer. The character of the smoked malt is directly related to the material that is used to smoke the malt. Each smoke source will contribute its own characteristic flavor and aroma to the malt and eventually to the beer brewed with that malt. Some common variations are peat smoked malt (think Scotch whisky), cherry wood smoked malt, alder wood smoked malt (alder is used to smoke salmon), oak smoked malt, and beechwood smoked malt.

Rauchbier is actually a traditional style of German lager with the city of Bamberg being most noted for this style. It is fairly easy to find imported bottles of Rauchbier in the US from Schlenkerla and Spezial (both breweries are located in Bamberg). Traditional German Rauchbiers use beechwood smoked malt to attain their sometimes very smokey nature.

For our Rauchbier, we stayed traditional to the German roots of the style and used beechwood smoked malt. We used a fairly conservative amount of 60% smoked malt in our recipe. The balance of the grain was made up of Munich-type malts and a small amount of caramel-type malt to provide some malt backbone to the beer. Just enough hops are used to provide a slight bitterness to balance the overall beer, and a German-style lager yeast is used to provide a clean fermentation profile. The focus of the beer is definitely on the smoke and the malt.

I hope you will come by the Tap Room and give this unique beer a try. We are really happy with how it turned out!

Cheers,
Augie

photo credit: Kate Burrus

Tap Room Brewmaster Stephen Hale has nearly finalized organizing 33 different casks of 12 different styles into a tastefully color-coded excel spreadsheet. Thanks Stephen! As an event organizer, nothing is more beautiful than well formatted excel files.
 
Look forward to 5 guest casks to be tapped on Saturday at 3PM.
 

• 4 Hands: Chocolate Milk Stout
• Civil Life: Irish Dry Stout with UK Challenger hops
• Kirkwood Station.: Porter with Madagascar Cocoa nibs
• Perennial Artisan Ales: Black Walnut Dunkel
• Urban Chestnut: Trafalgar- English Pale Ale East Kent Goldings Hops

 
Also these Schlafly Beers on cask:
(note not all casks available at all times)

• American Brown Ale
• American IPA
• Coffee Stout
• Dry-Hopped APA
• English IPA
• Scotch Ale
• Vanilla Milk Stout