Your favorite St. Louis brewery?
For generations St. Louisans have been brewing and consuming beer. From the biggest to the smallest, and everything in between, the number of breweries in the St. Louis area is impressive.
The poll this week asks your favorite local brewery. I’m not asking which you consume the most, but which is your favorite. They might be the same and they might not.
The list of breweries was taken from participants in the 2009 St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival (must be 21 to enter site):
- Alandale Brewing
- Amalgamated Brewery
- Anheuser Busch
- Augusta Brewery
- Buffalo Brewing
- Mattingly Brewing
- Morgan Street Brewery
- O’Fallon Brewery
- Schlafly
- Square One Brewery
- Trailhead Brewery
I have tried about 5-6 of them but that means there is that many I haven’t tried.  In the event I omitted a local brewery from the poll I have enabled the “other” field so you can add in one not listed. The breweries are presented alphabetically.
I see the corner bar/brewery as being part of an urban environment. Applebee’s says they are a “Neighborhood Grill & Bar” yet their neighborhood is often a suburban strip mall. Just not the same.
Most of these places are small brewers. Others started small and expanded. Most are in the City of St. Louis but there are exceptions. Whenever I’m on Main Street in St. Charles I usually end up at Trailhead. Going to Augusta used to be about wine for me but since I discovered Augusta Brewery I go for beer instead.
Brews from some of these brewers are available in other establishments/grocery store while others can only be obtained directly. You may think it unfair to have A-B compete in the poll with small micro breweries. Again, I’m asking for your favorite brewer.  I like A-B’s Amber Bach but that doesn’t make A-B my favorite brewer in town.
Fans of local beer can go to the stlhops.com forum where members post what beers pubs have in stock on certain days. Technology and beer are a nice combination. As I finish writing this post Halloween night I’m finishing off a local pumpkin ale.
Thanks to contributor Jim Zavist for the idea for this poll & post. The poll is at the top of the right sidebar. If you chose to drink please do so responsibly.
– Steve Patterson
While small breweries, in and of themselves, aren’t large employers, they do seem to be an indicator of an area’s desirability to the “young and hip”. It’s great to see so many new ones coming on line over the past few years . . .
FYI on Alandales in Kirkwood. It is now under new ownership and named Highlands. The new brewer is associated with O’Fallon Brewery and the beer is greatly improved.
I refuse to support a local brewer “O’Fallon”, which has their beer brewed and bottled in WI. When they brew more than just their keg beer here, I will consider them a true “local” brewer. Hiring your brewing and bottling out to an out of state brewer makes you a fraud!
Schlafly bottled their beer for years in Minnesota before opening their plant in Maplewood a few years back. I would hardly consider them a fraud for that.
I am a Schlafly girl, tried and true! As a matter of fact, their Pumpkin brew was flowing all weekend at our Halloween festivities.
PS- went to the Heritage Fest for the first time this year… fantastic!
“Outsourcing” or as it’s known in the industry as “contract brewing” is a pretty standard practice in the brewing industry. I don’t see what the problem with O’Fallon producing their beer at another brewery.
They could no longer keep up with the demand for their product (a good thing) but they couldn’t expand the current brewery or raise the capital to build a bigger brewery. So, to make sure they could continue to expand their business and build something here locally in the future, they had to have another brewery brew their beer.
People need to realize that O’Fallon’s annual production is somewhere around 7-8000bbls a year. This is a very small amount of beer to feed a large metro area like St. Louis. Schlafly will only do 30,000 this year and AB can do O’Fallon’s annual production in less than an hour.
No jobs in St. Louis were lost (in fact, the brewers are still working 10-12 hour days at O’Fallon) and a small local business has the opportunity to get bigger and generate more income for the local area. Seems like a win-win for everyone.
And Jay is right, from 1996 until 2003, Schlafly had their bottled beer contract brewed by August Schell Brewing out of New Ulm, Minnesota. They too wanted to increase their market and revenue, so until they could raise the capital to open up the Bottleworks, they had to have another brewery brew their beer.
Breweries are expensive.
Square One is, hands down (in my opinion), the best St. Louis brewer. The Scotch Ale is quite possibly the greatest drink on earth. If you haven’t tried Square One, get down to Lafayette Square and give it a try. It is delicious!
I like O’Fallon’s IPA. I’ve tried to like Schlafly, but its pale ale is not very good, nor is its APA. Boulevard is also great, though not quite “local.”
Heck, while I agree that Schlafly’s regular pale ale is not very good, I love their APA. Nice and hoppy w/o being too bitter.
I have nothing against O’Fallon outsourcing per se. I just won’t consider them “local” if its being brewed in WI. And I realize that the workers didn’t lose their jobs, but they could have added workers instead.
I’m a huge fan of O’Fallon Brewery, and even more so after (repeatedly) tasting their delicious Amber Ale, which they only brew for the Dubliner down on Washington. I’d love to see more collaborations like this to help diversify tap selections around town and showcase the creativity of our local brewers.
@ W Kruse. Unfortunately it’s not just a matter of adding workers and bam, beer magically starts appearing. They don’t have enough fermenter space to produce more beer; they’re at capacity. Fermenter space is always going to be the bottleneck at ANY brewery.
But, they can’t add more fermenters, they don’t have room. Which means they have to open a new brewery, which they don’t have the capital for.
So, it’s either the don’t grow their business and they stay stagnant not being able to produce the amount of beer that is needed in their markets, or they temporarily have someone else brew their beer until they can raise the capital to open a new brewery.
By asking them not to “outsource” you’re asking them not to grow. The beer is produced at an outside state and the money that is made on the beer stays in St. Louis. I don’t see how that doesn’t make them a local brewery (especially when they’re still brewing beer in O’Fallon.)
For the record, there is a decent chance you’ll be seeing Schlafly needing to have someone else contract brew their beer again in the next couple of years. They’re producing 30,000 barrels this year, if someone else produces some of their beer for them, does that mean they’re no longer local too?
I think people are missing the point. I realize they need to temporarily outsource, as schlafly will possibly have to do as well. There is obviously a market for this outsourcing. Keep it local and I will consider you a local brewer. Brew your beer in WI, and you’re a WI brewer. That’s just the way it is.
Steve, I wish I had an answer to why a brewery like Point has the ability to take on additional breweries to contract brew beer. My guess is that when they expanded their brewery, they made contract brewing part of their business plan. But I’m sure they also have to worry about not biting off more than they can chew.
Outside of AB, the only brewery locally that would be able to brew and bottle a large amount of beer would be Schlafly, but as I mentioned above, they’re having growth issues of their own and I don’t think they’re even interested in brewing a beer for someone else. The huge desire for their product is headache enough without having to try and worry about someone else’s product.
Is there a need to have a facility to allow one of our local breweries to grow? Absolutely. Will we see someone actually step up and fill that need? My guess is no. Like I mentioned above, like most manufacturing plants, building a new brewery is an expensive venture and you would need someone with the start-up capital to not only want to build this facility, but also take on brewing beer for other breweries.
I’ll tell you what though, if I hit Powerball one of these days, I’ll be the guy to do it.
@W Kruse As a member of Slow Food St. Louis, I too understand the importance of being local. That being said, you act as if O’Fallon wanted to do this to save a buck or as if they didn’t want to continue brewing beer locally. They don’t have any choice.
It’s not as if they can magically snap their fingers and increase the amount of beer they can brew and bottle. (Oh, I should also add, every bottle of beer that gets brewed at O’Fallon is bottled by hand.) They can’t just magically get the money to open a new brewery? So what should they do? Limit the amount of beer they brew and money they take in just so they can remain local in your eyes?
I guess I’m curious what you think they should have done? Steve, I’d actually be curious to put this poll to your readers to see if they still consider O’Fallon a local brewery. I’d pose the question to my readers, but I think they understand that contract brewing is a pretty standard practice in the industry.
That would be an interesting survey. My guess would be that the outcome would very depending on the wording. For instance, if you were to ask if a beer bottled in WI is a local beer, you would probably get a resounding “no”. But, if you were to ask if o’fallon practice of outsourcing the brewing and bottling of x% of their beer qualifies it to be a local brewery, it may result in a quite different response.
W Kruse, 1st I don’t think you have any idea how much capital is required to expand a brewery. O’Fallon is doing this until they have paid down some debt and have raised some cash to expand the brewery in O’Fallon. Doing this not only saved jobs here long term but will mean more jobs here in the future. Also what you are saying would also disqualify AB since they have many plants that are not in St Louis. As pointed out by others, Schlafly did this for many years and it worked out very well for them. O’Fallon is still brewing all the beer which is put in kegs in O’Fallon and are also brewing all specialty bottled beers in O’Fallon. By the way, using the term fraud is a bit harsh. There are many good people who work at O’Fallon and the owners are great people who not only take good care of their employees and are good members of the community. I have seen them give beer and merchandise to many area charities and they open their brewery doors to many area brewers groups. As to your question why didn’t they have a local brewery contract brew for them it was because as Mike pointed out there is no one in Missouri. They looked into this and wanted this to be done as close to O’Fallon as possible. The Point Brewery does lots of contract brewing for others and O’Fallon like them for the reason that they gave O’Fallon complete access and the O’Fallon head brewer makes monthly visits to Point Brewery. The Point Brewery also did everything possible to copy exact the O’Fallon brewing processes. My main point is, that doing their expansion your way would most likely lead to failure and a loss of jobs and a local business. I think it is important to have local successful companies, not ones that go bankrupt. Maybe if you have a few million extra dollars sitting around you can give them a call and see if they need an investor to help out with their expansion? As you probably already know by my post I know the people at O’Fallon personally and as I said they are great people.
Interesting chat going on here.
We have heard lots of opinions on contract brewing. The bottom line is contract brewing is our only option at the moment to keep a LOCAL brewery going. As previously mentioned this option is not ideal, but it is what it is. There are many factors that go into choosing contract brewery and choosing a local facility was not an option (there are none), so what do you do? You do the best with what you have. I personally oversee the production process from start to finish at Stevens Point and we do everything we can to ensure consistency and quality between both breweries.
We will be bringing all of the production back to O’Fallon eventually, but only with the support of our loyal drinkers. Bear with us during this time of growth and keep in mind that we are as passionate as ever about creating the best beer we can in O’Fallon or in WI.
I bought plenty of MN Schlafly beer when those guys outsourced bottling. I did it because I liked their beer and wanted to see them succeed and I am glad that they have done so well. They too are a big part of the local community and I am glad they are still around.
My two cents,
Brian Owens
O’Fallon Brewery