Beer City, USA

I've been reading a lot of talk about St. Louis reclaiming its spot as the beer city in the U.S.  I have a copy of St. Louis Brews which is an excellent book detailing the city's rich brewing heritage.  St. Louis' large immigrant German population combined with our excellent cave system (invaluable before refrigerators) made our city the undisputed beer capital in the 1800's.

Over the course of the 20th century. Anheuser Busch became the world's largest brewery, while other area breweries closed up shop.  In he last 20 years, and especially in the last 10, St. Louis has seen an explosion of sorts of new breweries.  I feel that this has grown even more apparent since Anheuser Busch's hostile takeover by InBev in 2008.  While St. Louis still boasts the worlds largest brewery thanks to ABI, a new interest in craft breweries and specialized beer has really taken off here.

In the city alone, we have the Schlafly Tap Room, Amalgamated brewing (the Stable), Six Row Brew Co, Square One, Buffalo, Cathedral Square, and Morgan Street.  Over the course of the next year we will have at least three more.  That's not even mentioning some of the great microbreweries open in the area suburbs such as O'Fallon, Hill Brewing, and Augusta.

I say, the more the merrier.  St. Louis can take advantage of this new found craft brewing culture and draw in some extra tourism dollars (food/beverage tourism is really taking off) and maybe even some beer-influenced entrepreneurial (that is, influenced by beer...not under the influence of it...).  If you needed any other indication of how big the beer scene here is getting head on over to STLHops and read all the events, message board posts, and beer reviews.  While all the excitement is around the small microbreweries popping up, I also want to reiterate that I still support AB-InBev and they still employ thousands of fellow St. Louisans.  My grandma's house was on Utah in Benton Park and I still remember the distinctive aroma as a kid, from that old brewery on Pestalozzi.  It will always be near and dear to me and AB is no doubt a huge part of St. Louis still.  I have no issues getting a pitcher of Bud Light at a sports bar or ordering one at a hockey game.

But the microbreweries are the future of beer in St. Louis.  Hopefully one day in the not-so-distant-future, St. Louis will again reign as Americas Beer capital.  Imagine this: St. Louis boasts the worlds largest and most renowned brewery and has the most microbreweries to boot.  Excited yet?