stlbites.com – st. louis food blog of bill burge

Beer in the Lou

Aug 28, 2007 beer, general food

So my Mom tells me yesterday that she “loves beer”. But does she?

I think most Americans are going to tell you that they love beer, and with the all powerful AB looming over our fair city, you’re really going to find this to be the case in St. Louis. Ask any native of the area if they’re a beer lover, and if the answer is yes, which it more then likely is, their favorite beer will undoubtedly be Bud Light a large portion of the time. This is certainly the case with my Mom, and while she is entitled to her opinion, I can’t help but think of one of those grade school style fill in the blanks when I hear a “beer lover” tell me they “love Bud Light!”

Bud Light is to Beer what White Zinfandel is to ____.

It’s the beer for beer lovers that don’t truly love beer. It’s the bland, watered down, low alcohol content beer best served just before it starts to freeze so as to cover up what little flavor is held within it’s suds because that flavor is, well, pretty bad. Most shocking of all, is that it’s Bud Light they veer to and not the slightly more flavorful full-fledged Budweiser which, in some small way, is at least a little better.

Now they’ve even brought us a whole new world of classy high brow Bud drinking in the form of Bud Select. I’m not even sure what Bud Select is supposed to be. It tastes like some middle step between Bud Light and Budweiser in a fancier package. I do know one thing though. I’ve happily steered clear based upon my previous experiences with AB products.

So, the cru of my gripe, would have to be that AB is sort of like the McDonald’s of the beer world. They’ve done more then anyone else to wear down the American palate so that it no longer enjoys a truly full flavored brew. They’ve got people saying they love dark beer because they love Amber-Bock which is a) not a bock at all by definiition and b) sort of the fake dark beer of the world. Give them a Mule-Kick from their beloved shrine, and they’ll quickly get the swift kick of reality.

So, does my Mom “love” beer? Absolutely not.

But, if you’re in St. Louis, and you still persist that you are a true Beer Lover, then your mecca, at least on the West side of the Mississippi, is Lukas Liqour in Ellisville. Lukas is the most beer-centric liquour store I’ve ever been to. As a former cook, and as a result wine lover, I initially went there in pursuit of a specific Robert Sinskey wine I was looking for. When I saw the beer selection though, it was love at first site and it’s magnetic draw drew me to names like Tripel, Lambic, Flanders Red and a variety of others completely foreign to me.

To that point, the only Belgian beer I’d had was Duvel, and while I loved it and the ceremony of it’s being served in it’s very own branded goblet, it had fallen into a category of beers that had become the standard import fare of this city. Beers like Newcastle, Bass and Guiness while initially peaking my interest in my early days of drinking, had worn thin over the years because I wanted to taste something different and new. When New Belgium products first hit the city, they to sparked a brief affair away from my beloved wine, but it was a short lived romance because they didn’t have the complexity of a Shiraz from Australia or a Pinot Noir from Oregon.

It was that first visit to Lukas two years ago that left me thinking that the grass might be greener on the other side. At the very least, the grass is cheaper, for a top notch case of 12 750ml bottles of beer can be had in the $80-$90 range and a truly great case of wine can be twice that much or more.

The reason I bring all this up is that there is a whole world of Craft Beer in America that is doing things the way that only Amercians can do. They’re brewing without rules. They’re brewing for the true Beer Lover, and they seem to be doing a lot of it in California. Breweries like Alesmith, Lost Abbey and Stone are doing things that many can only dream of. In St. Louis, however, these full flavored brews were, I thought, unavailable to me without having friends illegally ship them or bring them back from vacations to the promised land, San Diego. That is until now, when the most beer-centic liqour store in our fair city, showing their true colors even further, pointed me to four online sources available for legally shipping beer to states that allow alcohol sales to be shipped to private residences (go Missouri!).

Food>Sources>Beer

Hi-Time Wine Cellars – Costa Mesa, CA

Archer Liqours – Chicago, IL

South Bay Drugs Pharmacy – Imperial Beach, CA

Liquid Solutions – Oregon City, OR

Cheers,
Bill

Jason Alstrom from beeradvocate.com sums it up a lot harsher then I can in his tasting notes on Bud Light:
“Notes: This beer is for the tasteless beer drinker that thinks there is only ONE beer out there. You may as well drink some seltzer water with alcohol added to it … get the picture, you are not a real beer drinker!”