We continue to feature profiles of beer towns that didn’t make it into our Beer Traveler issue.
St. Louis, Missouri
While St. Louis has arguably slipped in its influence, both beerwise and otherwise, the history of Anheuser-Busch still makes it a destination for beer lovers. A century ago, St. Louis was the fourth largest city in the country, which is when it acquired its nickname as the “Gateway to the West,” but today it is not even in the top fifty.
History alone makes a trip to visit the original Anheuser-Busch brewery de rigueur. But you’ll also want to visit one of Schlafly Brewery’s two locations, and not because they bill themselves as St. Louis’ second-largest brewery. Other breweries include The Stable, Square One Brewery and Mattingly Brewing. Outside the city limits, check out the O’Fallon Brewery.
For beer bars in the city, there’s the 33 Wine Shop & Tasting Bar, Iron Barley and Bailey’s Chocolate Bar. In the area, there’s also the International Tap House in Chesterfield and the Wine and Cheese Place if you’re shopping for bottles.
At the end of April is the best time to visit, at least for beer, because that’s when the city puts on its own St. Louis Beer Week.
Beyond beer, for art visit the St. Louis Art Museum and Forest Park, which was built for the 1904 World’s Fair. The Gateway Arch is hard to miss, but there’s also the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis and the St. Louis Union Station. While not strictly a non-beer destination, the Lemp Mansion is open to tourists, and several ghosts are reputed to haunt the home. The mansion was owned by the family that ran the Lemp Brewery, which in 1870, was the largest brewery in St. Louis.
Look, not to get picky here, but METROPOLITAN St. Louis has a population of 2.9 million, making it the 15th largest in the U.S. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Combined_Statistical_Areas). This always drives me crazy – the CITY of St. Louis is tiny size-wise (just over 60 square miles) so you have to include surrounding counties. Just my 2 cents. Homer.
Amen, Homer! That always drives me crazy, too. Yeah, St. Louis is tiny because no one lives in the city anymore, and the city limits were drawn up a century (or more) ago, making the area very small.