I Brewed a Beer at Anheuser-Busch

Anheuser-Busch has periodic "engagement" events to keep employees happy and dissuade them from quitting/hurling themselves into the beer vats with bricks in their pockets. Well I was especially excited about our trip to the Star Shop Brewery. The "star" of course is a reference to the iron star anchors used to brace the masonry in Soulard's plentiful brick buildings.

The Star Shop is located in the actual brewery part of campus. I don't usually have a reason to go to this part of town so I was excited just by that.

I was impressed by all of the equipment. Even after making the beer I have only a partial understanding of what it all does, but I definitely improved my familiarity.

Dusty was our guide for this adventure. He has been doing this a long time so he had a good feel of what combinations of ingredients wouldn't be a disaster.

There was a large amount of scrubbing, hosing, and sterilizing of things during this process. Keeping things sterile is important so you don't get weird bacteria in your beer making weird flavors and otherwise ruining the fun.

My understanding is A-B makes beers like Budweiser at a high proof then waters them down afterwards to meet whatever alcohol by volume they're looking for. There were several beers on tap but the most special of them all was the full strength, high octane Budweiser. It had a lot more taste to go with the additional alcohol. It was also kind of cool because it's not available outside of the brewery. It's just too real for regular folks.

Brewing a beer in the Star Shop was like homebrewing on crack because we could use A-B resources. They had a large array of malt and hop varieties that we could choose from and mix and match. We split into two teams making different beers. My team starting yapping about making an IPA but luckily I was able to steer us to something less boring. I asked our brew-guide Dusty "what's the weirdest ingredient you have?" and he swiftly opened up the pepper drawer.

Of course the next question was "which of these is the hottest?"

We had a couple of brave taste testers take a nibble of the peppers and the hotness was confirmed.

Roasted malts taste like delicious cereal without the sugar.

The more roasted the malt, the darker the color of the beer and the more rich/coffee-like the taste becomes. Cool.

Well what I didn't know is that even a dark beer is only a certain percentage dark roasted malt. I assume that anyone who drank a beer brewed from 100% dark roasted malt would be consumed by the darkness. Sort of like Bird Box.

They had a cool grain grinder that was fun to use.

There was plenty of beer sampling in-between brewing stages. One must keep oneself hydrated. Clearly there was a Busch fan involved in decorating. The place had an awesome retro Busch Bavarian metal sign on one wall.

One of the cup choices was also these awesome wax paper cups.

Some of the other beers people had made.

So hoppy to be here.

Hop fridge.

They did have some little barrels on which to age beers. I tried to angle us into one of those with no success.

I did my share of scrubbing. I mostly liked that the brand of the gloves was "vinylove".

There was hops weighing.

The ad copy on these was fantastic: "More than 1,250,000 visitors-among them Princes, Ambassadors, Commissioners General-as well as representative people from all parts of the world, passed through this great plant during the World's Fair, all of whom will attest the grandeur and magnificence of the buildings, the prevailing cleanliness and the excellence of its product." I think it's cool that the clock tower used to have an observation deck.

So grandeur. So magnificence. If top hat was an acceptable thing to wear, what kind of self-hating type would not go for the top hat? 

They had some Blue Point firkins on hand and brewer-man Dusty asked us if we wanted to tap one. Yes, yes we do.

Towards the end of the process we loaded our beer up with cacao nibs, cinnamon sticks, and hot peppers. We came up with a name for our brew that I'm pretty proud of: "Navidad De Fuego: El Chapo's Revenge".

Then it was back to work, and weeks of waiting for our delicious beer to be ready. It was a really fun day.

Controlled 30th Birthday Violence

With my 30th birthday fast approaching, I wanted it to be as completely ridiculous awesome as possible. Partly for it's own sake, and partly because I wanted to dull the sting of entering geezerdom. There was plenty of a different type of sting provided by good old fashion paintball wounds.

Preparations started the night before with a trip to local beer purveyor Schlafly Taproom. I've never directly been involved with the purchase of a full size keg before, which was exciting by itself. I've always been disappointed with the weak nature of keg beer I encountered. I decided to use my dictatorial birthday powers to upgrade the beer to something awesome.

Schlafly Belgian Golden Ale is the beer a Lannister would dream about. Delicious with a 7% alcohol content to remind you it means business. Per the Schlafly website:

"Our Belgian-Style Golden Ale opens with a fruity nose and rounded sweetness that compose a pale and balanced beer. Hallertau hops lend a hint of spice that balances the aroma and flavor of orchard fruit. Similar to our Belgian Tripel, but with a lighter body and a crisper finish..."

The keg was so large and heavy that we needed a truck to transport it, which my good buddy Kyle was kind enough to provide. We met him and Jess for a pre-drink. Unfortunately for everyone at the table I glanced at a food menu and noticed something awesome: pickled herring! I'd actually had this before; It's a big deal in the Netherlands. I ate it once as a whole fish fillet that you hold by the tail, and once chopped up with onions on a hot dog bun.

I expected a couple little pieces, and maybe some bread or crackers. What I received was a massive pile of pickled sea creature with four little pieces of bread. In case that wasn't enough pickle, there were pickled capers mixed in and some pickle pickles on the side. Of course there was dill sour cream to dip it all in. Once our mouths were sufficiently pickled we loaded up the truck.

I think everyone present would agree that paintball was completely awesome. Gateway Paintball Park was out near St. Charles, and had several maps with different kinds of obstacles to hide behind. My little strategy was to move quickly along the sides of the courses in order to flank people in the middle. It worked fairly well I would say, but I didn't escape without several quarter sized bruises. I got several extras bruises from the end of the day, where I just ran around with no gun and let people shoot at me a la Duck Hunt.

Party goers who weren't still nursing their paintball PTSD came over to the apartment later that night and we went out on the Loop. Adventures were had.


I learned a hard lesson in keg beer the next day. I brought the remainder of the keg out for our kickball team, Pitch Slap (I'm proud of that name), to enjoy. I'm thinking I hadn't kept it cold enough overnight, but it was like a foam firehouse. I had a couple bags of ice on it to no avail. That is the reason why people put such weak, no head, beer in there. Live and learn, I guess.

I filled up a few containers with the keg once it had settled down a little, then took it back to its home. Goodbye keg, and happy birthday to me!