Cory King, co-owner and brewer at Side Project Brewing, clearly remembers the queue of thirsty patrons that stretched from his Maplewood brewery all the way down Manchester Road. Hundreds of drinkers and collectors eager to get their hands on the hottest bottles of Beer : Barrel : Time, a barrel-aged stout or M.J.K., a triple barrel-aged barleywine.

But those days are long gone – and according to King, that’s a good thing.

“Before, you’d have to wake up early, drive here – maybe even sleep here – to get a bottle,” said King. “Covid forced us to move all of that online, where people could order from the comfort of home. When the pandemic ended, we wanted to stay with that approach.”

In many ways, craft beer was built by people waiting for hours in line. In the earliest days of the so-called Craft Beer Revolution, breweries like Side Project and South City’s Perennial Artisan Ales would quietly announce a special release of a beer via Facebook or Instagram and wake up the next morning to throngs of thirsty patrons queued up outside the brewery hours before opening. This line culture created community among beer nerds and fostered a shared enthusiasm for the product and the brand. But it also meant that only a select number of die-hards got access to the company’s signature labels. Now, as the overall industry slips into a bit of a decline, it’s more vital than ever for brewers to get their best beers into as many cellars and snifters as possible – especially these premium potables for which there is still solid demand.

Side Project took its releases online, eventually landing on e-commerce platform Shopify. And while King was already brewing at capacity, he installed a new bottling line that could spread the love in smaller 375-milliliter bottles along with the traditional 750-milliliter bombers so that more people could experience Side Project. And while the brewery still holds special events and bottle releases, like February’s Stout Week, to keep the essence of “line culture” alive, they’ve started marketing beyond social media to broaden their audience. The idea is to use the beer to get more people into Side Project’s award-winning bar service and expanded food options. “We’re still creative and energetic about making beer, it’s what pays everyone here and keeps us going,” said King. “But overall, we’re a hospitality company. Beer, wine, whiskey and food. I don’t want Side Project to just be a place where people come to stand in line.”

7458 Manchester Road, Maplewood, sideprojectbrewing.com

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Vivian Ward was at the 2008 St. Louis Wine Festival when one glass of beer woke her up to two separate revelations that would shape her life thereafter. First, it was a craft beer, far more flavorful than the Bud Light that her family in Washington Park had always drunk. Second, it had been made by a Black man, Ray Hill, a St. Louis pioneer of independent brewing. “That was my introduction to both craft beer and Black-owned beer,” said Ward. “I’d only ever seen the stereotypical white man brewing the stereotypical American beer.”

As Ward explored the burgeoning craft beer scenes in St. Louis, Chicago and beyond, she found a lot more new and exciting beers and a few Black brewers and owners. But what she did not see in the many taprooms and bier halls she visited were patrons like her. “I was often the only Black person, definitely the only Black woman,” she says. “I wanted to create a space to invite more people who looked like me.”

Ward’s answer was The ExBeerience, a multipronged effort to diversify brewery clientele in St. Louis and the Metro East. It began simply with Ward reaching out to Black-owned breweries in other states (there were none in Missouri or Southern Illinois – even today, less than 1% of U.S. independent breweries are Black-owned), driving to pick up the beer in Ohio, Indiana and Tennessee, and bringing it back to serve guests in her Caseyville, Illinois, garage. At first, the guest list was mostly friends and family, but Ward gradually built a network and following through attending festivals (like Pittsburgh’s Barrel & Flow Fest and Sacramento’s People’s Beer Fest celebrating Black-owned brewers and artists) and establishing relationships via social media.

To date, The ExBeerience has hosted 27 events, including taproom receptions and game nights, brewery tours and tutorials, and even virtual tastings and happy hours. Ward has also collaborated with area breweries, like Florissant’s Narrow Gauge, Belleville’s Shoehorn Brewery, Blue Jay Brewing Co., and the woman-owned Earthbound Brewing (which closed late last year) on her inaugural ExBeerience Juneteenth Beer Collaboration, where each brewery brewed a special beer in honor of the holiday. (She also takes a weekly shift behind the bar at Blue Jay to get to better know the beer and the business.) “The local craft beer scene tends to look a certain way because these breweries are not integrated into the communities where minorities live,” she says. “The ExBeerience is about creating access to these places and awareness – a lot of Black people don’t even consider craft beer as an option.”

Through The ExBeerience, Ward wants to give them that option, while also showing that diversity is an asset. “We are all better and stronger together,” she said. “My motto is: Drink the good beer. Fight the good fight.”

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For any brewer that aspires to be more than just the neighborhood brewpub (and there are plenty of great ones that are content to do just that), the goal is to get your brand and your beer in front of as many drinkers as possible. Traditionally, the way to accomplish that is through retail – but that requires spending money on increasing production, storage space, packaging, and likely a third-party distributor. Even then, you’re fighting with Big Beer like AB InBev and countless other independents for scant shelf space at the store and limited tap handles at the bar and restaurant.

No wonder that many brewers these days are opting for a different way: taking their beer to the people themselves via satellite locations. Since 2020, St. Louis craft pioneers Schlafly opened taprooms in St. Charles and Highland, Illinois; 4 Hands Brewing Co. expanded to Chesterfield (2023) and Kirkwood (2024). Wentzville-based Friendship Brewing popped up in Flint Hill (2023) and Hannibal (2024). Goodwood Brewing in O’Fallon is an extension of a Louisville-based brewery.

But by far the most prolific local empire is Good News Brewing. Since first launching in O’Fallon in 2017, Good News has opened three additional locations in Defiance, Augusta, and the French Town neighborhood of St. Charles. This spring, they’ll open a fifth in Wildwood. “Distribution has never been our goal,” said Dan Tripp, co-owner of Good News with Matt Fair. “We’re not fighting for shelf space or in competition with people.”

Of course, that’s not to say building a brand out of brick-and-mortar is easy. While these brewers may not have to deal with a distributor or fight to get their four-packs in the coolers at Schnucks, they face a gauntlet of other issues stemming from extra real estate, including landlords, leases, upkeep and overhead. For instance, Schlafly recently cited an expiring lease and impending repairs in closing its St. Charles Bankside location; Friendship decried increased property and flood insurance as part of their reason for shuttering their Hannibal outlet for the winter months, at least. Tripp said that Good News limits its liability by owning the buildings in which they operate. “We’re building a brand, but we’re also building assets,” says Tripp. “We learned really quickly that banks don’t want to fund buildouts and start-ups – breweries are closing. But they are happy to hand out money when there’s real estate attached.”

The risk of investing in these locations is somewhat offset by the control owners maintain, not just over their product, but over their brand. Because breweries like Good News aren’t just selling beer – they’re also exporting a taproom experience. “It’s about creating community in your own neighborhoods,” said Tripp. “We focus on being a community center.”

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Nothing soaks up good beer like good bread — and there’s no bread better than the house focaccia at The Kings Oak by Modern Brewery. Inches thick, the crispy, slightly oily crust yields to a delightfully spongey core. It’s so soft, you want to take a nap on it (especially after a couple pints of Choice Nugs Hazy Double IPA). This focaccia forms the basis of the Porchetta Pastrami Sammie. You can get the sandwich with a few choice meats, including birria-braised beef, an Italian combo of prosciutto and stracciatella, and a turkey club, but we recommend the pastrami, with house-brined pork belly, Swiss, and mustard. You’ll love it down to the last crumb.

5200 Oakland Ave., St. Louis, 314.788.0900, modernbrewery.com

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When Blue Jay Brewing Co. opened in Midtown in December 2023, it joined one of the more established craft beer scenes in the country. Long-standing STL brewers, many of whom Blue Jay co-owner Jay Thompson had worked with, had made definitive statements on barrel-aged stouts, pale ales, IPAs, browns and even German-style lagers. Thompson built his bird house on a foundation of traditional styles done extremely well. And in so doing, he brewed up Okay! Bavarian-style hefeweizen — which I consider to be the city’s best hefeweizen. It has the creamy, banana-bread flavor you look for in the style, while adding slightly sweeter and hoppier notes — a perfect refresher as the weather heats up.

2710 Locust St., St. Louis, bluejaybrewing.com

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In April 2024, workers distributing Heavy Riff beer had to call on the U.S. Embassy USDA staff in South Korea for assistance. They were in Seoul for the Korea International Beer Expo (KIBEX), one of the largest beer festivals in the world, and the Heavy Riff booth was being overrun by thirsty patrons eager to get samples of Dear Agony, Heavy Riff’s bourbon-barrel-aged double milk stout. Demand was so intense that they had to enlist embassy staff to help pour.

The scene might have sent Hagen’s mind home to Dogtown, where every winter, people from all over the U.S. would line up around the block to get their hands on the latest Dear Agony variant. But while Heavy Riff’s signature BA stout remains popular, the crowds queuing up for craft beer around the country are not what they used to be. In 2022, American craft beer sales were going flat for the first time outside of the pandemic – a stagnation that seems to be slipping into a decline. Brewers everywhere are trying to keep their bubble from bursting. Some have streamlined production to reduce costs; others have narrowed their focus to regional and hyper-local markets. Meanwhile, Heavy Riff Brewing is thinking about Asia.

“Asia is on fire for American craft beer,” says Heavy Riff co-owner Rick Hagen. “West Coast breweries had been sending beer to Asia, so my radar was already up. When I saw the local beer market go into this mini recession, my thought was that we should look to sending beers overseas.”

Through an export development program facilitated by the Brewer’s Association (BA), the U.S. craft beer trade association, dozens of American breweries have found outlets for their beer in foreign markets all over the globe. But this trans-Pacific opportunity comes at a particularly ideal time for many brewers like Hagen. “One Seven-Eleven 7 has 11 of our beers on their shelves,” says Hagen. “We’re really pleased with what we’ve been able to accomplish. It’s made up for what we’ve lost in the domestic slump.”

Hagen says Heavy Riff hasn’t had to ramp up production to meet overseas demand – though they have had to adjust for subtle differences in foreign taste. For instance, while hoppier hazy IPAs like Disco Apocalypse and Prison Bound are wildly popular in Japan, the vanilla-forward Love Gun cream ale has been slower to catch on (it seems vanilla is not a familiar flavor in Japanese beer). So, the brewery has developed a version of Love Gun with chestnuts that’s more geared to Japanese palates.

Meanwhile, South Koreans go nuts for the sweeter Love Gun – and, of course, bottles of Dear Agony. In fact, they didn’t couldn’t wait for the shipment. “Last June, the Korean distributor came to taste some of our cellar stock from 2021,” says Hagen. “They bought 142 cases of Dear Agony, the whole inventory.”

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Time is generally the arch nemesis of any good beer. Hops degrade, fruity esters fade, air works its way into the bottle or can and robs the brew of its carbonation. Age also tends to flatten a beer’s commercial appeal. In a microbrew movement built on the novelty of flavorful alternatives as contrast to the staid, mass-produced American lagers, a craft label is only fresh until the next hop varietal or edible-glitter-strewn sour that comes off the line.

That’s why, after more than two decades of craft beer in St. Louis, we local tipplers must tip our stein lids to the beers that have endured. These are brews that have never wavered in quality, whose creators have never bored of making them – or at least making money off them. We take them for granted, bolt for the flashiest new tallboy or bomber, but we always come home to them in our time of need. And thank the ancient alewives that they’re always there, with the taste just as we remember, to welcome us.

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No one wants to talk about the pandemic, especially regarding business. But when it comes to the beer industry, there’s no way to avoid it.

For worse – and, admittedly, for the better – the pandemic reshaped the craft beer industry. Overnight, taprooms were closed or faced occupancy limits, and with all that product just sitting in vats, breweries had to find a way to move it, in crowlers and cans, into consumers’ hands. Brewers started packaging and expanded distribution.

Covid forced Bryan Schubert of Millpond Brewing to pivot on his entire business model – but it also forced him to make decisions that ultimately led to Millpond becoming one of the metro’s most recent success stories.

In 2019, after nine years of award-winning homebrewing, Schubert’s wife Lizzy had urged him to open a brewery of his own in a smartly rehabbed old Shell gas station in Millstadt, Illinois. But in so doing, he initially wanted to help other hobbyists realize the same dream. The original name on the shingle was Millpond Brewing and Incubator. Yes, it was to be a place for Schubert to indulge his own passions; but also set it up to where fellow homebrewers who might not have had the resources could brew on a larger scale and get their beers in front of customers. “Opening up a brewery is really hard,” said Schubert. “It takes a lot of work and a lot of money and not everyone has that opportunity. The plan was to have this incubator side to the brewery where, occasionally, we’d allow an aspiring brewery owner to come in and brew their recipe and sell it to the public.”

When Millpond opened, Schubert even had an aspiring brewery owner lined up. (Jason Thompson, formerly of Urban Chestnut and currently of co-owner and head brewer of Midtown St. Louis’s newest beer star Blue Jay Brewing). But then in March 2020 … well, you know. People wanted to stay away from each other – and stay home and drink beer. Schubert took the opportunity to focus fully on brewing the beers he wanted to make. Fortunately, Schubert’s tastes lean toward hazy IPAs, a hophead staple which had solidified its ubiquity in tap rooms and brewpubs nationwide; craft lagers, which had been steadily emerging as a crushable craft go-to; and barrel-aged stouts and barleywines, which were still highly sought-after, if a longer-term investment. And because social distancing put a damper on taproom gathering, Schubert looked straight to packaging his wares and telling his story, which trickled out of tiny Millstadt and gradually built a groundswell of response throughout the region.

Last summer, Millpond launched distribution in Missouri after doubling its production capacity. Today, you can find cans of their Old Millstadt, a replica pre-Prohibition lager and Dunkes Bier German-style pilsner throughout the metro. “It’s been huge for us,” said Schubert. “Before, people may have heard about Millpond from a friend. But now their first experience is a four-pack that they can buy close to their house. And that is now bringing people to Millstadt.”

308 E. Washington St., Millstadt, Illinois, 618.476.9933, millpondbrewing.com

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When discussing his business, Dan Saettele often starts with a story about its previous ownership: In 2013, woodworker and homebrewer Matt Walters was hired to build a bar for Dogtown’s newest brewery, Heavy Riff Brewing Co. The brewers were so impressed with Walters’ craftsmanship that they asked him if he could also build them a foeder.

“Sure,” Walters is said to have replied. “What’s a foeder?”

Walters soon learned that a foeder (a Dutch word pronounced food-er) is a large wooden vessel used to age or ferment beer. Originally used by the French to produce wine, the foeder was adopted by Belgians in the 1800s for use in aging their sour ales. Fast forward about 200 years and American craft brewers getting into wild ales, sours and lambics were clamoring for oversized barrels. And, as Walters discovered, the best wood to make a foeder was oak, particularly the Missouri white oak that was plentiful right in his backyard.

Walters’ work on that first foeder impressed Heavy Riff co-owner Justin Saffell — and plenty of other area brewers — enough for Saffell to convince Walters to start a business together. Today, Foeder Crafters of America (10844 Indian Head Industrial Boulevard, foedercrafters.com) is the largest American manufacturer of the vessels in the world, with their handcrafted foeders featured in more than 500 brewhouses, wineries, cideries and distilleries on five continents.

“We make them differently than they do in Europe,” says Saettele, a former loan officer who worked with Walters before buying the company from him in 2020. “[Walters] didn’t have the knowledge or baggage of history; he just made them the way he thought they should be made.”

Traditionally, foeders have been made like barrels — using flat-side staves that are simply pressed and held together with the metal hoops and pressure. But Foeder Crafters instead uses interlocking finger-jointed staves, which make the vessel air-tight, essentially as if it was one solid piece of wood.

The other key differentiator in Foeder Crafters’ wares is the type of wood. Missouri is the country’s most prodigious producer of white oak, a hardwood that endures at least 80 years of the state’s harshest winters and most brutal summers before being ready for harvest. Oak also undergoes a unique decaying process called tylosis, where the wood cells swell up to fill gaps in the growth rings, making the wood practically leak-proof. Plus, Missouri white oak imbues liquid with spices, like vanilla, and a toastiness that winemakers, distillers and brewers all over the world covet for their respective concoctions.

The oak used by Foeder Crafters has been air-dried for at least two years. The staves are then cut, assembled and steamed. They also usually char the interior at least a little just to get rid of the pungent “green” of raw oak. The foeders range in size from 500 liters to 10,000 gallons, $8,000 to $75,000, and come in either horizontal models that sit in racks like wine barrels or vertical ones, which resemble a typical stainless vat with a conical bottom that makes it easier to clean.

This article was originally published by the Riverfront Times.

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Barrel-aged beer is big business in this town. Four of the highest-rated beers in the world — Side Project’s M.J.K., Beer : Barrel : Time, and O.W.K. and Perennial’s Barrel-Aged Abraxas — are brewed, bourbon-barreled and aged right here in St. Louis. Bottles of each run over $50 apiece (750 mL), though Side Project often bundles its brews with other beers in packages that cost into the hundreds. Even so, they tend to sell out quickly. You can usually find pours in the respective taprooms easily enough — at up to $6 and $8 per ounce. (Worth every penny, in this writer’s humble opinion.) The secondary market for many of these oak-soaked beers starts in the triple digits and sometimes reaches into the thousands per bottle (not sure any beer is worth that).  

All of that said, when Heavy Riff Brewing Co. at 6413 Clayton Ave. in Dogtown got into the BA ballgame with Dear Agony in 2018, it wasn’t looking for a money grab. In fact, what has quietly matured into one of the best barrel programs in the country started as something of an accident. The rock & roll-themed brewery, started by musicians and music nuts Jerid and Justin Saffel, Rick Hagen, Steve King and Greg Meyer, wanted to celebrate the life of deceased Motorhead bassist and singer Lemmy Kilmister. The late Brit musician was known to love Jack and Coke, so the crew decided to brew up a Russian Imperial stout and age it in used Jack Daniels whiskey barrels. “Jerid was up on the brew deck, and all I heard were expletives,” Hagen said. “I ran over to him to ask what was wrong, and he told me he’d put too much lactose sugar into the beer. We called our good friend [STL brewing scion and 2nd Shift Brewing owner] Steve Crider and he said, ‘All you can do now is throw it into some barrels.’”  So they did. In addition to Tennessee Whiskey barrels, they also stashed the flawed concoction in seven brands of used bourbon cooperage: 1792, Buffalo Trace, Elijah Craig, Eagle Rare, Bulleit, Heaven Hill and WhistlePig. Over the next 12 months in storage, oxygen slowly slipped through porous wood, gradually tempering the bitterness and teasing out different flavors in the beer, such as notes of cinnamon, ginger and dark fruit. The charred staves, still stained with bourbon, absorbed the liquid, imbuing it with charcoal, tannins and alcohol. Time mellowed the drink, making sugary substance smoother and, most importantly, less lip-smackingly sweet.  

The product was good enough that Heavy Riff decided to do a special, in-person release. That had become commonplace for breweries putting out a barrel-aged offering, since it’s an occasion worth celebrating: BA labels are something of a status symbol in craft beer, a sign of the skill and sophistication needed to produce such a decadent luxury product (Dear Agony typically registers around 13% ABV). It’s also a declaration that your brewery is on solid enough financial footing to tie up the time, storage space, labor and materials (Dear Agony’s mash bill includes pricey Belgian candy syrup and imported dark malts, and premium used bourbon barrels cost up to $200 apiece) in a beer that won’t recoup the expense for a year — if then.  

At first, Hagen and his co-owners were skeptical if Dear Agony could break even. They decided to stagger the release, putting out two variants every week for four weeks, beginning the last Saturday in December. Initial response was tepid, with hardcore groupies and a few curious strangers trickling in. Then word seemed to get out and gradually, the people started to come. “By the fourth week, we had a line wrapped around the block,” Hagen said. “We sold out. We doubled production for the following year and started seeing people coming in from out of state. We sold out again.” Heavy Riff doubled the batch yet again in 2020, a move that, at first, seemed like an overreach — for the first time, they didn’t sell out — but the back inventory turned out to be a boon when the pandemic struck months later. It sold out the remaining bottles in two weeks, essentially floating the company through the early part of the shutdown while it quickly set up a canning line to move the rest of their wares.  In the intervening years, Dear Agony has only evolved. New brands of bourbon barrels have been tried (Blanton’s, W.L. Weller and 12-year WhistlePig); other liquor barrels, such as Madeira sherry; and some adjuncts, such as coffee and vanilla. This year, it’s adding a ninth variant, a breakfast stout, as an extra special release. Hagen said interest has spread all over the country and even across both oceans, where Europeans and, interestingly, Vietnamese drinkers have acquired a taste for boozier American stouts.  

And yes, he’s even seen a secondary market emerge, with 500 mL bottles that retail for $20 going for upward of $200. “I guess some people would be flattered by that,” Hagen said. “For me, I wish they hadn’t. It’s not a cheap beer to make, but we try to keep the price at $20 a bottle, a level where the common person can afford it. We take less margin. But I want to keep it real.” 

This article was originally published by the Riverfront Times.

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