Saint Louis Things: Brewery Tour

Hi friends! I’m coming at you with a weekend recap a little bit late, but here we are! Last weekend was lots of fun. My parents came to Saint Louis to visit, so I had a blast showing them around and hitting all the must-dos.

Friday evening we had plans to go to dinner at the sister restaurant to my spin studio, but unfortunately their flight was delayed 4 hours and they got in pretty late. Instead, we ended up doing dessert and or drinks. We went to Strange Donuts, which I’ve been meaning to try. It turns out they only have GF in the morning, but my parents got some delicious donuts! We ended up heading across the street (in Maplewood) for a drink. My dad and I both got the Schlafly Pumpkin Ale, and it was probably my favorite pumpkin ale. (Schlafly is the big local Saint Louis brewery.)

We ended up also ordering some guacamole.

Saturday morning, I had to teach my spin class. This worked out well because my parents were on a different time zone, so they could sleep in a little! Afterwards, we met up to go to the zoo.

^I feel like this is a good picture of Yoyo.

I took them to all the animals I observe, and gave them the grand tour!

We also stopped for Dole Whips, which were quite necessary as lunchtime was rapidly approaching. I also rode the train that goes around the zoo for the first time!

Finally, around 2:30, we headed to lunch. In the continuing trend for the weekend, we struck out on lunch. I wanted to go to a GF cafe downtown, but it had gone out of business literally 5 days earlier. We instead headed across the street to a Mediterranean place, where I went with salad and a side of hummus.

Then, we explored downtown a little bit. We drove by the Arch, and stopped by Busch stadium and Ballpark Village.

Then, we went on a brewery tour. This is my birthday present to my dad. I signed us up for a tour that stopped at 4 different local craft breweries: Heavy Riff, Urban Chestnut, Alpha, and 4 Hands. It was a fun atmosphere, and we got to know the people on our bus a little. While some of the breweries gave us free samples, I liked how almost all offered sample sizes you could buy of any of their beers. My parents and I shared the samples, so we got to try quite a few different things.

Heavy Riff:

Highlight: Nine Tonight (Belgium style). They are also famous for their vanilla coffee, which I tried and thought was good.

Urban Chestnut:

Highlight: they gave us samples while talking about the history, the brewing, and details on the beers we were tasting.

Their most famous is the Zwickel. I actually had this at the concert I went to.

My parents and I also shared some kind of Oktoberfest beer.

Alpha:

Highlight: Belgian Blonde. Also—I loved that you could get a flight with whatever you wanted. They specialized in sour beers, which my parents wanted to try. I’ve tried one before and knew it wasn’t my thing, but I confirmed that. Other highlight: they had a popup BBQ and towards the end of our time there, they started passing out free BBQ popcorn. Delicious.

4 Hands:

Highlight: Chocolate Milk Stout. Enough said. I like darker beers with deep flavors, and this wasn’t quite as deep as my favorites but still amazing. Again, chocolate milk stout? Speaks for itself. We also got some BBQ nachos here to tide us over for a later dinner.

Overall, my experience with Brewery Tours of St. Louis was fantastic. We got to try a ton of different craft beers. We spent about 30-45 minutes at each place, and the tour lasted a little over 3 hours. The bus driver was excellent as well.

Finally, it was dinner time! We went to Pi Pizza because I know they have GF crust.

We started with fire roasted veggies.

For our main meal, my mom and I split half BBQ chicken and half cheese+veggie.

After a long day, it was bedtime!

Because this post got crazy long, Part 2 is coming at you tomorrow!