Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Located just south of Forest Park and Highway 64, Brew Hub Taproom (5656 Oakland) hopes to attract “everybody from Springfield to Springfield,” says executive chef/general manager Andy White. He promises that the average customer will experience great beer and “surprisingly delicious” food, and the beer aficionado will discover a collection of brews not found anywhere else in St. Louis.
There is also a Brew Hub Taproom location in Lakeland, Florida. How is the St. Louis location different than the original? Different companies, different ownership, and the Lakeland facility is predominantly a partner brewery that uses economies of scale to help small brewers produce and market their beer without a lot of costly overhead. They have a tasting room and use food trucks; we have a full-scale restaurant.
What’s the difference between a contract brewer and a partner brewer? A lot of contract or private-label brewing is remnant capacity, where a brewery uses its excess capacity to brew someone else’s beer. That brewery is a contract brewer by default. Brew Hub is different: We start with someone else’s beer, so we use a different term: partner brewing.
Describe the interior. There are 120 seats, including a lounge-y area with leather chairs and sofas. Above the bar are heat-distressed copper cones, a tie to the onsite copper still—yes, Brew Hub is a distillery as well. On the back bar are halves of spent beer barrels inset with laser-cut logos from each of our 17 partner beers. Part of the space is dedicated to the brewery operation, barrel aging, and stainless steel tanking. Inside the front door is a retail area, selling everything from 6-packs of those beers to growlers and crowlers. My hope is to schedule live acoustic music there, too, even at lunchtime.
Why have a distilling component? Isn’t having an array of unique craft beers enough? Since so few people know how liquor is made and curated distilled spirits is the next new frontier, we thought we’d add another layer of customer experience.
What’s with the giant Scrabble board? It’s different than having say, a dartboard or a pinball machine. The big question is whether beer affects the ability to spell. Never mind on that…
How big is the actual brewery? We have a four-barrel system, which translates to eight kegs. If it’s a popular style, we’ll blow through it in a weekend, which means we’ll have to piggyback a lot. Let’s just say the brewery will be in constant use.
Which beer is hardest to produce? The heavier beers—ales and porters—are more forgiving and ferment in a several weeks. Lagers and pilsners are so crisp and clean that any fault is readily apparent, plus, the lighter beers take over twice as long to make.
Will the staff be fluent in beer-speak? The entire staff is required to pass the test for Level 1 Cicerone training, and then we will train them to explain to guests what we are and what we do.
Discuss the importance of having a place to experience the beer, rather than just drink it. Having a four-barrel brewery and copper still is key, because as you hit the door, all the senses kick in. It’s important to see it, smell it, touch it, hear about it, talk about it. If we’re doing our jobs, that will translate to a lot of out-the-door sales.
Discuss the beer offerings. We will start with 17 beers—ales to goses, stouts to sours. Fourteen are Brew Hub partner beers, and three are home brands—Keybilly Island Ale, Rome City IPA, and Diver Down—that we’ll ship directly from Florida. Local beers will fill out the remainder of the 20 taps. That ratio will change as time progresses. Flights of four beers are served in cool-looking barrel staves.
Don’t you have to select a wholesaler to distribute beers in Missouri, which effectively opens them up to the rest of the state? Since we are a brewery, we can ship our products from one facility to another in what’s called a brewery-to-brewery transfer. Schlafly ships their beer across town; we take ours a little farther.
Isn't the craft beer movement slowing down? Innovation and choice are driving the market. That’s where the growth is. So our product mix includes the basics, but also sours, stouts, goses, unusual ales...
Can Brew Hub accommodate the light lager drinker? We have several intro beers—craft versions of “fizzy yellow beer.” The craft movement continues to progress creatively, but it’s still important for us to provide a gateway.
What does brew Hub have for the non-beer drinker? At Schlafly, I learned that without other beverage options, a party of six with one non-beer drinker means a lost six-top. So we’ll have premium call spirits, a few higher end options, plus three reds and three whites.
The 50-item menu is different, too. It’s broken into seven sections, with one price per section: Bites, Snacks, Salads, Pizzas, Burgers, Sandwiches, and Larger Bites. The Bites, for example, are true tapas in bite-or-two portions for $2.75 each. There are 16 options in that section alone.
How would you describe the cuisine? Beer friendly as opposed to beer focused—because there’s not a lot of beer in the dishes. Beer is tricky to cook with, so it’s used sparingly and only when appropriate. I want people to smile and nod because it’s familiar food and surprisingly delicious for a brew pub.
How did the menu take shape? After writing beer menus for 10 years, I know what works. Meatloaf works, for example; ours will be made from grilled turkey. Fish and chips work; ours will be battered cape shark with London-style chips. Reubens work; ours will have duck confit, Emmenthaler cheese, and homemade kraut. When I go out, I don’t want to have to ask what things are, so the goal here is to have familiar but different items and have people be surprised by the quality and the technique.
Will the fries be made in house, like at Schlafly? No fries. Chips. Hand-cut, soaked in salt and vinegar overnight, then fried to order. I hope it’s the best chip ever and no one will miss the fries. Part of the dining out experience—and one that many owners and chefs overlook—is that the customer needs to feel good when they leave. That’s why the burgers are all 5 ounce portions—it’s an ample size that won’t leave you wishing you’d ordered something else. No one wants to unnotch the belt on the way home. I want people to be able to function, not have to go take a nap.
Talk about the importance of a brewpub having a chef with fine dining background. I consider myself a well-rounded chef with fine dining experience. As the quality of craft beer has improved, there was a gap. The food component had to step up its game and locally it has, at places like Civil Life, Urban Chestnut, and Schlafly. Today’s brewpub chef doesn’t need a fine dining background but the bar has been raised. To keep up, especially in St. Louis, brewhubs must adopt some the refinements of fine dining.
What will drive Brew Hub’s menu changes: the seasons or customer demand? It won’t be static, and it won’t be seasonal—more ‘changes where necessary.’ A good chef listens to the staff, the customer…and the dishwasher. That’s the guy who sees what comes back on plates. In places like this, people expect to see their favorites. If you change too much, you don’t develop regulars. Nowadays, that can be a forgotten lesson.
Is there a family component to Brew Hub? The younger beer drinkers in the area are, in many cases, new parents. Turning your back on them would be turning away a significant part of the potential clientele. We don’t have a kid’s menu per se or yet, but no good idea is ever off the table.
Was there ever an a-ha moment, when you knew that becoming a chef was the right decision? I had two. One in 2000, when Steve Gontram had enough faith and trust to turn his kitchen over to me at Harvest. Eight years later, Dan Kopman [co-founder of Schlafly Beer] taught me how to be a good person and the importance of the collective good. Tom Schlafly was happy to take over an abandoned building and an old grocery store and by doing so improve two zip codes. Dan taught me that good things come to people who do good deeds, which he did. I was lucky that a little of his excellence rubbed off on me. It was that combination that made me a complete restaurateur.
Talk a little bit about Schlafly. What was it like when you got there? Chaos. When I started as GM and chef at the Tap Room, the focus was on building out the Bottleworks. Not long after, A-B got acquired by In-Bev, the doors swung open to expand the Schlafly brand, and it took a while to rein in the kitchen component. A few years later, I took over the Bottleworks, which was a different animal.
How so? Downtown attracts the business lunch crowd, tourists, and people attending concerts and sporting events. That group is looking for classic pub fare: burgers, reubens, the heartier stuff. Bottleworks is more residential, the mid-county-ans and families, who prefer healthier, more vegetable-oriented fare. That clientele wants to know where and how their food was sourced. At the Tap Room, not so much; it was more the free tour, free beer, and hearty food. So the menus had to be quite different. The only commonality is the sticky toffee pudding.
That’s such a great dessert. What’s the backstory? Dan Kopman’s wife nabbed that recipe from a hotel in Scotland where she worked. It’s iconic, an easy sell, and eminently sharable. It’s so simple and so perfect that I don’t dare tinker with it.
At Brew Hub, was there any discussion of the cursed location syndrome? I grew up half a mile from here so I know the area as well as the history of the building. Krieger’s was a restaurant in an office park before there was an office park. It took a while to get Highway 40 rebuilt and populate the neighborhood, which affected the Highlander—which came next—and then St. Louis Rib House. Brew Hub is presenting a unique product at a time of peak interest in an area with a captive clientele.
What happened to the partner brewery planned for Chesterfield in 2016? The craft market slowed down so that project was put on hold, and Brew Hub pivoted, to a the beer-across-the-bar taproom model versus the partner model. That said, the Florida Brew Hub has expanded four times and those partners are now in this market. The Chesterfield location may come back into play as the local brewers think about expanding and can see the advantages of partner brewing first hand. Our Florida beers are currently being shipped here, our Missouri beers could be shipped there.
Who is Brew Hub’s principal customer? Everybody from Springfield to Springfield, beer nerds to neighbors to young families. Forest Park and the zoo have 3 million visitors per year. Then there’s Highway 40, with 3 gazillon cars per year.
Did you ever consider another career? Every year, I’d tell myself that I’m going to do this for one more year and then try something else. I’m on my 26th year of saying that.
