Every Wednesday this month, we’ll discuss a festival held the previous weekend, with no shortage of options to choose from, so check every week for a new installment. This week: beer; next week: fun with the GLBT community... which could also involve beer.
There’re some experiences that really lend themselves to a straight narrative. You can start telling the story friom the beginning and you keep talking (or writing) until the end. Others have a bit more of a meandering feel, and it’s better to break the story up into smaller chunks. We’ll take the latter approach this week.
Attending the St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival this weekend was a fun trip, one that was unbelievably overdue, as there’s no history suggesting that I don’t like beer. But this reason and that reason conspired and (all of a sudden) the event’s on its sixth year and I’m finally just making it down. Thankfully, the good folks at the Heritage Fest were generous with their media pass policy, which didn’t limit the recipient to just interviews. Instead, it also offered a wristband, a glass and an opportunity to sample dozens of beer from a wide variety of St. Louis brewers, of which there were truly many.
While some only offered less than a handful of releases, others were floating a myriad of styles, and the vast assortment of tastes provided a fun and varied way to sample brands both old and new. Supported by super-friendly volunteer servers hooked by the chance to help support the charity affiliated with the Heritage Festival, Lift for Life, the event on Sunday afternoon had a very positive feel. Hundreds had flocked under the Fest’s big tent, even as thousands more were streaming into neighboring Busch Stadium for the third game of the Cards’ series vs. Kansas City.
There were highlights, plenty of them. Along with a couple critiques. Let’s get the main one out of the way early.
Ballpark Village: In some respects, it’s nice that the presumed Ballpark Village gets used at all, and it seems as if festival organizers are starting to latch onto the space as a location to put mid-sized to larger public events. But when you cross the pock-marked, rutted, damaged field of burned-out grass that is the current iteration of the Village, you can’t help but feel that St. Louis got the shaft somewhere along the line. Perhaps time will eventually prove kind to the site and the years spent waiting for development will be well-invested. But right now, it’s hard to look at the space and think of it as anything short of our biggest civic embarrassment, region-wide. It’s almost painful enough to make you not enjoy your time at the space. Luckily, this past weekend, there was beer, comradeship and cover music, so civic hand-wringing aside, there were reasons to still have fun. But, boy, our city fathers sure have made it hard to do so.
Unexpected transportation: City residents know that you don’t have to pay for parking to big events. The flipside, of course, is that some walking’s going to be involved on hot days. Aptly parking behind the Lohr distributorship on the south side of downtown allows for a chance to park for free and get some exercise. Unless, of course, a kindly gent rolls up in a six-person golf cart, offering a ride to the stadium for the price of a tip. Traveling down city streets in an open-air cart is fun, relatively affordable, and allows for a bit of people-watching. Probably better to ride in one of these before attending a beer fest, than after, because these carts do make a few hard stops along the way. If you’re feeling the need to travel in style after a ballgame, look to Gate 2, where the carts congregate, or flag one down if seats are open.
Pretzels: There were only four food vendors on site, with Companion Baking selling the most apt beer complement of all, a giant pretzel for $4. When you’ve already started down a certain path of beer consumption, getting a bottle of water for $2 and an oversized piece of salted dough is pretty much the best, most certain way to keep your energy intact. And Companion’s pretzels are good. Really, really good. Sometimes the small things in life carry a bit of extra oomph. The Companion stand was selling a product, but was also offering happiness, for a reasonable price. Kudos, too, to the people wearing strings of hard pretzels around their necks. Whether these were being sold on site, we couldn’t determine. It’s possible that people simply knew to tie a bit of twine around their necks, hanging a bag’s worth of twists from the tiny rope. If so, bravo to them. Practical and fashionable, pretzels on a string are fun and smart.
Volume: If you’ve not been to an event of this size, the first round or two are meant to test you. Here’s a hint: You don’t need to ever finish a beer that’s not to your liking. With dozens of five-gallon buckets set along the endless row of pouring, the expectation is that you’ll pour off any unwanted beer before rinsing your day-long sampling glass with water. Second tip: When you go with a friend or loved one whose germs you don’t mind sharing, the process doubles up. Each person orders a different option, you share the results, you sample twice as much, and you move on. Some systems are so deceptively simple that they’re nothing shy of genius. Beer sharing at a beer fest is just such a thing.
Goal setting: With a full 20 breweries taking part, one way to approach the Heritage Festival is to get at least a sip from every single one. In some cases, your options are limited. This year, for example, Perennial and Buffalo were represented by only one pour apiece. Several others were sampling only two, or three, different styles, so the picks were easy to make. Others were more aggressive. Anheuser-Busch was displaying 14 products and Schlafly trailed by only two. Urban Chestnut and Kirkwood Station were checking with a half-dozen apiece. That left a lot of room for sampling, from bocks to fruit infusions to porters to slightly freaky offerings, one of which we’ll highlight below. The IPA, meanwhile, was this year’s “festival beer,” with 11 breweries offering their take on the single-hop IPA. Beyond the notion (and, maybe temptation) to completely overindulge, there’s no right or wrong way to attack your $30 ticket price This corner of cyberspace, though, suggests this: Hit every brewery. It’s only a sip, it’s not gonna kill you. And it might yield some interesting finds.
Interactivity: Before we go back to beer talk, two quick asides. One is this: The Brewers Heritage Festival sets out a fair number of tables, but when you’re in the thick of things, you might wind up sharing one, whether it’s a big sit-down 10-top or a high stand-up, offering space for four people. Even if you’re not overtly social, you can wind up standing next to, or sitting nearby, an interesting beer nerd, who’ll break down the flavors that you’ve been noting in your program with vague descriptions like “wow,” or “meh.” These sages speak of “hoppy after-tastes” and “pungent fruit notes.” They can be a smidgen odd, but these folks have some good info. So talk to people. It’s part of the ticket price and reflects the European sensibility of the Fest.
Music: One last aside. On Sunday afternoon, a cover band called Plastic entertained the opening slot of the day and they opened up their set with Tears for Fears (twice), Journey and Justin Timberlake. They were a 100 percent professional, solid band, able to blend new wave with modern pop without missing a beat. While the beer tastes can get adventurous at the Heritage Festival, the entertainment’s pretty mainstream. And when you look around the audience—from the young, partyin’ folks in their 20s to the note-taking, serious hopheads in their 60s—that booking choice probably makes sense. Plastic, you boys done alright.
Notable beers #1, Vanilla Cream Ale, Exit 6: This selection let you know what was coming with the olfactory sense first. Sometimes the nose knows and this one was chanting “cream ale, cream ale” from the second poured. A nice, clean, enjoyable beer that’ll be enjoyed again down the line, the Vanilla Cream from Exit 6 was worth a full second glass with a taste that, frankly, could get a little dangerous. As in an ale that goes down this easy could mean you knock back a handful with a bit too much enthusiasm. Especially on a hot, summer’s afternoon with temps in the low 90s and a driver at your side. So, so nice!
Notable beers #2, Smoked Ale, Urban Chestnut: One of the beer nerds we shared a table with late in our experience expressed his dislike of smoked ales. For him, a visit to the table for this UCBC offering was unnecessary. He just wasn’t going to like it. But for someone without any reference point, the Smoked Ale from Urban Chestnut was a revelation. An ale that tastes as if smoked is a... smoked ale! Wow, who knew? This might not be something you desire on a daily basis, but to exclude this from your mouth forever is to take away one of the brewing art’s great gifts to humankind. Gosh, this one... yeah, it required a second glass, too. What a neat treat.
Notable beers #3, Field Beer: Almost inexplicably, a visit to google.com, followed by a trip to A-B’s own site turned up no info on this mysterious thing known as “Field Beer.” But the bright red color brought over a visitor from a neighboring table, who asked “What is that interesting-looking beer?" Well, unless this was a hallucination brought on by the under-the-big-tent heat, Field Beer might be akin to Clamato Chelada, the curious wedding of Budweiser with a tomato-based infusion. This enigma tasted like a Bud, or Bud Light, mixed in equal measure by Bloody Mary mix, then shot through with an energy drink’s boost of carbonation. Would I have it again? Um, yeah, in a certain mindset, I would. But would I recommend it to a friend? Not really sure. Then again, for a beer with so little info, I might not get the choice. Maybe this was dreamed up, after all.
