Meet me in St. Louis, Louis...

Day Beer

Today we went to St. Louis. As a Lutheran Pastor I felt I had an obligation to visit the mothership, to make a pilgrimage to the holiest of holy places… The Anheuser-Busch headquarters/brewery. I may have teared up a little bit when it came into view, a giant brick slice of heaven that took my breathe away. The promise of a free tour and beer beckoned us onward.

I had toured the plant in Fairfield California before but it was nothing like this. This was grander, more historic. The plant was built in the 1800’s and they have kept a lot of it in the same condition as when it was first built. The place where they make the wort for the beer was totally ornate with painted wrought iron railings and gilded pillars, but I am getting ahead of myself. Our first stop was the stable where they keep some of their famous Clydesdale horses. Apparently there is a herd of 250 of these things that are used for various events across the United States, and they are beautiful. The stable is an historical landmark and incredible to behold. They keep it sparkling clean (it didn’t even really smell like horses!), and have the beer wagon from the commercials in the middle. We learned a lot about beer making but I think what blew me away was the scale of everything. Anheuser-Busch products account for %50 of the market share in the US. Think about that for a minute. That means of all the beer that is drank every day in America half of it is Budweiser or something like it… nuts. Anyhoo, they took us to the maturing room, where the beer goes through the beechwood aging process (essentially the beer sits in a vat with woodchips and the chips clarify the beer and give it some flavor, a process unique to Budweiser) for 6 days. They have twelve holding tanks that are totally massive, each holding a ridiculous amount of beer. How much? I am glad you asked…

“Each tank holds enough beer that if you were to start today you would have to drink a case of beer every day for the next 137 years”

… and there are 12 of them. Sign me up…

We went through the rest of the tour, unfortunately we had to bypass the bottling portion due to it being a Saturday but learned some interesting things in the holding room too. Apparently their warehouse can hold 500,000 cases of beer. Pretty impressive. What was crazy to me is that only enough beer for a 24 hour supply for their distribution area! Nuts huh!

The free samples awaited us and we enjoyed them very much. We even got to be all tricky because Candace and Beth don’t really enjoy beer so Dan and I had them go up and get some. It was good, and I remember little from the rest of the day… just kidding.

After this it was on to exploring St. Louis a bit, looking for a little restaurant where the promise of a unique dining experience awaited. It is at this point that I would like to say that I feel that St. Louis was once a great city but has somehow lost that luster. The arch was kind of meh, and I wasn’t all that keen on going up there based on what Dan and Beth described as “ascending to great heights in the drum of a washing machine”. We drove around a bit and all I really saw was boarded up buildings and houses with the occasional nice neighbourhood. Now I understand that this may not be all of St. Louis but it was around the downtown area and I found it hard to pick out what the nice areas would be. We drove down the street, past Busch Park, where the Cards play, and found a little slice of heaven oyster bar.

The reason we went there were two-fold, Dan recommended it, and they were selling buckets of crawdads. I am always up for a new eating adventure, and this was no different. I am not sure what I thought crawdads were, maybe like big shrimp or something. In reality they are like tiny lobsters. In know this because when they come in the bucket they are totally whole with a few lemon wedge thrown in for good measure. I know there are some people in this world who would probably eat the whole thing and call it a delicacy but there was no way. All you can really eat is the tails, and the liver if you are really brave, the liver being the sickly green part that comes out is you don’t separate the tail properly. The liver is oily and pretty gross. The tails are pretty delicious.

We chowed down on that, and then dug into a sampler plate of jumbalaya, red beans, and rice, and a few other amazing dishes. Seriously, I have been missing out, red beans and rice is just unbelievable, as is jumbalaya, and can I say that I already miss andouille sausage?

Following this we went to the big mall for some shopping. It was a pretty cool mall with some neat specialty shops and things. We were getting pressed for time though as Dan and Beth had hired a sitter for the day and that time was running out. Before we left we had marble slab ice cream (the servers mix the ice cream with a goodie of your choice on an iced marble slab, this makes it creamy and delicious. I had amaretto and cookie chunks and I thanked baby Jesus for it). On the way out we passed a soda shop called Soda Jerks, and I went in to see if I could satisfy my curiosity on something. This shop had every kind of pop imaginable but I was only looking for one in particular.

Can I say that I am pretty oblivious to the racial issues that exist in the US. I have never had to be sensitive to those kinds of things, not in that I am prone to uttering racial slurs, but that I am unaware of the things that I say that could be taken as racial slurs. The product I was look for was called Coke Blak, a product only available there and it is a combination of Coca-Cola and coffee flavoring (I know, I’ll get there). I had been looking for it, wanting to try out the latest, and figured this store had to have it. I am not generally a quiet person, and sometimes when I get an idea I just sort of speed up and make a bee-line, so as I pulled away from my wife, she asked where I was going and I rather loudly said, “I am going to find some Coke Blak” and right when I turn around I walk through a bunch of teenage black kids who, given how difficult the product is to find, have no idea what I am talking about. I was looking at the floor sort of when it happened. I heard one of them say, “What did that guy say, Coke Blak, what the hell is that supposed to mean!” Keep walking… you are an idiot… keep walking… I love you I really do…. it’s a drink… seriously… dang it! They didn’t pursue anything, I just felt really bad.

After that we headed home and hung out. We headed out on Monday morning, driving back to Chicago, dropping off the car and staying at the O’Hare Best Western to catch our flight in the AM. Thankfully we just barely missed all the no liquids, no electronics thing and got home just fine. Brian picked us up and we headed home. A totally awesome trip… now, back to work…