St.louis Visit

Craft Beer Cellar in Clayton. Ask for Justin.

 

Check out the Stl craft beer week website. Lots of good stuff happening around town

 

Civil Life is awesome and is dog friendly. FYI, its cash only. I do think they have an ATM on premises.

 

The Biergarten at Urban Chestnut Midtown is dog friendly.

 

If you're looking for shops that are easily accessible on your way from Penn to Dallas, I would say either Randall's Jefferson or Fairview Heights IL, and then Friar Tuck's in Crestwood. (This assumes coming from 70/64 into town and heading west on 44 on the way out)

 

Schlafly Tap Room or Bottleworks are always really cool places too.

 

The Wine and Cheese Place in Clayton (the one on Forsyth) is one of the best places in STL to buy beer: great selection, knowledgeable staff, and great prices.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/5026/?view=ratings

I also recommend the Craft Beer Cellar (it is only about 6 - 7 blocks from the Wine and Cheese Place).
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/35102/?view=ratings

 

I was about to disagree with you here until I noticed you said the Wine and Cheese Place in Clayton. I cannot speak to the quality of this store, as I have never been to that one.

I will say though to steer clear of the one on Manchester in Webster Groves. It was possibly the worst store I have ever been to for beer. All of their beer was sitting on very warm shelves (only 4 cooler doors/90% of the stock was on the shelf), the selection was extremely limited as it came down to one aisle of beer (including these 4 cooler doors), the majority of what I looked at was out of date, and all of their stock had a layer of dust on it as if it had not been touched for some time.

 

Interesting. Some of what you stated for the Manchester store seems to be the same for the Clayton store (in terms of very little beer in coolers). I don't have a problem with that, because most of what I buy is for consuming later, and much of it will end up being cellared anyway, so sitting at room temp on the shelves just adds 'cellared time' to the beer, from my perspective.

I went thought the inventory thoroughly at the Clayton store (at least the stuff I was interested in--imperial stouts, barley wines, and beers with high ABV, mostly), and I don't remember seeing any old or 'bad' beers (there was one Firestone saison 22OZ--I think--that was about a year old, but those are supposed to age well, so I wouldn't consider it 'old'). My understanding is, when some stuff starts to get a little old they mark it down and put it is a special basket with red tags on them. I was told that also do that for overstocked items.

I have recently been to at least 20 liquor/beer stores in the last month or so, looking for older stuff to cellar, and I found that their stock was more up-to-date than most.

 

I am going to be in St. Louis next weekend (August 8th-10th) and I am going to be limited in time. I want to make sure my planned stops sounds reasonable because I am unfortunately not going to be able to make tons of stops. We are staying at The Cheshire Inn in Clayton and don't want to have to drag the family too far out of the area.

Place to drink beer: Side Project Cellar (Has to happen on Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday)
Places to buy bottles: Wine and Cheese Place and Craft Beer Cellar, both in Clayton

Am I going to be completely missing out on anything?

If anyone is interested in an IP trade for TG (PseudoSue, Golden Nugget, ZeeLander, Rover Truck) or possibly Todd the Axe Man, let me know. I would be interested in Side Project and Perennials less sought after stuff.

 

SP Cellar is right by Schlafly Bottleworks and Heavy Riff so you may as well check them out while in the area

 

You could take the whole family to Schlafly Bottleworks and enjoy a meal. Very family friendly.