In the Brew House

On Bruce’s last day in St. Louis we decided to take him on a classic day in the city. We hit up a tour of the Budweiser plant, where I click, click, clicked away. Unlike a lot of large breweries, the origional plant here in St. Louis was founded before the civil war, and the company has worked hard to maintain the beautiful and now very historic buildings on the grounds. All of the original buildings are still being used for their original purposes.

My favorite part of the tour is always the stables. This building was built along with the original Anheuser family homestead and was (and still is) used to house the local Clydesdale population currently working the hitch. Horses not currently working are kept at Grant’s Farm in the south part of town. Anyway, the stain-glassed windows, the huge chandelier, the beautiful Christmas decorations and the fragrant smell only of beer and fresh hay are not common sights in most stables. This one is special.

After the beer tour and possibly a bit more time spent in the hospitality room than we were supposed to, we grabbed lunch at Ameghetti’s on the Hill. I think Mark and Bruce both enjoyed their half-specials and another round of Budweisers. For dessert, we dropped in at Ted Drews, which was still open, but had converted one parking lot to the fresh Christmas greens sale lot for the season. There is something interesting about enjoying a frozen custard while shopping for Christmas trees in the warm (70F!) St. Louis evening.

Pictures from the day are found in the photo gallery.