The Schlafly Tap Room
Tom Schlafly bought a 1902 printing house on Locust Street for $137,000 and then had to get a Missouri law changed before he could sell his own beer out of it.1
Why go
Schlafly practises law when he is not selling beer, and he came back from a stint at Oxford wanting an English-style ale in St. Louis.1 Dan Kopman had worked for Young's in London and learned about beer in Edinburgh, and it was Kopman who told him a microbrewery could be a business.1 They formed the corporation in 1989 and took the first microbrewery licence the state of Missouri ever issued.1 For the beer itself they hired Dave Miller, a self-taught brewer with a name among St. Louis homebrewers, and his first beer for the company was a wheat ale that became the hefeweizen.1 The pale ale came next and Schlafly says it is still the biggest seller.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the pale ale. It is the beer Schlafly names as the one that launched the company.1
- Order: the hefeweizen if you want the first recipe. Miller's wheat ale was the filtered version of it.1
- Avoid: picturing a small taproom. The building runs 32,000 square feet and the brewing happens in the basement.1
What locals & experts say
- Tom Schlafly on his Oxford year, to Sauce Magazine (March 2022):
I like to say I learned more about English beer than English law.
1 - Schlafly on what stood in the way, same piece:
We had the first microbrewery license issued by the state of Missouri. Breweries were not allowed to own retail licenses unless it was a sports stadium. We had to get that law changed.
1 - Fran Caradonna, CEO of Schlafly Beer, on the years after:
I had been in the beer business on the wholesale side, and our little company was fortunate enough to partner with Schlafly after Tom got the laws changed. We were able to expand distribution across the state in the '90s.
1
Good to know
- Which door: this is the Locust Street Tap Room, one of four Schlafly brewpubs. Bottleworks in Maplewood is a separate room.1
- The kitchen: German-inspired mains and a long sandwich list alongside the beer.2
Verdict
should-visit — Schlafly and Dan Kopman had to get a Missouri retail-licence law changed before they could pour their own beer in their own building, and that is the fact that sets this room apart from any other brewpub in the city. The building is a 1902 printing house and the brewing still happens in its basement. What holds it off the top rung is the food and the beer themselves: no bylined writer has judged either, so the rung rests on the history and on the pale ale being the company's own founding beer.