Situated in a 1920s-era building that had a previous life as a garage, the brewery will boast an Old World-style tasting room and an authentic German-style biergarten shaded by chestnut trees. A dozen or so taps will pour the brewery’s wares, plus suds from other St. Louis outfits. Urban Chestnut also plans to bottle its beer for sale on shelves throughout the city.

Kupulent says his brewery aims to blend American beer innovation with European brewing tradition in a “revolution meets reverence” ethos. “I have a traditional European brewing background, but I also worked on the American craft side, so it’s a little bit of both,” Kupulent says. “We’re trying to bring traditional styles to our area and experiment with ingredients and styles—tweak some things, make them new.”

Kupulent’s keeping mum on the brews, but he told DRAFT, “We’ll start off with two, and one will be a Germanic lager. We’re still tweaking the recipe a bit.”

Like most of you, I constantly sift through news feeds looking to see what others are writing about beer. Aside from the occasional big-ticket stories that spread to every possible publishing outlet (hello, Beer Summit and Cameron vs. Obama), beer headlines range from “Local man stabs other local man with beer bottle” to “Beerbeque-n-Blues fest tonight,” on any given day. Every. Single. Day. This morning I decided to do a casual search for wine, just to see the print/online life this beverage lives. I can’t say I was surprised. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s Beer vs. Wine headline match-up.

Beer

Wine

Hmm. Something seems off-balance here. Beer gets stuck with the anonymous man while wine gets the celebrity. Beer and wine have shared an uneven relationship for the thousands of years they’ve been around, so maybe there’s nothing shocking here—except for “200 Bottles of Beer at Warp Speed.” Sign me up.

What beer headlines make you laugh, or piss you off the most?

Within the last hour or so, it looks like Beer Advocate has made some significant changes to its top beer lists.

[8/10 Update: The Bros' official word on their "experiment:" http://beeradvocate.com/forum/read/2952755]

The most significant change is that only beers with at least 1,000 ratings qualify. This means that Westvleteren 12 has been knocked off the list of the site’s best beers in the world. The beer has 921 ratings to date.

In addition, there is a new “Buzzed” list that rates new beers that are earning praise from the rating community. You can still view top beers by style and country.

There is no official thread on the changes or why they were made yet though they are being discussed by members here. There is certainly a debate as to whether the changes are beneficial. Coincidentally or not, they come a little over a week after a handful of brewers expressed their opinions that hyped and rare beers were getting too much attention on Beer Advocate and fellow rating site, RateBeer. [ed. note: link to the ProBrewer thread? Perhaps deleted?]

View the new Beer Advocate lists here.

RateBeer has tweaked its top beer lists as well from time to time. The current version doesn’t appear to have a minimum number of reviews needing to qualify in order to be high up on the charts. For example, AleSmith Kopi Luwak Speedway Stout with 31 reviews is currently ranked #5 in the world and Dieu du Ciel Péché Mortel en Fût de Bourbon Américain currently sits at #101 with 24 reviews.

What do you think the minimum # of reviews should be in order to qualify for a top 100 beer list? Or should there be a minimum at all? Vote in the poll to the right.

Beer Advocate overhauls top beer lists

[Disclaimer: Beernews.org is a leader in craft beer news and is the original source of this article. If you would like to check out more, please visit the original site. Thanks!]